Asymmetries between Goal and Source prefixes in Spanish
A structural account from a diachronic perspective
An asymmetry is observed in Spanish between the Goal prefixes a- and en- and the Source prefix des-: while the former are not productively adjoined to verbal bases, the latter felicitously attaches to verbs in order to encode Source-oriented transition events. From a diachronic standpoint, it is shown that this asymmetry was not present in Latin, and that it was triggered by the evolution from a satellite-framed system (rich in prefixed verbs able to encode a Manner Co-event in the verbal root) to a verb-framed one (whose prefixed verbs can only encode an abstract Ground in the root of the verb). The different behaviour of a- and en-, on the one hand, and des-, on the other, can be accounted for by taking into consideration the different conceptual and structural complexity of Goal paths and Source paths. The present study offers a nanosyntactic analysis of the observed asymmetry which, in addition, fits the Goal bias and naturally explains the linear order in which Spanish directional prefixes appear in multi-prefixed verbs.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Methodology and empirical basis
- 2.1
Collection of the data
- 2.2
Theoretical framework
- 2.2.1Talmy’s typology of motion events
- 2.2.2
Nanosyntax
- 3.From Latin to Spanish
- 3.1
Latin prefixed verbs
- 3.2
Spanish parasynthetic verbs
- 3.3
Prefixed verbs in Late Latin and Old Spanish: A typological change
- 4.Goal prefixes a- and en- vs. Source prefix des- in Spanish
- 4.1
The asymmetry
- 4.2The high productivity of des- as a consequence of its Source-orientation
- 5.A structural account
- 5.1
Syntactic structure of paths and motion events
- 5.2
Inherent syntactic structure of a-, en- and des- prefixed verbs
- 6.Conclusions and future challenges
-
Acknowledgments
-
Notes
-
References
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