Change of state and its morphological effects on German and Polish word building

Abstract

The present paper deals with change of state as a semantic feature and the formal consequences deriving from it with respect to German and Polish word building. It could be shown that in Polish resultativeness as well as its counterpart causativity are always morphologically marked thus giving rise to a perfective verb, whereas in German change of state does not necessarily lead to the creation of a separate verbal item requiring the adding of a prefix to the basis.