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Alina Villalva
Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa
alinavillalva@campus.ul.pt
May 2015
1
Non-romance languages that have also deserved attention are Greek (cf. Efthymiou (2015)) and English
(cf. Padrosa Trias (2005)).
2
See Alcoba Rubio (1987), Serrano Dolader (1995) and Schroten (1997), for Spanish, Crocco-Galèas &
Iacobini (1983) for Italian or Padrosa Trias (2005) for Catalan. For a pan-romance approach see
Darmesteter (1894), Reinheimer-Ripeanu (1974), Allen (1981) and Iaconini (2010). Accounts of Latin
parasynthetics can be found in Darmesteter (1894) and also Dinu (2012).
somehow be considered for the analysis of such forms is the hypothesis that I will try to
substantiate.
In this paper, I will provide a description of parasynthesis in Portuguese 3 that will
resonate this hypothesis into other observable properties. Firstly, I will argue that
parasynthetic verbs must be accounted for together with all other denominal and
deadjectival verbs; secondly, I will discuss the status of the prefixes and suffixes that
occur in parasynthetic verbs; finally, I will try to demonstrate that there are two
different sorts of parasynthetic verbs in Portuguese and eventually in other languages.
Usually, the semantics of parasynthetic verbs is quite grossly tackled. They are
described as change of state predicates, sometimes inchoative, sometimes causative, but
other meanings can also be found (as you can see in 3), no matter what their precise
structure may be:
3
Previous descriptions of parasynthesis in European Portuguese include Villalva (1994), Rio-Torto
(1994), Pereira (2002), Arim & Freitas (2003) and Rio-Torto et al. (2013), among others. For Brazilian
Portuguese, see Bassani (2008) and Valente et al. (2009).
(3) magr ADJroot o ‘thin’ e magr ec Vroot er ‘to loose weight’
torment Nroot o ‘torment’ a torment Vroot ar ‘to cause torment’
braç Nroot o ‘arm’ a braç Vroot ar ‘to put the arms around someone’
sop Nroot a ‘soup’ en sop Vroot ar ‘to soak something with soup’
There is one semantic exception that concerns some of the parasynthetic verbs
formed by the prefix des-, which have a meaning that can be found with none of the
other prefixes and none of the other verb-forming resources (conversion or suffixation),
as you can see in (4) – it implies a sense of ‘deprivation’ of what is referred to by the
base form:
(4) casc Nroot a ‘peel’ des casc Vroot ar ‘to take the peel off’
nat Nroot a ‘cream’ des nat Vroot ar ‘to skim’
Apart from this ‘deprivation’ meaning, the array of semantic possibilities that are
available for parasynthetic verbs also stands for other deadjectival and denominal verbs.
Examples in (5) uphold this claim for conversion:
In the case of suffixation, it is worth noticing that the set of suffixes it requires is
the same as for parasynthesis (i.e. –ec(er), -e(ar) and –iz(ar), which means that base
selection should also be similar, but as we will see in a second, it may not be the case:
Verbs formed by conversion (as in 8a) or by suffixation (as in 8b) show no such
phonetic constraint – they can select either vowel-initial or consonant-initial bases:
In sum, as you can see in table 2, almost a thousand verbs are derived from
consonant initial bases either by parasynthesis, conversion or derivation and a set of
120 verbs derived from vowel initial bases consistently avoid parasynthesis
(disregarding those three words mentioned in (7b), and that I will bring back to the
discussion later on):
Now, we need to understand what role the affixes involved in parasynthesis may
have.
parasynthetics non-parasynthetics
100 100
80 80
59.8
60 60
40.2 35.6 40.4
40 40
19.4
20 20
4.6
0 0
total w/ suffix no suffix total w/ suffix no suffix
If suffixes only show up in less than 25% of the total amount of verbs, and in only
a bit more than 10% of parasynthetic verbs, than it is reasonable to question what their
effective role might be, bearing in mind that the presence of a suffix is not crucial for the
verb-forming process:
Furthermore, the set of denominal and deadjectival suffixes available for verb-
forming parasynthesis and strict suffixation is shared by both, although not in the exact
same proportion, as you can see in table 5:
I will not further investigate the distribution of suffixes in this talk, for it would
bring us out of focus, but it is worth mentioning that –ej(ar) and –e(ar) are originally the
same suffix and that they may even compete diachronically for the same base, and that
they can both compete with –ec(er)4, as shown in (10a); furthermore, it is worth
mentioning that the suffix –ec(er) is used by a defective verb (as shown in 10b) to
facilitate rhizotonic inflected forms, reminding Romanian extension suffixes (cf.
Dindelegan (2013:29)) that Rudes (1980) characterizes as morphological left-overs; and
finally, as you can see in 10c), notice that the same base may be selected by different
suffixes or by conversion and suffixation to yield different words, with different
meanings.
4
Cf. A. Villalva, J.P. Silvestre (2011) De bravo a brabo e de volta a bravo: evoluçã o semântica, aná lise
morfoló gica e tratamento lexicográ fico de uma família de palavras. ReVEL, v. 9, n. 17.
[www.revel.inf.br/files/artigos/revel_17_de_bravo_a_brabo.pdf].
custo ‘cost’ cust-ar ‘to cost’
cust-e-ar ‘to pay’
a- 157
des- 39
parasynthetic verbs en- 192
es- 39
TOTAL 427
Three of these suffixes (i.e. a-, en-, es-) are exclusive of parasynthesis; the fourth,
unsurprisingly des-, coincides with two independent homophonous prefixes – one of
them selects adjectives and modifies them creating a negative adjective (as in 13a); the
second selects verbs and generates the opposite verb (see 13b):
The prefix des- that occurs in parasynthesis is none of the previous, and in fact it
is also not always the same: there are two parasynthetic des-. The first type of (hence)
des1-, that you can see in (14a) closely resembles all the other parasynthetic prefixes. It
has a vague semantic role, more like an intensifier than a meaningful modifier, which
can even occur in non-sanctioned words such as destrocar ‘to get change for a bill’,
instead of trocar (see 14b). Furthermore, it can be easily related to the prefix es-, from a
phonetic point of view and also semantically (as in 14c):
Parasynthetic verbs that contain the second kind of des2- have already been
isolated for several reasons, and they are indeed quite different from all the other
parasynthetic verbs. In this case (see the examples in (16)), the prefix is semantically
relevant – if it could not be present, which never happens, the meaning of the verbs
would be the opposite, not the same:
(16) membro ‘member’ desmembrar (cf. *membrar) ‘to take the members out’
telha ‘roof tile’ destelhar (cf. *telhar) ‘to take off the roof tiles’
This type of parasynthetic verbs is probably the only one that can be related to
other instances of bracketing paradoxes, and it is also closer to parasynthetic adjectives,
since their semantics clearly conflict with their structure:
For now, we will leave this particular type of parasynthetics aside and resume the
analysis of the dominant type, which is where cross-linguistic contrasts, such as those
that were initially displayed and are repeated here under (18), occur. These contrasts
illustrate the presence/absence of a prefix in semantically equivalent verbs, formed
from cognate roots, which hints that the role of prefixes is as dubious as the role of
suffixes:
(18) Pt acalmar
Sp, Fr, It calmar, calmer, calmare
A similar contrast can be found between European and Brazilian Portuguese (see
19a) as well as in different synchronies of European Portuguese (see 19b): bravejar and
esbravejar ‘to roar’ are dominantly registered in different periods – apparently the first
one (without a prefix) was replaced by the second, which is parasynthetic:
The reverse case, that is the loss of the prefix, is displayed in (20) and it is even
easier to locate in corpora. Some of these evolutions fail to apply in some dialects or
sociolects, but they get heavily imposed by school education. Somehow, these prefixes
are used by some speakers as non-redundant intensifiers in the structure of the verb,
while others refuse to accept them at all:
trono ‘throne’
palha ‘straw’
entronizar ‘to enthrone’
empalhar ‘to stuff’
destronar ‘to dethrone’
espalhar ‘to spread’
Finally, let’s look at verbs that contain the same root, no suffix and one of the
PLUS parasynthetic prefixes. These verbs (see 24) have different meanings, eventually
depending on the semantic of the base:
To complement the previous set of examples, there is a new set (in 25) formed by
pairs of verbs that also contain the same root, one of them is obtained by conversion and
the other one is a parasynthetic verb. Again, they don’t have the same meaning:
So, with respect to prefixes, we have identified two semantic types: PLUS prefixes
and MINUS prefixes, which account for a considerable number of semantic contrasts.
Consequently, the expletive nature of prefixes should be utterly rejected, but the set of
verbs that have had a parasynthetic version that is now lost or the opposite, as well as
crosslinguistic contrasts for cognate and semantically equivalent verbs favours the
status of prefixes as left-overs, and the existence of different verbs that make use of
different prefixes that belong to the same semantic class also seems to sustain this view.
Closing remarks
To conclude, I will try to correlate the finding from the previous three sections.
First, as regards to the field of deadjectival and denominal verbs, the basic semantic
distinction between PLUS verbs and MINUS verbs is apparently quite useful: verbs
belonging to the PLUS class can be yield by conversion, by suffixation and by
parasynthesis; verbs belonging to the MINUS class can only be obtained by des2- or es2-
parasynthesis (as you can see in the table 7):
Word-
Semantic
formation EXAMPLES
class
strategy
cabeça claro cravo fio flor fundo piolho sombre terra
Base
‘head’ ‘clear’ ‘stud’ ‘thread’ ‘flower’ ‘deep’ ‘lice’ ‘shadow’ ‘land’
Conversion cravar fiar florir fundar
clarear
Suffixation cabecear cravejar florear fundear sombrear
clarificar
des1- desfiar
es1- esclarecer
des2- descabeçar desflorar desterrar
MINUS
es2- espiolhar
Now, the existence of non-synonymous verbs within the PLUS class, which are
derived from the same base, by means of different prefixes demonstrates that the
meaning of each verb requires further attention. Schroten (1997) argued that the
distinction between en- verbs and a- verbs, in Spanish, is related to the semantic nature
of the base (stative telic quale, in the first case, and active telic quale, in the second). This
hypothesis might also hold in Portuguese, in some cases, but it certainly doesn’t when a-
verbs and en- verbs are derived from the same base. In fact, no systematic semantic
feature seems to cover the diversity of possibilities.
So, to conclude, I would like to suggest that the many possibilities for deadjectival
and denominal verb-formation are lexically constrained: conversion can apply once,
suffixation can apply as many times as the number of different available suffixes, and
parasynthesis can apply as many times as the combination of the prefixes and
conversion, or and suffixes will allow. Thus, the formation of actual verbs hinges from
the number of changes of state that the base may require – the amount of formal
possibilities is not a problem.
which were depicted as a very rich sort of compounds, yield by compounding and
derivation over the same root. This characterization was popularly interpreted by most
grammarians as simultaneous prefixation and suffixation. I tend to privilege the fact that
one root is the target of two processes: from left to right, prefixation and conversion (or
suffixation in a small number of cases). The data presented in this talk certainly allow to
claim from a converging structure comes
V initial 58 4 3 8 47 120
non-parasynthetic C initial 371 4 15 44 81 515
verbs 8 18 52 128
TOTAL 429 635
206
35 21 64 135
TOTAL 807 1062
255
Annex 1
a- des- en-
abandalhar agrupar aprofundar desabar embainhar encalhar encurralar engraxar
abastardar ajardinar aprontar desbaratar embalsamar encaminhar encurtar engrossar
abotoar ajoelhar aprovar desbastar embandeirar encanar encurvar enjaular e
abraçar ajuizar aproveitar desbravar embaraçar encanastrar endeusar enlaçar
abrandar alaranjar aprovisionar descabeçar embarrilar encapotar endireitar enlamear
abrasar alargar aproximar descabelar embasbacar encaracolar endividar enlatar
acalmar aligeirar aprumar descampar embebedar encarapinhar endoidar enervar e
acamar alinhar apunhalar descarnar embeiçar encarar enervar enevoar
acampar alisar aquartelar descaroçar embirrar encarcerar enfaixar enojar
acariciar alistar aquietar descarrilar embonecar encarniçar enfardar enquadrar
acarretar alongar arraçar descascar embrechar encaroçar enfarinhar enqueijar
acasalar alourar arrebanhar descompassar embrenhar encarquilhar enfarpelar enraizar
acastanhar amaciar arrecadar descortinar embruxar encarrapitar enfarruscar enredar
acautelar amadurar arredondar desfear embuçar encarregar enfartar enrelvar
acelerar amaldiçoar arregaçar desfigurar embuchar encarreirar enfastiar enrijar e
acertar amansar arregalar desfraldar emoldurar encarrilar enfatuar enrolar
achatar amanteigar arregimentar desfrutar empacotar encartar enfeirar enrugar
acinzentar amarar arrevesar desgarrar empalhar encasquetar enfeitiçar ensaboar
aclarar amassar arrolhar desgrenhar empandeirar encasquilhar enfeixar ensacar
acobardar amesquinhar arrombar desmantelar empanturrar encavacar enfiar ensanguentar
acobertar amestrar arruar desmembrar empapar encenar enfileirar ensarilhar
acolchoar amofinar arruinar desmemoriar emparceirar encerar enforcar ensebar
no suffix
apedrejar
-ej
acarear
acobrear
desnortear enlamear
-e
afoguear
arroxear