A cognitive syntactico-semantic analysis of the Croatian verbal prefix uz-.

Abstract The focus of the paper is on the semantics of the Croatian prefix uz -, or, more specifically, on its contribution to the verbal semantics and the resulting network of senses realized by all the ' uz- ' prefixed verbs in standard Croatian. We first offer a brief overview of the extant analyses, both those that employ traditional and those that employ cognitive approaches, of this prefix in Croatian. This is complemented by a brief review of the corresponding Russian prefixes vz- and voz- and a comparison of the main senses expressed by these prefixes in Croatian and Russian. The central part deals with a detailed and systematic analysis of the semantic components and the syntactic requirements of all the Croatian uz- prefixed verbs. This approach, which takes into account both the semantic components and the syntactic behavior of verbs, allows us to create a much more finely-grained semantic network of senses compared to those presented in previous research. In the conclusive part of the paper we systemize the syntactic behavior of ' uz- ' prefixed verbs and present the obtained semantically motivated network of senses of ' uz- '. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]