IS THE CHOICE OF PREFIX ARBITRARY? ASPECTUAL PREFIXATION AND RUSSIAN VERBS OF PERCEPTION

At the heart of the notoriously complex Russian aspectual system is a sim ple rule whereby a perfective verb is formed by the addition of a prefix to an imperfective verb. Thus perfective verbs are formed from delat' 'do' and pisat' 'write' by adding the prefixes s- and nasdelat' and napisat'. Since Russian has nineteen different perfectivizing prefixes that create aspectual pairs (Rrongauz), the question arises as to how native speakers of Russian know which prefix to choose for a given verb. Is the choice arbitrary, or are there linguistically significant generalizations motivating the choice of pre fix? As a first step in a larger project on prefixation and semantic classes, I offer in this paper a study of perception verbs. I argue that for this semantic class the choice of prefix is indeed motivated. The contribution of my study can be summarized as follows. First, I demonstrate that the two prefixes u and po- are dominant for perception verbs. Second, it is shown that u- com bines with verbs of so-called passive perception, while po- is used for active perception. Third, I argue that these correlations are motivated by conceptual overlap between stem and prefix. In particular, it is shown that u- involves movement away from an implicit observer's domain of accessibility, and that this meaning is compatible with the meaning of passive perception verbs. As for po- and active perception, I suggest that atelicity is relevant for both stem and prefix. My argument is structured as follows. After a brief overview of the data in section 2,1 discuss the notions of active and passive perception in section 3, before I turn to verbal prefixation in sections 4 through 6. Conclusions and implications are summarized in section 7. 2. Data