Deverbatives as a Means of Actualization of Taxis Polymorphy

Abstract

This article considers deverbative nouns as a means of actualizing taxis polymorphism. Taxis polymorphy refers to the polyvariety of taxis categorical meanings realized by deverbatives when used with adverbial prepositions. The material of the study was German, Dutch and English utterances with deverbatives, selected by directional sampling from the database of the Leipzig National Corpus (LC) and the Electronic Dictionary of the German Language (DWDS). Taxis polymorphy, actualized by deverbatives, is due to a number of factors related to the constituent composition of their functioning environment. First of all, it is specified by the heterogeneous semantic potential of prepositions, including polysemic prepositions in, bei, mit, unter, durch, bij, met, voor, at, on, upon, with, by, through. In addition, it can be determined by such elements of the taxis environment as phasal verbs, as well as iterative, phasal and durative adverbials and attributes. In the corresponding taxis environment, deverbatives act as actualizers of syncretic phase-taxis, iterative-taxis and durative-taxis categorical meanings of simultaneity, precedence and sequence.