Inchoative derivation in Bulgarian: State predicates and their derivatives
This paper studies the potential of inchoative verb derivation in Bulgarian. The authors illustrate the productivity of Bulgarian ingressive prefixes in contrast with Russian where prefixed verb formation is subject to greater restrictions. At the same time, despite the productivity of ingressive derivation in Bulgarian, restrictions stemming from the semantic (aspectual) features of source predicates limit the capacity for forming the respective prefixed counterparts. Predicates of state may be one good example.
The paper demonstrates the peculiarities of the formation of inchoatives derived from stative predicates by comparing these with verbs from other semantic types. Its main focus is on temporary-state predicates embedded in impersonal constructions and on corresponding inchoative verbs inheriting a number of obligatory structural elements of the impersonal model. The paper considers verbs of physiological, mental state or emotions; substantive emotional, mental or physiological predicates; and inchoative desiderative predicates. Finally, the authors look into the potential for forming terminative prefixed derivatives only available for stative desiderative verbs.
Some important differences of inchoative verbs vs. their stative counterparts are the possibility of expanding the argument structure, the syntactic means of expression and the semantic content of the arguments. While stative verbs denoting physiological, emotional or mental states are more likely to only express the dative experiencer, their inchoative correspondences usually can take additional arguments. Verbs of physiological states take arguments with the stimulus and locative (the part of the body affected by the state) roles; emotional verbs may express a stimulus and the object of emotion; and mental verbs take an argument denoting the cognitive content and, possibly, an additional argument denoting the object of the cognitive content. Syntactically, inchoative verbs allow both phrasal and sentential expression of some arguments, while only one means of expression is available for their stative counterparts. In addition, the semantic content of some arguments is broadened to include generalised situations and hidden predications. Unlike the previous three groups, inchoative desiderative verbs have the same argument structure as their stative counterparts and usually do not take arguments other than the dative experiencer.
The restricted productivity of the inchoative model is predetermined by semantic and derivational factors, as well as by the competition with ‘phase verb + stative verb’ constructions.