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Part of
Space in Diachrony
Edited by Silvia Luraghi, Tatiana Nikitina and Chiara Zanchi
[Studies in Language Companion Series 188] 2017
► pp. 241–280

Asymmetries between Goal and Source prefixes in Spanish

A structural account from a diachronic perspective

| Universitat de Girona

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.

Keywords: directional prefixes, typology of motion events, diachronic evolution, Goal–Source asymmetry.
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
Published online: 14 August 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.188.09sot
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