Distributive Verbs in Serbian and Croatian

The prefix pohas been productive to varying degrees in the derivation of a special class of distributive verbs in almost all the Slavic languages (the only exception being Sorbian; cf. Schuster-‹ewc 1968). Distributives in poare particularly common in Serbian (Sb) and Croatian (Cr); they are frequently encountered in all stylistic registers—colloquial speech as well as the press and belles lettres. Distributive verbs may be broadly defined as verbs which profile the distribution of a predicate over every member of a plural object (or subject; henceforth participant distribution), often (though not necessarily) with an added sense of the distribution of the predicate over the objects (or subjects) in time, i.e., ‘one after the other’ (henceforth temporal distribution). This article presents a description of distributive verbs in Sb and Cr with respect to participant and temporal distribution. Then, the fact that Sb and Cr distributive verbs that seem to directly express only participant distribution tend nevertheless to have temporal distribution as a default interpretation is explained in terms of the theory of the processing of predicates offered by Langacker (1990).