Polysemy of Agentive Suffixes in Slavic: Toward a Cognitive Semantic Analysis

Abstract

This article analyses the polysemy of agent noun suffixes in six Slavic languages (Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Czech, Serbian, and Slovenian) by using the “metonymic” approach to word formation developed by Laura Janda (2011). It discusses the semantic features of verbs that agentive suffixes can be attached to, and it describes the semantic types represented by the derived nouns. It is demonstrated that agentive suffixes serve to form nouns that belong to a broad range of categories other than agent, and that the formation of these nouns can be analyzed through the lens of metonymy patterns.

Keywords

• word formation, polysemy, agentive suffix, slavic languages, metonymy