Compound nouns with paš- ‘self-’ in Latvian
Compound nouns with paš- ‘self-’ in Latvian

Summary/Abstract: The article addresses issues of Latvian compound nouns with paš- ‘self-’. The mass media database attests 1144 paš-compounded nouns. About 40% of them consist of reflexive (25.3%) and non-reflexive action nouns (13.8%). Paš- is added also to suffixal derivatives with -um-, -īb- and -ācij- which denote process, result and state, and other nouns without suffixes. Paš- indicates subject-object coreference and subject coreference with the help of its reflexive semantics. In the former case, when paraphrasing the noun with corresponding verb, the object typically takes the accusative case, but also dative and prepositionals. In the latter case, paš- delivers adverbial exclusive semantics. In connection with other base words which are not related to actionality, paš- demonstrates semantics vaguely related to self and semantics of possession. Compared to derivation of paš-compounded verbs, the semantics of paš- in nominal derivation is not homogeneous and a degree of lexicalization in derivation of paš-compounded nouns is greater. For most paš-compounded nouns, the derivational direction follows the pattern: A → paš- + A. However, some paš-compounded agent nouns are not derived by just adding paš- to the base word, but rather by adding the agent suffixes to a noun already compounded with paš-: paš- + A → paš- + A + agent-denoting suffix.

• Details
• Contents