Mirativity in the Slovak language on the example of prefixal verbs in the daily newspaper SME

Abstract

The phenomenon of mirativity, which is based on conveying information that is new or unexpected and causes surprise and counter-expectation, was observed and analysed in many languages; however, there is a lack of research on the topic in the Slovak language. The aim of this paper is to identify, analyse and compare mirative meanings based on Aikhenvald’s range. We have applied Aikhenvald’s approach to the set of collected prefixal verbs of sight perception in the past tense using journalistic texts selected from the daily newspaper SME that are listed in the Slovak National Corpus. We are particularly interested in showing how the grammatic and semantic categories of Aktionsart are intertwined with the concept of mirativity. The results demonstrate that the most frequently used types of Aktionsart in sentences with mirative overtones are inchoative, comitative, delimitative and resultative.