On the productivity and semantics of the prefix des- in current Brazilian Portuguese

ABSTRACT

The semantic status of the Portuguese prefix des- has been a much discussed topic in recent literature. In this paper, we revisit the data from Bona (2014) with the objective of verifying the hypothesis that the prefix des- has come to denote only the reversal of a trajectory of change (productively applying to verbs of change or to deverbal nouns), no longer being configured as a negation of state prefix. For analysis purposes, as a theoretical framework, we chose the semantic model from Lieber (2004), which presents a set of semantic features to the description of affixes, such as [-Loc] for denials and [+ IELTS] for paths. Furthermore, a diachronic research on the date of entry of these lexical items in Portuguese was done, as well as a comparison with neological items to evaluate the productivity of prefix des- in current Brazilian Portuguese.

Keywords: Prefix des-; Lexical semantics; Reversion; Negation