engleski

A cognitive semantico-syntactic analysis of the Croatian verbal prefix nad-

The focus of the paper is on the semantics of the Croatian prefix nad-, or, more specifically, on its contribution to the verbal semantics and the resulting network of senses realized by all the ‘nad-‘ prefixed verbs in standard Croatian. We first offer a brief overview of the extant analyses of this prefix in Croatian. This is complemented by a brief review of the corresponding prefix nad- in Macedonian and Bulgarian (Mitkovska & Bužarovska 2012). Next, we propose a detailed and systematic analysis of the semantic components and the syntactic requirements of all the Croatian nad- prefixed verbs. The approach, which takes into account both the semantic components and the syntactic behavior of verbs, allows us to create a much more finely- grained semantic network of senses compared to those presented in previous research. In the concluding part of the paper we systematize the syntactic behaviour of nad- prefixed verbs and present the obtained semantically motivated network of senses of nad-. By way of final analysis, we try and relate our findings to the feature of +/- ATTACHMENT, previously recognized (Brala, 2008) as centrally differentiating the meaning of the Croatian prepositions (iz)nad and preko. The central hypothesis of the paper is that the network of meanings of the Croatian prefix nad- is based on the same structural elements (semantic atoms) and follows the same extensional principles as analogous networks that have already been developed for, e.g., the Croatian prefixes do- and od-.

Croatian, semantics, syntax, verbal prefix, ‘nad-’

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