About Evolution of the Semantics of Some Old Bulgarian Verbs with a Prefix

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the problem of the existence of the empty prefixes the Old Bulgarian language. The linguistic material is collected from dictionaries and archives. Althought the research, by its nature, is interdisciplinary the main method is linguistic. The object of study are several verbs which form aspectual pairs (лѫчт : раꙁлѫчт; сѣшт : прѣсѣшт; ст : прост; любт : въꙁлюст). On theoretical perspective, the analysis of the article is based on the use of the Wey-Schoneveld effect, nowadays widely spread in Russian aspectology. The main purpose of the article is to analyze that prefixes which in the verbal derivation change only aspectual meaning of the imperfective verb. According to the fact that the prefix becomes aspectual when its semantic is similar to the semantic of the original verb (Wey-Schoneveld effect), we are trying to discover approaches when the polysemantic has made that semantic connection difficult to feel. Sometimes, in order to reveal the semantic relationship between the prefix on the one hand and the imperfect verb on the other, we need deep knowledge of the nature of the phenomenon that this verb names.