ON THE SEMANTICS OF THE PREPOSITION ZA AND THE PREFIX ZA- IN BULGARIAN Svetlana Nedelcheva

Za - one of the primary prepositions used as early as the 9th to 11th century, the period of Old Bulgarian language Old Bulgarian spatial meaning of za - a place beyond something contemporary Bulgarian primary meaning of za – the purpose of an activity, the purpose of an object

Deciding which is the primary meaning can be quite a problematic issue The Dictionary of Bulgarian Language (1977) shows 22 different meanings of za in Modern Bulgarian Eurodict (2003) associates za with a range of 14 meanings and 7 fixed phrases the primary sense and the functional element of za is that of PURPOSE

Bulgarian aspect ImperfectivePerfectiveSecondary imperfective пълзя (crawl)запълзя (start crawling) запълзявам (start crawling) карам (drive)закарам (finish driving) закарвам (finish driving)

The prefix za is associated with what seems to be contradictory meanings a starting sense (e.g. zacheta start reading); a 'completed' sense (e.g. zapisha write down); there appears to be no relation between these meanings and the meanings of the preposition za

I suggest that such a relation exists Talmy's spatially based theory of aspect (Talmy (2000)) a previous analysis of the semantic network of the preposition za (Nedelcheva, Tyler (forthcoming)) conceptual blending (Fauconnier & Turner (1998))

The contemporary preposition ZA The movement to the back side of a location became a movement in the direction of that location. Patuvam za grada. Otivam zad granitsa. (I) travel za city-Det. (I) go zad border.

The Purpose sense of the preposition za Otivam zahlyab. (I) gozabread. Im doing to get bread. purpose the purpose is experientially correlated with the physical destination

The Prefix Za- and Bulgarian aspect Simplex imperfective пълзя (crawl) (prefix) за- Derived perfective запълзя (started crawling) (suffix) -ва Derived imperfective запълзявам (start crawling)

In his Reference Grammar of Modern Bulgarian, Scatton (1984: 291) defines three meanings of za-: movement or location behind крия (hide)закрия (obstruct from view) държа (hold)задържа (hold back, restrain) beginning of action or state живея (live)заживея(begin to live) спя(sleep)заспя(fall asleep) помня(remember)запомня(memorize) result регистрирам(register)зарегистрирам(put in a register) копая(dig)закопая(bury, cover)

However excess (i.e. завзема (conquer), завардя (guard), заграбя (grab) covering (i.e. закопая (bury), залея (pour all over), зациментирам (cover with cement) accumulation of quality (i.e. забременея (become pregnant), заболея (get ill), заквася (make sour)

The two most frequent meanings of za- beginning of action or state (i.e. забързам (hurry up), заговоря (start talking), заваля (start raining)) and result, which I call completion (i.e. закова (nail in), закрепя (fix), заловя (catch))

I hypothesize that the image schemas of these two meanings of the prefix za- are related to the proto- scene of the preposition za the TR-LM relationships invoked by the perfective verbs prefixed with za- are the same as the TR-LM relationship of the spatial meaning of the preposition za – the Destination sense

The Completion Sense 2 nd in frequency ~23% of the total number of za-prefixed verbs Peter zagasi ogynya. TR za-LM Peter za-extinguish-3p. sg. fire-Det. Peter extinguished the fire. activity time The motion has a goal – the completion of the activity (extinguishing the fire)=>the destination point (LM) of za.

The TR-LM correlations in the prefix and the preposition profiles SPATIAL TEMPORAL TR za LM TR za-LM analogy location activity LM TR DESTINATIONS are Life GOALS (Lakoff & Johnson (1999: 62))

The Ingressive Sense the most frequent one more than 58% of the total number of za- prefixed verbs Kilimat sashto zadimya i plamatsite barzo plaznahakam bibliotekata. Carpet-Det. also za-smoking and flames-Det. quickly crept to library-Det. The carpet started smoking as well and the flames quickly spread out to the library. rest TR LM event time

The Completion sense MOTION END OF MOTION = DESTINATION The Ingressive sense NON-MOTION START OF MOTION = DESTINATION The Destination sense TR LM = DESTINATION

CONCLUSIONS za- makes the verb perfective it changes the speakers perspective on events from unbounded to bounded the polysemous functional morphemes (za & za-) have semantic networks for the Completion and Ingressive sense of za- prefix and the spatial scene of the preposition za – the functional element is that of DESTINATION the only difference is that with za- prefix the relationship has been extended from the SPATIAL to the TEMPORAL domain

THANK YOU