Moving od(-) and do(-) in Croatian. An account of sources, goals and dual readings of the dative

Abstract: This paper focuses on the Croatian P-elements od ‘from’ and do ‘up to’, which productively appear as both verbal prefixes (yielding either source- or goal-oriented motion verbs) and prepositions; in motion contexts these lexicalize TO (i.e., goals) or FROM (i.e., source paths). Furthermore, the pair allows for a very interesting alternation: a prefixed od-/do- motion verb is frequently followed by an od or do prepositional phrase. The resulting possible combinato-rial patterns are interesting with respect to their semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic properties. A careful look at the various possibilities opens the way for analysis of what seems to be a previously undescribed property of the Croatian spatial prepositionless dative: a possible dual reading, generally of the adlative/ablative type.