Prefixes

In what follows we describe how prefixation is annotated in the database

The general guideline that we followed in determining if a verb is prefixed or not is ‘if something can be taken to be a prefix, then it is a prefix’, where the starting point were existing lists of prefixes in BCS and Slovenian (Babić 1986, Klajn 2002 for BCMS, Toporišič 2000 for Slovenian).

To this end, the first step was to determine if a verb that seems to be prefixed has an unprefixed pair, e.g. Slovenian prebrati ‘to finish reading’ has the pair brati ‘to read’, the BCS pročitati ‘to finish reading’ has the pair čitati ‘to read’.

If the seemingly prefixed verb does not have an unprefixed pair, we have checked if a verb with the same root, but a different prefix exists. If it does, the verb was taken to be prefixed and annotated as such. Examples of this kind are, for example, verbs with the root četi:za-četi ‘start’, po-četi ‘to do’, na-četi ‘start’, pri-četi ‘start’, za-četi ‘start’ (even though četi does not exist). Finally, if there are no corresponding unprefixed verbs or verbs with the same root but other prefixes, verbs were still marked as prefixed if their root is independently attested in other categories (e.g. nouns, adjectives, compounds). Examples of this kind include e.g. uz-nemiriti ‘upset’ in BCMS, where nemiriti is not attested on its own or with other prefixes, but nemir ‘unrest’ exists as a noun.

In general, the annotation shows if the verb is prefixed and, if it is, which prefixes are present on the verb (see below). The column Prefixed_verb shows if a verb has prefix or prefixes (1) or not (0).

This information is relevant for the column Simplex_verb too - in this colomn either a prefix or any type of an affix, it is marked with a 0.

Prefixes are marked in 4 additional columns (Prefixes (list), 1, 2 and 3). In the column Prefixes (list), we show all the prefixes that the verb contains, separated by a “+”. The next three columns show specific prefixes, as well as the position of each individual prefix with respect to the root, where column 1 refers to the position closest to the root, column 2 the second one, and column 3 the prefix that is most distant from the root. This means that the order of prefixes in the columns is reversed compared to their linear order in the verb itself (and in column Prefixes (list)). If there is no prefix in the respective position, we annotate this with 0. More examples are given below.

Note that this annotation only marks the linear position of the prefix and that we are making no claims about the syntactic position of each prefix (whether it is lexical, intermediate, super-lexical etc.).

If the verb cannot be annotated as prefixed using the criteria described above, but there is a strong intuition that the verb contains a prefix, this is marked in column Potentially_prefixed_verbs with 1. For instance, in BCMS, the verb za-taškati ‘to cover up.pfv’ seems to include the prefix za- (which retains the same meaning as in other verbs with za-, e.g. za-kopati ‘burry’), but the base taškati is not attested independently or with other prefixes).

Finally, verbs that are taken to be potentially prefixed are not taken to be simplex (i.e. they are marked with a 0 in column Simplex_verbs).

The following table gives an overview. Note that verbs that are annotated with 1 in the Potentially prefixed are not taken to be Simplex (i.e., they are annotated with a 0 in the Simplex verb column).

In some cases it is unclear whether the item in question is a single prefix or if it could be further separated. One such example is Slovenian izpod- where prefixes iz- and pod- also exist (as do prepositions iz, pod and izpod). In the database we decompose these prefixes.

Loan prefixes were not annotated as prefixes (e.g., re- in reciklirati ‘recycle’).