abstract
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This article discusses the deverbal verb derivation by the means of the prefixes in the Old Lithuanian language based on the data of about 110 primary verbs and their approximately 460 derivates attested in the Gospels and Epistles (ViE) and the Catechism (ViC) of Baltramiejus Vilentas, with additional data from other contemporary sources.
By comparing the derived verbs with their bases occurring in the texts, the co-occurring morphological and semantical changes were found out. Attention is brought on the together occurring morphological and semantical changes used in deriving telic verbs from their often atelic bases, e.g. the loss infinitive formants -ė-, and -o-, as in giedoti “to sing”→ pragysti “to start to sing, to start to crow”, or the ablaut change in šaukti “to shout” → prašukti “to cry out, to exclaim”. The change in telicity can be used to classify the derived verbs into aktionsart classes (e.g. ingressive, delimitative). The telic ingressive and momentaneous derivatives also have the nasal infix or sta formant in the present tense.
It is shown that the non-prefixed verbs with ingressive or momentaneous meaning of the type gysti occur extremely rarely in the oldest Lithuanian texts, and are better seen as later de-prefixed derivatives of the type pragysti. Similarly, the derived type pragiedoti is rare in Old Lithuanian as the prefixation is usually accompanied by the shortening of the infinitive stems in the derivatives of this semantic class, leading to pragysti, although the type pragiedoti also occurs. This has led to the formal patterning of the derivatives and base verbs into two new models similar to that of degti → sudegti: gysti → pragysti and giedoti → pragiedoti.
