Prepositions, Case and Verbal Prefixes

This monograph is concerned with prepositional elements in Slavic languages, prepositions, verbal prefixes and functional elements of prepositional nature. It argues that verbal prefixes are incorporated prepositions projecting its argument structure in the complement of the verbal root and that their meaning is based on the two-argument meaning of prepositions, enriched with the CAUSE operator. This accounts for various effects of prefixation. The book investigates idiomaticity in the realm of prefixed verbs and proposes a novel analysis of non-compositional prefixed verbs based on the operation of predicate transfer. It also offers a uniform analysis of cases; prepositional as well as non-prepositional cases are treated as a reflection of the agreement operation and the type of prepositional case is determined by semantic properties of the decomposed preposition. Furthermore, it examines prepositions from diachronic perspective and argues that they can be grammaticalised as a future marker under certain circumstances.