This paper deals with Serbian predicates such as spojiti se “join” or ujediniti se “unite” (Kazaljke na satu su se spojile “The hands of the clock joined”, Radnici i studenti su se ujedinili “The workers and the students united”), which belong to the group of decausative reciprocals, i.e. participate in the causative alternation, while also having a reciprocal meaning. Due to their reciprocal aspect and the obligatory presence of at least two participants, these predicates are frequently classified among “reciprocals proper”; the paper discusses this problematic classification, setting two goals. The first one is to show that decausative reciprocals represent a subtype of both decausatives and lexical reciprocals, but cannot be classified together with morphosyntactically derived “proper” reciprocals such as grliti se “hug” or mrzeti se “hate each other”, which can also be construed with the pronominal expression jedan drugog “each other” in place of the clitic se “self”. The second goal is to establish the criteria for a more precise description of two subtypes of decausative reciprocals, some of which can be labelled as decausatives sensu strictu, due to expressing actions that take part without an external causer being involved (as in Kazaljke na satu su se spojile “The hands of the clock joined”), while others are better characterised as autocausatives, given that their subjects are volitional agents that cause theri own action (Radnici i studenti su se ujedinili “The workers and the students united”).

O problemu klasifikacije dekauzativnih recipročnih glagola u srpskom jeziku

Maja Miličević
2012

Abstract

This paper deals with Serbian predicates such as spojiti se “join” or ujediniti se “unite” (Kazaljke na satu su se spojile “The hands of the clock joined”, Radnici i studenti su se ujedinili “The workers and the students united”), which belong to the group of decausative reciprocals, i.e. participate in the causative alternation, while also having a reciprocal meaning. Due to their reciprocal aspect and the obligatory presence of at least two participants, these predicates are frequently classified among “reciprocals proper”; the paper discusses this problematic classification, setting two goals. The first one is to show that decausative reciprocals represent a subtype of both decausatives and lexical reciprocals, but cannot be classified together with morphosyntactically derived “proper” reciprocals such as grliti se “hug” or mrzeti se “hate each other”, which can also be construed with the pronominal expression jedan drugog “each other” in place of the clitic se “self”. The second goal is to establish the criteria for a more precise description of two subtypes of decausative reciprocals, some of which can be labelled as decausatives sensu strictu, due to expressing actions that take part without an external causer being involved (as in Kazaljke na satu su se spojile “The hands of the clock joined”), while others are better characterised as autocausatives, given that their subjects are volitional agents that cause theri own action (Radnici i studenti su se ujedinili “The workers and the students united”).
2012
Jezici i kulture u vremenu i prostoru I
487
495
Maja Miličević
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11585/775863
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