Читать книгу Multiple Preverbs in Ancient Indo-European Languages - Chiara Zanchi - Страница 38

Thus far, several key characteristics of preverbs have been discussed, including their functions, their positional properties, their origin, and their murky categorial and typological statuses, reflected in the correspondingly unclear terminology (cf. Section 3.1). Another critical issue requiring attention is the number of preverbs that can occur in front of a verbal stem.

According to my definition, “multiple preverbs” occur every time two or more of such morphemes are placed in front of a verbal base. Among Indo-European languages, single preverbs are widespread, whereas multiple preverbs are not. However, Old Indic, Ancient Greek, Slavic and Old Irish, are noteworthy for allowing multiple preverbs. An example from each of the mentioned Indo-European branches is shown in (22); notably, all composites contain a Proto-Indo-European root for seeing or looking.1

1 Multiple preverb composites containing roots for ‘seeing, looking’*ku̯ei̯s-,*spek̂-,*u̯ei̯d- (LIV2 381, 575, 665)Ved. ábhi ví √spaś- ‘look at, view’ (R̥V 3, 62, 9; 10, 187, 4)AG eis-an-eîdon ‘look upward to’ (Il.16.232, 24.307)OCS pro-po-věděti ‘proclaim, predict’ (Mar.Mk.1.38, 16.15 etc.)OIr. imm·accai (imm-ad-√kwis-) ‘look after, examine, consider’(Ml.114a15, 17b6)

The composites of (22) can be schematized as follows:

1 Pn [exterior] (…P2[medial]) P1[interior] V

Multiple preverbs can be either different, as in (22), or identical, as in AG pro-pro-kulíndomai ‘keep rolling in front of’ and OIr. as·éirig (ess-ess-√rig-) ‘rise again’. The preverb farthest from the verbal stem (P_n) is called “exterior preverb” (EP), whereas the closest to it “interior preverb” (IP).2 All preverbs occurring between the EP and IP are “medial preverbs” (MPs). For example, the Ancient Greek composite ex-apo-baínō ‘step out ofʼ contains ex- ‘out of’, which is the EP, and apó- ‘away from’, which is the IP. In case of more than two preverbs, such as in the composite ex-up-an-ístēmi ‘start up from under’, ex- is the EP, hupo- ‘under’ the MP, and an(a)- is IP.

The cumulation of preverbs exemplified in (22) and represented in (23), though possible, does not seem to reflect the usual phenomenon in old Indo-European languages (Kuryłowicz 1964: 174ff.). In this respect, Old Irish constitutes an exception: three, four, and even five preverbs are occasionally put in front of a verbal base (cf. Chapter 7; Rossiter 2004; McCone 2006). Kuryłowicz accounts for the productivity of verbal composition in Old Irish as follows: in Old Irish, the EP is clearly separated from the rest of the composite by a clear-cut juncture, #EP_n=MP₂-IP₁-V#, and has the status of a proclitic, instead of a prefix. Furthermore, the addition of a new preverb (MP₃) prompts such a juncture: #EP=MP₃-MP₂-IP₁-V#. Therefore, while in principle the other Indo-European languages including Vedic, Homeric Greek, and Old Church Slavic allow two interpretations for sequences such as #EP-IP-V#, namely #EP-[IP-V]# and #[EP-IP]-V#, only the former interpretation is possible for Old Irish (on this issue, cf. also McCone 2006: 177–189). Thus, multiple preverbs in Old Irish do not belong to an ambiguous structure: the EP is always perceived as a modifier of the remaining verbal form taken as a whole (cf. also the concept of “recomposition” or “accretion”, introduced by McCone 1997, 2006, and in this work, mentioned in Chapter 1 and discussed in Chapter 7). This lack of ambiguity arguably favored the productivity of multiple preverbs in Old Irish. In addition, the earliest attestations of this language (4^th–5^th centuries onward) go back to a chronological phase, when composites were advanced in their lexicalization process: this means that a good number of lexicalized composites must already have been available for recomposition or accretion (cf. Chapter 7).