Naslov
A diachronic change of the reflexiva tantum psychological verbs in Croatian

Autori
Milković, Lidija

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Sažeci sa skupova, prošireni sažetak, znanstveni

Skup
Zadar Linguistic Forum 2022 – Predicate: from polysemy to arguments

Mjesto i datum
Zadar, Hrvatska, 06.04.2022. - 08.04.2022

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Predavanje

Vrsta recenzije
Međunarodna recenzija

Ključne riječi
diachronic change, argument structure, Croatian language, psychological verbs, reflexivity

Sažetak
The term Reflexiva tantum denotes a group of reflexive verbs which occur in a language exclusively with a reflexive marker, i.e., which do not have their transitive pairs (Oraić Rabušić 2018: 76, Belaj 2001: 4). The verbs within this morphologically defined category are subjected to differing semantic classifications. For the reflexiva tantum verbs, Belaj (2001: 4) also uses the term ‘primarnopovratni’ (primary reflexive verbs) and separates them into two categories based on the criterium of the relationship of actants involved in an action, and Oraić Rabušić (2018: 77-79) categorizes these verbs based on their ontological status and the thematic roles of the subject of the verb. The verbs analysed in this work have been singled out according to the criterium of the semantic classification of verbs, which relies on the classification of verbs in the Croatian Verb Valency Database (Brač and Bošnjak Botica, 2015). The aim of this work is to analyse to what extent the reflexiva tantum psychological verbs are diachronically stable in Croatian, and to determine which changes have occurred in their meaning and argument structure. This is intended to be achieved via a comparison with the verbs etymologically related to them listed in Proto- Slavic dictionaries (ЭССЯ and SP), the Old Russian Dictionary (SRЯ) and the Dictionary of Croatian or Serbian language (ARj). In Slavic languages, the reflexive pronoun *sę indicates the decrease of the verb valency (Сильницкий and Недялков, 1970: 40), wherefore, the presence of a greater number of reflexiva tantum verbs in the more recent linguistic phases indicates the increase in use of the valence-decreasing morphological marker. The sample of 30 verbs was collected by the following procedure. Since there is currently no existing Old Croatian dictionary, etymologically related verbs have been excerpted from the index of the Old Russian Dictionary (СРЯ). The etymological matching was confirmed by an insight into two Proto-Slavic dictionaries (ЭССЯ, SP). The verbs collected following this procedure were compared to the verbs found in two contemporary dictionaries of Croatian, in order to check whether a certain verb belongs to the reflexiva tantum category of verbs. Taking into account the possibility that a certain verb found in Croatian would not be mentioned in the Old Russian dictionary, a list of reflexiva tantum verbs has been taken from Oraić Rabušić’s research (Oraić Rabušić, 2018) and compared with the two aforementioned Proto-Slavic dictionaries. In case when the verbs were not alphabetically listed in dictionaries, it was checked whether a certain verb occurs in the Arj in the pre-standard period of the Croatian language (from the 11th century to the first half of the 18th century (Brozović, 2008)). The excerpted verbs mostly belong to the Chakavian dialect of Croatian. Samardžija (1994) states that the relationship between valency change and meaning can be threefold: 1) the meaning of a verb changes without affecting valency ; 2) the valency change occurs without a meaning change ; 3) the valency and the meaning are changed simultaneously in the manner that the verb has one valency in its one meaning, and in its other meaning it has another valency. By including the criterium of the presence of a reflexive marker, the number of the possible combinations of the changed components increases. Table 1 lists all logical possibilities concerning the change in 1) semantic field (SF) ; 2) argument structures (AS) ; 3) the presence of reflexive marker (RM). The largest number of verbs belongs to the first category, i.e., the category of verbs in which all three analysed components have changed. Changing the semantic field does not include cases where meaning can be decomposed by adding the CAUSE operator in accordance with the predicate decomposition scheme in the Role and Reference Grammar (Van Valin, 2005). The fifth category is second in number of verbs. It can be represented by the following general scheme: {; ; sramiti ‘to shame’ [do’ (x, ∅)] CAUSE [feel’ (y, [ashamed’])]}; ; t1 {; ; sramiti se ‘be ashamed’ (x, y)}; ; t1/t2. The scheme denotes that the causative alternation pattern stopped being productive, whereby in the more recent linguistic period only the intransitive use of verbs with a reflexive marker has been preserved. The results show that two verbs have remained reflexiva tantum from the Proto-Slavic period, and the data on the use of one of these verbs are available only for the prestandard Croatian. Furthermore, all verbs have a decreased number of arguments and their morpho-syntactic features have changed, and the tendency towards a causative meaning loss is also traced.

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