A unified analysis of two classes of Slavic verb-prefixes

The paper presents a unified analysis of the external and internal Slavic verb-prefixes, treating them as markers of agreement between the phrases representing the initiating and the result subevent in telic eventualities. Each verb-prefix has a counterpart among prepositions. When agreement is established between the two subevents of a telic eventuality and there is a preposition that semantically (nearly) matches the predicate of the result subevent, the verb will take the prefix that corresponds to that preposition. I argue that the same mechanism generates both classes of prefixes, and that only two special properties distinguish the structure in which external prefixes are generated. One is that the affected participant of the telic eventuality (the undergoer of the change) is represented not by a nominal expression, but by a VP, and the other that there is a context variable in the result phrase. I show how quantitative interpretations, associated with external prefixes, can be derived from prepositional meanings, in combination with the context variable in the complement of the result subevent phrase. While the earlier analyses all account for the differences, but not for the similarities between the two classes of prefixes, the present analysis explains both aspects of the classification.