I prefissi verbali russi pri- e do-: semantica spaziale e possibili corrispondenze in italiano

Abstract

In this paper, we analyse the spatial meaning of verbal prefixes pri- and do- and their semantic contribution to the lexicalisation of motion events. Our analysis is based primarily on the lexicographic description of these prefixes proposed in the Academic Grammar of the Russian Language (Švedova et al., 1980) and on the interpretation given to them in different works devoted to the study of the semantics of verbal prefixes in the Russian language. In different contributions, it is observed that the spatial meaning of the prefix pri- expresses the reaching of the goal of motion, including the crossing of its threshold (boundary-crossing). In contrast, the spatial semantics of the prefix do- is mostly described in relation to the progressive approaching to an endpoint along a spatial scale (boundary-reaching). In the course of the contrastive analysis, an attempt will be made to identify and describe possible Italian correspondences for Russian verbs of motion with prefixes pri- and do-. We also consider which semantic components of a motion event encoded in a Russian prefixed verb are expressed or omitted in the corresponding Italian constructions. The research has been conducted on the parallel Russian-Italian corpus, part of the National Corpus of the Russian Language (we consider just a few examples).