Between ingressivity and resultativity: The prefix za- in contemporary Polish from a cross-Slavic perspective

Abstract

Summary The aim of this paper is to describe the submeanings of the prefix za- in its perfectivising function in Polish. The semantic meaning of this prefix deserves a reassessment given its high productivity in new, often colloquial verbal deri­vatives. In such derivatives, e. g. zagłosować ‘vote’, zawalczyć ‘struggle’ or zapozować ‘pose’, as well as in many other older verbs, the meaning of za- seems to be distinctly different from the traditionally assumed meanings: in­gressive, allative, hiding, covering or damaging (a discussion of previous analyses of za- is presented in Section 2). This article proposes a new meaning of Polish za-: the segmentative meaning (see Section 3.4). The object of this analysis is za- in purely aspectual pairs of verbs consisting of an unprefixed imperfective (ipf.) and a perfective (pf.) with za- (for the defini­tion of a purely aspectual pair of verbs and some modifications for motion verbs, see Sections 1 and 3.5). The paper is not concerned with Aktionsart meanings expressed by the prefix za- in lexical derivations from a simplex ipf. verb in which a pf. verb is paired with another derived imperfective. Such pairs of pf. and impf. verbs in za- are considered only as a background for the analysis of za- as a pure perfectiviser.