Theme Vowels e and i in Russian: Implementing the Cartographic Approach
Abstract
The paper deals with the Russian theme vowels that can be regarded as derivational suffixes, in particular, with e- and i-vowels. The former derives emission verbs or inchoative verbs, whereas the latter derives causatives (both dynamic and stative), unergative behaviour-related verbs, and some others. I propose a uniform explanation of the fact that the same theme vowel can give rise to different structural types of verbs. I argue that, semantically, the best way to capture the differences between the two vowels is to implement the Ramchand’s model of predicate decomposition, where e-vowel encodes the process sub-event and i-vowel the initial sub-event.
Submitted: July 20, 2021 | Accepted: Dec. 14, 2021 | Published Feb. 15, 2022 | Language: en
Keywords Denominal verbs • Stative causatives • Russian • Deadjectival verbs • Unergativity • Unaccusativity • Theme vowels
Copyright © 2021 Vadim Dyachkov. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/BES/0/2021/02/002