Abstract

Yiddish possesses a class of ‘inseparable’ verbal prefixes which augment the meaning of the verbs they attach to. Among these prefixes is tse-, which has been described as conveying a variety of separate meanings: spatial dispersion, perfective aspect, and initial action. Here, I argue that the latter two of these meanings can be accounted for by a single analysis, wherein tse- functions as a CAUSE-BECOME operator. When combined with atelic predicates, it transforms the underlying event into one that is inchoative: initial and with minimal temporal extension. When combined with telic predicates, the underlying event becomes completative: final, but likewise with minimal temporal extension. I provide a formal analysis of this description in the framework of Neo-Davidsonian event semantics, and show how this account unifies the spatial, perfective, and ‘initial’ readings treated as separate in previous descriptions. I also discuss the partial coöccurence of tse- with the reflexive pronoun zikh ‘self’; though treated as obligatory in previous descriptions, I show that there are cases when tse-prefixed verbs need not take zikh ‘self’ as an object. I then provide an account for why zikh ‘self’ does at times coöccur with tse- by appealing to the connection between anticausitivization and reflexivization developed in Koontz-Garboden (2009), and discuss how the qualities of a verbal predicate’s event and argument structure determine whether the reflexive marker is obligatory. I end by considering the prospect of extending the analysis given here to cover the rest of the inseparable verbal prefixes to provide a unified account of synthetic aspect marking in Yiddish and discuss the questions this analysis opens about how tse-prefixed causative and inchoative/completive forms interact with related constructions in Yiddish.

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