Denominal parasynthesis and inchoativity from both lexical-semantic and aspectual points of view

Abstract

The present paper deals with a specific verb class: parasynthetic denominal verbs with an inchoative meaning. Analyzing them requires connecting two notions that belong to different linguistic analysis levels: the morphological mechanism of denominal parasynthesis – a particular word formation process starting from a noun – and the semantic notion of inchoativity – which expresses a change of state in the notional subject. This relation is especially productive with affixes such as a- and em-/en-, and with the verbal endings -ar, -ecer and -ear. The aim of this survey is twofold: on the one hand, to show how the study of the conceptualization base in the resulting structure makes it possible to establish different groups of denominal parasynthetic verbs; and, on the other hand, to determine the aspectual characteristics of inchoative denominal parasynthetic verbs so as to try to identify the aspectual class to which they could belong. The outcome is a proposal of characterization and classification that fills the gap concerning inchoative parasynthetic denominal verbs, since they have not been systematically analyzed in Spanish grammars so far.