Apie kai kurias lietuvių kalbos veiksmažodžių priešdėlių ypatybes

The present article examines Lithuanian prefixes from the generative syntactic perspective. It is argued that the prefix occupies a peculiar position within the verb, which is manifest by several features: a) all Lithuanian verbal prefixes (excluding the reflexive marker -(i)s(i)-, which is given a different treatment) can be regarded as separable to a certain extent and, consequently, have phrasal status; b) given the fact that some verbal prefixes can stack and have predictable meanings, the distinction is made into lexical and superlexical prefixes, following the methodology developed for Slavic verbal prefixes. The merging positions of Lithuanian prefixes are examined in light of Svenonius’s analysis of Germanic particles and Slavic prefixes, which is grounded in Talmy’s distinction of Figure and Ground. Lexical prefixes are shown to reside within the conceptual domain of Ground. Consequently, they are merged low within the verbal complex and then undergo movement to an aspectual projection immediately above the verb. Meanwhile the merging position of superlexical prefixes is outside the verb. It is shown that the functional severing of prefixes from the verb and allocating them to their respective positions allows to account for the position of the reflexive/reciprocal marker -(i) s(i)- following internal (lexical), but not external (superlexical) prefixes, when both types are present, in Lithuanian