Bulgarian Spatial Prefixes and Event Structure

Abstract

In this paper, I explore the combination possibilities of Bulgarian directional prefixes with various motion verbs. Adopting Ramchand’s (in press) event decomposition, Zwarts’ (2005) vector space semantics for directional prepositions, and drawing on various discussions regarding the manner component in the verbal meaning, I propose an analysis that captures the distribution of Goal and Source prefixes. I show how this proposal accounts for the change in the syntactic behavior of prefixed motion verbs compared to their unprefixed counterparts. The proposal also explains the syntactic properties exhibited by verbs when prefixed by different prefixes. I offer a unified treatment of path structure and event structure and suggest that directional prepositions and directional prefixes are semantically identical and originate in the extended PP. The differences between them are due to the syntactic structure in which they participate.