Danish clausal verb prefixes be- and for- and comparable Spanish affixations.
The role of morphological schematization.

Keywords: Morphological construction, Danish, schematization, Germanic, Spanish

The paper examines the availability of schematizing transitive prefix constructions in Danish and discusses briefly comparable Spanish constructions. It argues that the Danish prefixes be-/for-, in addition to their role as verbal derivatives, are markers of a productive lexeme-independent argument structure construction that can also be observed in other Germanic languages.
In the be-construction, for instance, the semantic integration of the morphological construction and the verb stem is analogous to the integration of the clausal construction and the verb (e.g. Goldberg 1995: 22-23; Michaelis & Ruppenhofer 2001; Petré & Cuyckens 2008). In general, we may refer to morphological schematization of the clause when an affix, such as the be-marker, in addition to its role as a derivative marker, schematizes the clausal argument structure independently from the base lexeme:

(1) Peter snakker med den ældre dame
‘Peter is talking with the old lady’

(2) Peter be-snakker den ældre dame
Peter be-talks the old lady
‘Peter manipulates the old lady with his talk’

(3) Nasa be-mand-er rumskibet
Nasa be-NOUN-PRS the spaceship
‘Nasa mans the spaceship’

In (1)(2), the be-construction converts the intransitive core meaning into a transitive core meaning. In (3), the clausal schematization induced by the be-construction leads to the core meaning ‘X provides Y with ZNOUN’, which cannot be predicted from the noun root. Moreover, (3) shows that the prefix has a ‘valence-creating’ function, and not merely a ‘valence-changing/augmenting’ function (cf. (2)). Providing data of innovative usage, we show that schematizing clausal prefix constructions are productive in Danish.
While verb affixed constructions in Spanish appear to be very similar to the Danish constructions with respect to surface form and meaning, we argue that the internal structure of the Spanish constructions is different. As expected, the Spanish constructions are productive at the level of verbal derivation yielding predictable transitive verbs and argument structure. However, we do not see creative, transitive uses of base lexemes in the affixed construction (cf. (2) and (3)). This is because, we argue, the Spanish affixation is exclusively a morphological construction of verbal derivation. In contrast to Danish, it does not imply an additional verb independent transitive schematization of the clause.
We hypothesize that while clausal constructions across languages may appear to be alike, they have a language type specific internal structure with respect to the role of schematic construction and verb framing respectively. In this study, we observed that such typological difference between Danish and Spanish seems to be reflected in the role of affixed constructions and their state of development.


References:
Goldberg, Adele. 1995. Constructions: A Construction Grammar approach to argument structure. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Michaelis, Laura & Josef Ruppenhofer. 2001. Valence creation and the German applicative:
The inherent semantics of linking patterns. Journal of Semantics 17. 335–395.
Petré, Peter & Hubert Cuyckens. 2008. Bedusted, yet not beheaded: The role of be-’s constructional properties in its conservation. In Alexander Bergs & Gabriele Diewald (eds.), Constructions and Language Change. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 133-169.