description
The article discusses a number of copulas with object complement of the type Sln. delati greh 'to sin' in the Resian/ Rezijansko dialect of Slovene, more precisely in the local dialect of Solbica/Stolvizza (SLA point 59, OLA point 1), placing additional focus on the genesis and typology of such verbal phrases. Resian, being a dialect spoken in the Slovene-Romance language contact area, typically bases these structures on loan translations of similar structures in the neighbouring Romance languages such as Friulian and Italian. Based on their valency, copulas may be categorized as univalent, bivalent, and trivalent, while the whole phrase may on the basis of the level of idiomatization function as a free or as a fully idiomatic expression. In addition, the article traces the process of weakening of the lexical meaning of full lexical verbs in copula role and accounts for the idiomatization of set verbal phrases. The weakening of the lexical meaning of full lexical verbs and the consequent formation of copula verbs is accompanied by the following semantic changes: a) intransitive verbs of state and motion attain the function of copulative verbs when their lexical meaning is weakened and approaches the meaning of the verbs 'to be' and 'to become' (stati 'to stand, stay', ostati 'to remain' -> 'to be'; iti 'to go', priti 'to arrive' -> 'to become'); b) similar process is observable with transitive verbs of state if they assume the meaning of the verb 'to have' (držati 'to hold' -> 'to have'); c) this also includes transitive verba effi ciendi (delati 'to work', narediti/narejati 'to do, make, create') whenever their direct object loses the meaning of the effectum, i.e. the effected object; d) verbs followed by an infi nitive may become modal verbs or phasal verbs, or otherwise start to express the Aktionsart: modality (biti 'to be' -> it is necessary, one should', imeti 'to have' -> 'to have to, must', iskati 'to look for, search' -> 'to try'), phasality (se dejati 'to place oneself' -> 'to begin'), causativity ((i)zdelati 'to make, produce' -> 'to let, cause', nehati 'to let'). The process of idiomatization affects verbs with full lexical meaning as well as original copulas. This rather surprising lack of differentiation must surely be ascribed to the fact that idiomatization is not in fact conditioned by the weakening of the full lexical meaning but rather by the metaphorical use of the idiomatizing verb.