Re: Russian verbal forms (was: (In)transitive verbs

On Wed, 11 Feb 2004 Alexander Savenkov <savenkov@...> wtote:
> >   As far I know, in case of <ponevydelyvat'> even its base
> > <vydelyvat'> is familiar.
> The base, the stem is <del>, as you know.
  Sure, but I intentionally didn't use the term "stem". In my
approach, <ponavydelyvat'> has more possible bases: <delat'>,
<delyvat'>, <vydelyvat'> etc. The actual combination of the meaning
of the prefix and the meaning of the possible base (i.e. "one less
prefixed form") can or can't fully determine the meaning of the
compound word. (Like matryoshka dolls: if you can't open any of the
external dolls, you can't reach the innerer dolls, even if you know
that their there. Therefore, those innerer ones may be
disregarded.)

  If the components can't determine the compound, that is the
semantically "indivisible" base. And I think that the base for
<ponavydelivat'> is <vydelyvat'>. In other words, there can be a
model where Russian has two separate verbs <vydelyvat'>, one with
the 'regular' meaning 'to manufacture, to process' and one with the
meaning 'to make, to do'.

> It is considered a prefixed word. This is because <podelyvat'>,
> <sdelat'>, <poddelat'>, and many other exist.
  See my previous paragraph, formally it _is_ a prefixed word, but
in the intellection of the Russian speakers, it _could_ be a
lexemic atom, though.

> I'm not an expert on this. All I can say that there are the verbs
> <navydelyvat'>, <povydelyvat'(sya)>, and <ponadelat'>. I.e. <po>
> seems to be a separate prefix.
  Sure, <na-> and <po-> are separate prefixes. But is their
combination <pona-> a simple addition of its elements, or has an
autonomous meaning that can't be deduced from <po-> + <na->? Can
the prefixes be combined freely, e.g. <perenavy-> or is it
restricted only to <pona-> (+ a variadic prefix)?
  <ponavy-> is rather a single prefix if there's a semantic or
combinatoric constriction.

> In Russian it is <navestit'>. <Na> can be cut off pretty easily
> since there are <izvestit'>, <perevesti> etc. What about Slovak?
  <navs^tívit'> is a result of a lexical split. In the past, Slovak
knew *<navestit'> but it meant also 'to announce, to report' (see
present-day <návestie> 'announcement, report'). Thus, this verb had
a similar semantic extension like <vydelyvat'> in present-day
Russian. Regarding the meaning 'to visit', the verb had lost the
semantic connection with its base *<vestit'> in the speakers'
intellection, it is considered as an indivisible word, and there
was no cohesion to protect against inetimological sound changes.

  When the connection remained intelligible with the base, the verb
(or the noun formed from the verb) retained its etymological form,
e.g. Slovak has <z|vest'> 'news' (cf. <izvestit'>), <pred|z|vest'>
'foreshow, prediction', <po|vest'> 'tale, saga'.

> > prefixes <v-> and <z->.
> This prefix is not for verbs only in Russian. Are you sure it
> originally consisted of two prefixes?
  Slovak <z-> is a cognate of Russian <iz->. There are contrastive
pairs like in case of Russian <pona-> vs. <po-> and <na->, e.g.
<vzletiet'> 'to fly away', <zletiet'> 'to land (bird, plane), to
fall down', <vletiet'> 'to fly in'.

> No way those constructions are ad hoc. Some other examples that
> come to mind: <ponavytvoryat'>, <ponavynimat'>, <ponavlezat'> etc.
> You cannot call them systemic but they can and should be used when
> appropriate.
  I've learned from your examples that <pona-> + one prefix exists
in Russian. But my original comment concerned the whole verbal
system not only the chosen example of prefix chaning. It there's no
other prefix triples but the ones starting with <pona->, then (1)
it's an isolated phomenon (and can be treated as "ad hoc" in terms
of the entire verbal system); and/or (2) <pona-> is a single
prefix, thus there's no three-level prefix chains in fact.

  Regards,

Tamás