Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Sprach- und literaturwissenschaftliche Fakultät - Institut für Slawistik und Hungarologie

22.05. Bartosz Wiland (Poznań): Polish prefix stacking redux [zoom]

Polish verbal aspectual prefixes like in (1), can stack together on the verb stem, as in (2) (where CUML stands for 'cumulative' and DIST for 'distributive').

(1) a. na-zrywać jabłek

         CUML-pick.INF apples

         ‘pick apples in bulk’

     b. po-zrywać jabłka

         DIST-pick.INF apples

         ‘pick apples one by one’

(2) po-na-zrywać jabłek 

     DIST-CUML-pick.INF apples

     ‘pick apples in bulk one by one’

In the talk, I formulate the constraints on multiple prefixation in Polish verbs and derive the attested prefix orders with a strictly syntactic (lexicalization-driven) complex left branch formation mechanism proposed in recent work in Nanosyntax.