Polyprefixation of verbs in the old Slavonic language

Slavonicpolyprefixation of verbs as a language phenomenon causes interest of researchers in several aspects: its wide prevalence in a number oflanguages (Greek, Celtic, German, Romance, etc.); place and essence of the given phenomenon in the system of form- and wordformationof the verb in various languages; functions of secondary prefixes, the mechanism of their joining to the verb, number of secondaryprefixes, etc. Analysing polyprefixal units on the material of the Old Slavonic language is motivated by the genetic relations ofthe given language with other Slavic languages and with ancient Greek, in which this language phenomenon is fixed, and by the generalthematic specificity of the lexicon of the given language connected with the history of its creation. The work is based on the material ofThe Old Slavonic Dictionary (by manuscripts of 10th11th centuries) under R.M. Tseitlin's edition. The overall number of polyprefixalverbs is about 40 units (without their grammatical and word-formation variants). The analysis of Old Slavonic polyprefixal verbs hasrevealed that they are represented by units with secondary prefixes въз-, за-, из-,о-, по-, про-, пре-, предъ-, разъ-, съ-. The basiccircle of semantics brought by secondary prefixes in the Old Slavonic language is the following meanings: prospectivity, superiority andintensity of action, compatibility, reciprocity of action, beginning with a shade of strengthening and potency, finality, completeness ofaction. A peculiar feature of the Old Slavonic language in the polyprefixation sphere is secondary prefixes with spatial meaning, whichis not characteristic for other Slavic languages. It is explained by the possible influence of ancient Greek models of polyprefixal verbs,which actualise spatial reference points of action (near, around, out of, etc.) and have a significant number of composites formed bysimilar models. The lexical features of the Old Slavonic composites cause particular interest. There are units of the following lexicalsemanticgroups among them: verbs of intellectual and speech activity, emotional condition, social activity, existence, verbs of physicalaction (less frequent). The thematic scope of the analysed units is connected with the fact that problems of people's spiritual life, questionsof faith and other vital values are significant for the native speakers of the Old Slavonic language, while the physical side of existence is less important. The carried out analysis of polyprefixal verbs allows making a conclusion about the complexity and ambiguity ofthe Old Slavonic polyprefixation, which represents one of the ways of extending the semantics of the Slavonic verb.

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