On Old Czech Segmentative Verbs and Their Origin

Abstract

This article proposes an analysis of the origin of a class of segmentative verbs in Czech, which are prefixed with za- and which profile a natural quantum of an action, not unlike semelfactives suffixed with congeners of Late Common Slavic *-nǫ- (cf. Benacchio 2026). After a brief description of these verbs in contemporary Czech based on Łaziński (2020a, 2020b), it presents data for these verbs drawn from the Vokabulář webový and the Staročeská textová banka, which indicate that these verbs are of an early provenance in Czech. It proposes an analysis of their rise as a temporal metaphorical extension of the original spatial meaning of za-, i.e., ‘motion beyond a landmark’.