Grammaticalization and polyfunctionality of the preposition za in Prizren-Timok and Kosovo-Resava vernaculars

Abstract

In this paper, we have tried to outline the status of the preposition ZA from the aspect of grammaticalization, to which it is subjected to a considerable extent in the Prizren-Timok and Kosovo-Resava dialects, and its polyfunctionality is confirmed by numerous examples from these Serbian vernaculars. However, it must be borne in mind that, in contrast to the preposition OD, they were subjected to the process of the so-called areal grammaticalization, and other Serbian dialects - even the Serbian colloquial and literary language - came within the scope of this morphosyntactic segment of balkanization. The prepositional-case connection ZA + A / CG expresses a large number of relationships - those that in the Serbian standard language are represented by some other free cases or prepositional-case connections, or else these connections do not have a particularly large share in their presentation. Summarizing what is presented in the corpus here, we can differentiate three directions of expansion of the prepositional-case connection ZA + A / CG: 1) penetration into the field of genitive ZBOG, accusatives U, PO and NA, and locative O; 2) replacement of genitive, dative and instrumental in supplementary predicates (instead of genitive, dative and instrumental non-prepositional constructions); 3) in the service of addition to certain adjectives and predicative adverbs of state. A significant specificity in relation to the grammaticalized prepositions NA and OD is that the ZA-connection in certain categories of examples from our material has the property of a condenser, i.e., it is in the role of transform of the predicate-argument structure, which can be formalized as (a) causal, (b) final, (c) declarative sentence.