Examples of expressive prefixation - in the dialectal material of the Banjani, Grahovo and Oputne Rudine Speech

Expressive prefixes are a specific word-formation category, unknown in synchronic derivatology. It is about word-formation elements which are essentially prefixes, but which are not recognised as such in the structure of the word. They can be isolated only by word-formation and etymological analysis. In the present paper, this category is studied within the context of dialectal material provided by J. K. Koprivica’s Dictionary of the Banjani, Grahovo and Oputne Rudine Speech. It is concluded that the examined speech contains a considerable number of expressively prefixed forms. Many of them have developed word families (e.g. čeprljati ‘to dig, scratch’, čomrgiti se ‘to frown’, kovriježiti se ‘to be angry’, kovrljati ‘to roll’, koprčiti se ‘to show off, boast’, temezgati ‘to be slow, sluggish’, totrčiti se ‘to swagger’), which testifies to their full integration into the lexical system of language and high frequency of use. The analysed material corroborates the statement that the expressive preverbs are a “productive“ word-formation category in the Serbian language. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 178007: Etimološka istraživanja srpskog jezika i izrada Etimološkog rečnika srpskog jezika