The Complexity of Greek Verbal Morphology

doi:10.1017/9781108780643.012

11 - The Complexity of Greek Verbal Morphology

The Case of Prefixed Verbs

from Part II - Structure of Complex Words

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 September 2020

Artemis Alexiadou

Edited by

Lívia Körtvélyessy and

Pavol Štekauer

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Lívia Körtvélyessy: Affiliation:
P. J. Šafárik University, Košice, Slovakia
Pavol Štekauer: Affiliation:
P. J. Šafárik University, Košice, Slovakia

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Summary

This paper examines the distribution of non-active Voice morphology on intransitive variants of prefixed verbs in Greek. It is shown that such verbs bear internal prefixes and are causative and transitive. Their intransitive variants bear non-active morphology obligatorily undergoing a process of detransitivization. It is further shown that this holds also for reflexive marking in Romance (Catalan and French). This is due to a reanalysis of the particle system of the languages under discussion, according to which internal prefixes have been reanalyzed and cannot be morphophonologically separated from the verbal stem. This suggests that all three languages changed from a more lexeme-like type of prefix system (Bauer 2003) to a system where prefixes are void of spatial semantic content and seem to function as transitivity markers.

Keywords

internal vs. external prefixes telicity transitivity transitivity alternations Voice morphology Greek

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Type: Chapter
Information: Complex Words
Advances in Morphology
, pp. 192 - 216
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108780643.012 [Opens in a new window]
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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