Between Attenuative and Excessive: Bulgarian въз- and Ukrainian за- Cover Image

Между атенуатив и ексцесив: българското въз- и украинското за-
Between Attenuative and Excessive: Bulgarian въз- and Ukrainian за-

Author(s): Ivan Derzhanski, Olena Siruk
Subject(s): Language studies, Language and Literature Studies, Theoretical Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, Morphology, Comparative Linguistics
Published by: Институт за български език „Проф. Любомир Андрейчин“, Българска академия на науките
Keywords: attenuative; excessive; evaluative morphology; parallel corpora; Bulgarian language; Ukrainian language

Summary/Abstract: Deadjectival adjectives formed by attaching the prefixes въз- (in Bulgarian) and за- (in Ukrainian) are inconsistently described in grammars and represented in dictionaries as either attenuative (‘a little …’) or excessive (‘too …’). Using material from a bilingual parallel corpus, in this study we compare their productivity and uses. We find out that Bulgarian adjectives with въз- and their Ukrainian counterparts with за- seldom correspond to one another. The two prefixes differ in their co-occurrence with diminutive morphology and degree adverbs. The studied differences demonstrate that in spite of the superficial similarity, Ukrainian за- is more strictly an excessive marker for which the attenuative semantics is marginal, unlike Bulgarian въз-.

  • Issue Year: 70/2023
  • Issue No: Special
  • Page Range: 325-335
  • Page Count: 11
  • Language: Bulgarian