ITERATIVE TYPE OF ASPECTUAL-TAXIS SITUATIONS IN GERMAN (BASED ON PREPOSITIONAL DEVERBATIVES WITH GE-)

Abstract

This article examines German prepositional deverbatives with the prefix Ge– in terms of their functional potential as means of actualizing iterative-taxis meanings. The surveyed prepositional deverbatives with Ge– include verbal nouns (das Gerede, das Gelächter, das Geschrei, das Gepolter, das Gelaufe, das Geklingel, etc.) in combination with prepositions of temporal (bei, mit, nach, seit) and circumstantial (mit, unter, wegen) semantics. The purpose of the study is to identify and describe the iterative-taxis meanings actualized by prepositional deverbatives with Ge-, as well as to determine their role in the formation of the iterative type of aspectual-taxis situations in German. The research material is utterances with prepositional deverbatives in Ge-, selected by the method of directed sampling from the electronic database of the German Dictionary (DWDS) and the Leipzig National Corpus (LC). The study revealed that prepositional deverbatives with Ge– act as a prototypical means of actualizing iterative-primary-taxis meanings of simultaneity (with prepositions bei, mit) and non-simultaneity (with prepositions nach, seit), as well as iterative-secondary-taxis meanings of simultaneity (with prepositions mit, unter in instrumental/medial and modal meanings) and succession (with the preposition wegen in a causal meaning). The iterative semantics of deverbatives with Ge– can be reinforced by iterative quantifiers (ständig, mehrmalig, jeder, etc.), which specify the nature of the multiplicity or regularity of the denoted action.