Separate morphemes or allomorphs? Morphological status of the Russian prefixes o- and ob- in the light of the new data: Corpus and experiment

Endresen, Anna

doi:10.7868/SX0000392-4-1

PII

S0373-658X0000392-4-1

DOI

10.7868/SX0000392-4-1

Publication type

Article

Status

Published

Authors

Anna Endresen

Volume/ Edition

Volume / Issue 6

Pages

33-69

Abstract

This article examines an interesting phenomenon in Russian morphology: the behavior of the pre- ﬁxes o - and ob -. Do these preﬁxes constitute two distinct morphemes or are they allomorphs of a single morpheme? Previous discussion in scholarly works has been limited to lexical data provided in dictionaries. A number of controversial uses of these preﬁxes were discovered and led to the hypothesis that the original single morpheme has split into two distinct morphemes. This article summarizes the results of two empirical tests of this hypothesis: ﬁrst, against a comprehensive dataset extracted from the Russian national corpus; secondly, via a psycholinguistic experiment. The results of both studies do not fully match the predictions of the split hypothesis. I offer a detailed analysis of the radial network of submeanings expressed by the two preﬁxes, an independent account for the subject responses to experimental stimuli, as well as statistically robust analyses of both studies. On this basis I propose an alternative hypothesis of a single morpheme with non-standard allomorphy and argue for a uniﬁed account of o - and ob -. The study of this particular problem of Russian morphology encourages us to reevaluate the traditional understanding of allomorphy coined in absolute terms and to revisit a number of forgotten ideas of American structuralists about the inadequacy of the binary (+/-) representation of linguistic units.

Keywords

allomorphy, corpus linguistics, morphology, preverbs, prefixes, Russian, experiment

Date of publication

09.11.2025

Year of publication

2025

Number of purchasers

Views

550

References

GOST	Endresen A. Separate morphemes or allomorphs? Morphological status of the Russian prefixes o- and ob- in the light of the new data: Corpus and experiment // Voprosy Jazykoznanija. – 2013. – Issue 6 C. 33-69 . DOI: 10.7868/SX0000392-4-1
MLA	Endresen, Anna "Separate morphemes or allomorphs? Morphological status of the Russian prefixes o- and ob- in the light of the new data: Corpus and experiment." Voprosy Jazykoznanija. 6 (2013).:33-69. DOI: 10.7868/SX0000392-4-1
APA	Endresen A. (2013). Separate morphemes or allomorphs? Morphological status of the Russian prefixes o- and ob- in the light of the new data: Corpus and experiment. Voprosy Jazykoznanija. no. 6, pp.33-69 DOI: 10.7868/SX0000392-4-1

RAS History & PhilologyВопросы языкознания Voprosy Jazykoznanija

Separate morphemes or allomorphs? Morphological status of the Russian prefixes o- and ob- in the light of the new data: Corpus and experiment

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RAS History & PhilologyВопросы языкознания Voprosy Jazykoznanija

Separate morphemes or allomorphs? Morphological status of the Russian prefixes o- and ob- in the light of the new data: Corpus and experiment

You can

References

Индексирование

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