What is it about?
This study claims that the German verbal prefixes ge-, be-, ent-, er-, ver- are allomorphs of locative prepositions, cf. Er lud Heu auf den Wagen (He loaded hay onto the cart) - Er belud den Wagen mit Heu (He loaded the cart with hay). Here the prefix be- is an allomorph of the preposition auf. This comes about by foregrounding of the Ground argument and adjunction, as prefix, of be- to the verb. Thus this analysis accounts for the Locative Alternation, as well as other features of syntax associated with these prefixes.
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Why is it important?
Apart from a comprehensive analysis of the German prefixes, the parallels with English are drawn, e.g. 'bedecked', 'bewhiskered', 'wake up' and 'awaken', and Old English variants of the prefixes.
Perspectives
I hope that this study sheds light for Germanists on a particularly intractable area of German grammar, ie. what do these prefixes mean?
Dr B Roger Maylor
Durham University
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This page is a summary of: Lexical Template Morphology, April 2002, John Benjamins,
DOI: 10.1075/slcs.58.
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