(University of Oregon, 2019-01-11) Gordeeva, Ksenia; Vakareliyska, Cynthia
The study compared prefix variation in novel verbs to prefix variation in standard Russian. Thirty-seven native speakers of Russian participated in the designed experiment. The experiment elicited the perfective verbs formed from the borrowed English nouns. The novel prefixed perfective verbs attested during the experiment were analyzed in comparison with databases for CSR. The analysis revealed significant prefix variation among the novel perfective verbs. It is caused by the broad semantics of the novel verbs and the absence of the restrictions and rules in the language for their formation. The aspectual prefix za- demonstrated dominance over other prefixes in the formation of the perfective forms. The Overlap Hypothesis has proven effective for the prediction of the prefixes used for the perfectivization on the basis of the semantic tie between the prefix and the verb’s base.
