Поле ‘менять’ в сербском языке

Acta Linguistica Petropolitana. Труды института лингвистических исследований. 2026. Т. 22. № 1. С. 134–166.

Fedorov D.

The article addresses verbs of the semantic field of change in Serbian which is covered by various derivates of the Proto-Slavic *-měn. Starting with perfective verbs of change (izmeniti, promeniti, zameniti, smeniti, razmeniti etc.), the article moves to imperfective verbs, separately discussing verbs prefixed with iz-. While the perfective verb izmeniti is primarily used to denote modification, its imperfective derivate izmenjivati predominantly denotes exchange; the second imperfective derivate, izmenjati, though boasting a wide distribution potential, is rather infrequent in texts. As a result, we have to deal with the three iz-derivates as separate lexemes. Another finding of the paper is that the argument structure in Serbian can either narrow verb meanings as in the case of promeniti and its two possible argument structures, or introduce additional meaning to the situation. For example, the NP-Acc za NP-Acc (lit. ‘NP for NP’) model denotes exchange even with the verb zameniti, normally used to denote replacing. Lastly, our Serbian data exhibits contiguity of the semantic field of change with two other fields — transformation and demoting (of employees); the verb promeniti is possible in contexts of evolution and becoming and is compatible with the NP-Acc u NP-Acc (lit. ‘NP into NP’) argument structure, which is usually not the case for cognate roots in other Slavic languages, while the verb smeniti is available in contexts of firing a worker or overthrowing a figure, which are also not covered by the derivates of the Proto-Slavic *-men root in other Slavic languages.

Keywords: лексическая типология, славянские языки, Slavic languages, сербский язык, lexical typology, Serbian, colexification, колексификации, verbs of change, поле 'менять'