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Morphological and semantic features of the 3rd verb type in Croatian

Croatian verbs are categorized into conjugational types from different points of view, some of which they share with other Slavic languages. In recent works there is a range of 3-4 verb classes and/or 6-10 different verb types (e.g. Babić 1980, Barić et al. 1997, Dressler et al. 1996, Raguž 1997, Jelaska 2001, Babić et al. 2007, Silić, Pranjković 2005, Bošnjak Botica 2011). The starting point for most categorization is the phonological shape and the change of thematic suffix/morpheme from the infinitive to the present or vice versa, but some other parameters play the role too. Some recent works (Bošnjak Botica 2011, Jelaska and Bošnjak Botica 2012, 2013 – to appear) view conjugational verb typology in Croatian as prototypically organized category (e.g. Rosch 1978, Tabakowska 2005). In line with cognitive linguistics which states that grammatical categories, even phonological, have structural meaning (e.g. Taylor 2003, Jelaska, Gulešić-Machata 2005), the authors analyze phonological differences in conjugation defining forms in relation to morphological and (verbal) meaning differences which could be assigned to the types as categories. Based on established criteria (the most salient properties) they consider one verb type a prototype of the conjugational category and the others as more or less close to the prototype. They show that some types are organized according to their grammatical meaning and some according to their lexical meaning. In this work the authors present morphological and semantic relations (form and meaning) within one verb type, the 3td, whose thematic morpheme is je (or jeti). The data are collected from a corpus (Croatian Language Repository ; Bošnjak Botica 2011) as well as on a questionnaire distributed to a group of native speakers. The analyzed 3rd verb type proves to be lexically organized around prototypical meaning becoming or being directly related to its prototype suffix -je- (< ê). This makes this verb type open, yet not very productive. Within this class the verbs with suffix -je- ('become X or being X') are compared to verbs of the same adjectival stem having suffix -i- ('make something or somebody to become or be X'), which belong to the 2nd verb type, including verbs with element se. Paired je : i verbs make a special group which distinguishes those i-verbs from the rest of the i-verbs, which have se to express the meaning of becoming/being X (non- adjectival stem) as in ukipiti se. The analysis shows that there is a difference in the meaning of se according to the type of stem and the type of suffix (je or i). It's possible to sort out several meanings according to the combination of mentioned morphological elements: a. X+je(ti) > 'become X' as in žutjeti ; b. X+(je)ti + se > being X, show oneself as X as in žutjeti se ; c. X+i(ti) > make sth/sb to be X as in žutiti ; d. X+i(ti)+se > make oneself to be X (adjectival stem) as in žutiti se. Analysis of about 550 verbs shows that a prototype verb of the 3rd conjugational verb type in Croatian is imperfective, unaccusative, with adjectival root, meaning become or being.

Croatian; conjugation; 3rd verb type; morphosemantic features

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