This article presents a cognitive analysis of Slovene emotion verbs with the personal pronoun se ‘self’, e.g., bati se ‘to be scared’. Slavic verbs of this type are traditionally considered ...reflexive. The objectives of the article are twofold. First, the article aims to demonstrate that se in Slovene verbs of emotion indicates not the reflexive, but the middle voice construction. However, given specific pragmatic factors, these verbs also form reflexive constructions with the heavy form sebe ‘self’ (Kemmer, 1993; Tabakowska 2003, 2003a), or even both middle and reflexive constructions with se and sebe, respectively. Second, this article challenges Anna Wierzbicka’s (1988, 1992, 1995) assumption that the Slavic verbs with the light form of the personal pronoun or the -sja affix (Russian) express (almost) volitional, i.e. self-induced emotion. In line with cognitive Suzanne Kemmer (1993), it is claimed that the constructions with the verbs under discussion indicate a low degree of volitionality in the process of emotional change i.e. they lexicalize an event that occurs independently of the Experiencer participant’s will.
This article analyzes Slovene constructions with verbs of emotional experience
formed by the prefix "raz-" (= in different directions, apart). The author
argues that the prefix metaphorically extends ...its spatial (physical) meaning and
denotes metaphorical motion resulting in the emergence of an emotional state
(i.e., the first stage of the emotion scripts) and the occurrence of a physical
reaction (i.e., the third stage). The author discusses not only metaphorical
extensions of the prefix but also how its spatial meanings are mapped onto the
course of an event of emotional change. The author also reflects on types of
causation implied by the experiencer-object and experiencer-subject of emotions, and on verbs of physical reaction that are prefixed by "raz-".
This paper examines how the prefix o-/ob- reflects the spatial bases of emotion events that comprise emotion scripts in Slovene. It is suggested that the prefix and emotion predicates form ...constructions. It is shown that the spatially based metaphorical meaning of the prefix in verbs of emotion blends with the prefix’s temporal meaning (i.e., inchoative, resultative, and factitive). Thus, the prefix “cooperates” with the meanings of the emotion predicates in terms of the spatial and temporal conceptualization of an emotion event. The occurrences of o-/ob-verbs of emotion are analyzed in the context of the entire sentence; that is, nouns that are trajectors and landmarks of o-/ob-verbs of emotion.
This paper examines how the prefix o-/ob- reflects the spatial bases of emotion events that comprise emotion scripts in Slovene. It is suggested that the prefix and emotion predicates form ...constructions. It is shown that the spatially based metaphorical meaning of the prefix in verbs of emotion blends with the prefix’s temporal meaning (i.e., inchoative, resultative, and factitive). Thus, the prefix “cooperates” with the meanings of the emotion predicates in terms of the spatial and temporal conceptualization of an emotion event. The occurrences of o-/ob-verbs of emotion are analyzed in the context of the entire sentence; that is, nouns that are tra-jectors and landmarks of o-/ob-verbs of emotion.
In Slavic languages the same scenes of the path-goal schema are often coded by different cases, prepositions and sometimes verbal prefixes. The differences have not been explained up to now.
We want ...to show that this can best be done within the cognitive linguistic framework (Langacker 1987). We focus on the analysis of a few instantiations of the schema that refers to physical movement in certain settings, and on the grammatical cases that code the categories 'goal' and 'path' in combination with prepositions and directional verbal prefixes in Polish, Russian, Bulgarian and Slovenian. We argue that the different linguistic coding reflects alternate images of the scenes in the above-mentioned languages. Especially crucial are: the varying salience of certain features of a goal, such as its shape as well as the varying level of abstractness at which the scene is treated.
We will demonstrate that the most similar imagery reflected in the linguistic coding occurs in scenes denoting motion to the goal perceived as a surface in the four languages. The imagery of other scenes shows differences. We argue that some iconicity can be seen in the coding of certain scenes. Finally, we want to show that despite differences in imagery the schema path-goal constitutes in Slavic languages a hierarchical semantic structure that represents a radial category. The prototypical spatial meaning is extended to more marginal spatial meanings through one of the conceptual mechanisms of generalization, specialization, and metonymy.
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