Izvorni znanstveni članak
The spreadity of verbal prefixes
Zrinka Jelaska
; Filozofski fakultet Sveučilišta u Zagrebu, Zagreb, Hrvatska
Zrinka Kolaković
; Zagreb, Hrvatska
Sažetak
This paper introduces the concept of
spreadity of affixes as one of the numerical measures which could be used in
the analysis of verb meanings, especially in their usage. It also suggests the
need to distinguish between individual and common frequency when the number of
affixes are analysed in a certain corpus. Individual frequency includes the
number of tokens of the most frequent word formed with a certain affix, while
common frequency includes tokens of all words formed with the same affix. The
first part of the paper discusses the concepts of frequency, productivity and
spreadity. Those three terms are applied to the four verb prefixes that appear
in 500 and 4000 most frequent words as examples of the meaning difference
between them. E.g.\ prefix \emph{ne-} and prefix \emph{pred-,} both
semi-productive, differ in their individual frequency as well as their common
frequency in the corpus of the 4000 most common Croatian words. Prefix
\emph{ne-} is a part of the eight times more frequent individual verb (1215 :
142) than prefix \emph{pred-} (individual frequency), it is five times more
frequent (1696 : 336) when all verbs with both the prefixes in the mentioned
corpus are included (common frequency), but its spreadity is lower than the
spreadity of \emph{pred-} (4 vs.\ 6).\\
The second part of the paper presents data on verbal prefixes in 9079 Croatian
verbs. The choice of verbs is based on the most frequent app.\ 5000 verbs and
verbs derived from them by various prefixes. The spreadity index is compared to
the previous notions on productive, semi-productive and non-productive prefixes
to see if there are any parallels. The results show that prefixes derived from
prepositions that are used in contemporary language have a much higher
spreadity than other prefixes found in the formation of Croatian verbs. Also,
there are strong parallels between the frequency order of verbal prefixes and
the prepositions with the same forms, although the most prototypical
prepositions: \emph{u} `in' and \emph{na} `at, on' did not win the first place.
The first 15 on the list include only three (today) non-prepositional prefixes
(\emph{raz-, pro-, pre-}), the rest are used as prepositions too (\emph{za-,
iz-, u-, po-, o-, s-, na-, pri-, od-, do-, pod-, uz-}). In the last 14 the
majority do not have prepositional pairs (\emph{ob-, su-, obez-, re-, de-,
dez-, dis-, protu-, \mbox{ne-}),} only four have (\emph{nad-, pred-, mimo-, suprot-}).
First place is occupied by \emph{za-} (941), it is followed by \emph{iz-}
(707), \emph{u-} (700), \emph{po-} (675), \emph{o-} (552), \emph{s-} (539).
Ključne riječi
prefixes; spreadity; frequency; productivity; Croatian verbs
Hrčak ID:
45329
URI
Datum izdavanja:
14.10.2009.
Posjeta: 1.868 *