ON THE SEMANTICS OF THE PREPOSITION ZA AND THE PREFIX

ZA- IN BULGARIAN

Svetlana Nedelcheva

Za - one of the primary prepositions

• used as early as the 9th to 11th century, the period of Old Bulgarian language

• Old Bulgarian spatial meaning of za - ‘a place beyond something’

• contemporary Bulgarian primary meaning of za – ‘the purpose of an activity, the purpose of an object’

Deciding which is the primary meaning

can be quite a problematic issue

• The Dictionary of Bulgarian Language (1977) shows 22 different meanings of za in Modern Bulgarian

• Eurodict (2003) associates za with a range of 14 meanings and 7 fixed phrases

• the primary sense and the functional element of za is that of PURPOSE

Bulgarian aspect

Imperfective Perfective Secondary imperfective

пълзя (‘crawl’) запълзя (‘start crawling’)

запълзявам (‘start crawling’)

карам (‘drive’) закарам (‘finish driving’)

закарвам (‘finish driving’)

The prefix za is associated with what seems to be contradictory

meanings • a ‘starting’ sense (e.g. zacheta ‘start

reading’);

• a 'completed' sense (e.g. zapisha ‘write down’);

• there appears to be no relation between these meanings and the meanings of the preposition za

I suggest that such a relation exists

• Talmy's spatially based theory of aspect (Talmy (2000))

• a previous analysis of the semantic network of the preposition za (Nedelcheva, Tyler (forthcoming))

• conceptual blending (Fauconnier & Turner (1998))

The contemporary preposition ZA

• The movement to ‘the back side of a location’ became a movement in the direction of that location.

Patuvam za grada.

Otivam zad granitsa. (I) travel za city-Det.

(I) go zad border.

The Purpose sense of the preposition za

Otivam za hlyab.

(I) go za bread.

I’m doing to get bread.

purpose

• the purpose is experientially correlated with the physical destination

The Prefix Za- and Bulgarian aspect

Simplex imperfective

пълзя (‘crawl’)(prefix)за-

Derived perfectiveзапълзя (‘started crawling’)

(suffix) -ва

Derived imperfective

запълзявам (‘start crawling’)

In his Reference Grammar of Modern Bulgarian, Scatton (1984: 291) defines three

meanings of za-:

• movement or location behindкрия (hide) закрия (obstruct from view)държа (hold) задържа (hold back, restrain)

• beginning of action or stateживея (live) заживея (begin to live)спя (sleep) заспя (fall asleep)помня (remember) запомня (memorize)

• resultрегистрирам (register) зарегистрирам (put in a register)копая (dig) закопая (bury, cover)

However

• excess (i.e. завзема (‘conquer’), завардя (‘guard’), заграбя (‘grab’)

• covering (i.e. закопая (‘bury’), залея (‘pour all over), зациментирам (‘cover with cement’)

• accumulation of quality (i.e. забременея (become pregnant’), заболея (‘get ill’), заквася (‘make sour’)

The two most frequent meanings of za-

• “beginning of action or state” (i.e. забързам (‘hurry up’), заговоря (‘start talking’), заваля (‘start raining’)) and

• “result”, which I call completion (i.e. закова (‘nail in’), закрепя (‘fix’), заловя (‘catch’))

I hypothesize that

• the image schemas of these two meanings of the prefix za- are related to the proto-scene of the preposition za

• the TR-LM relationships invoked by the perfective verbs prefixed with za- are the same as the TR-LM relationship of the spatial meaning of the preposition za – the Destination sense

The Completion Sense

• 2nd in frequency• ~23% of the total number of za-prefixed verbs

Peter zagasi ogynya. TR za-LM

Peter za-extinguish-3p. sg. fire-Det. Peter extinguished the fire. activity

time

The motion has a goal – the completion of the activity (extinguishing the fire)=>the destination point (LM) of za.

The TR-LM correlations in the prefix and the

preposition profiles SPATIAL TEMPORAL

TR za LM TR za-LM

analogy location activity

LM

TR

DESTINATIONS are Life GOALS (Lakoff & Johnson (1999: 62))

The Ingressive Sense • the most frequent one

• more than 58% of the total number of za-prefixed verbs

Kilimat sashto  zadimya i plamatsite barzo plaznaha kam bibliotekata.

Carpet-Det. also za-smoking and flames-Det. quickly crept to library-Det.

The carpet started smoking as well and the flames quickly

spread out to the library. rest TR LM

event

time

• The Completion sense MOTION → END OF MOTION = DESTINATION

• The Ingressive sense NON-MOTION → START OF MOTION = DESTINATION

• The Destination sense TR → LM = DESTINATION

CONCLUSIONS

• za- makes the verb perfective• it changes the speaker’s perspective on events

from unbounded to bounded • the polysemous functional morphemes (za & za-)

have semantic networks • for the Completion and Ingressive sense of za-

prefix and the spatial scene of the preposition za – the functional element is that of DESTINATION

• the only difference is that with za- prefix the relationship has been extended from the SPATIAL to the TEMPORAL domain

THANK YOU