In press: In: Dimitrova-Vulchanova, M - NTNU

• For the climbing type: English climb, Norwegian klatre and Bulgarian katerja se,
slizam
We predict that these verbs are basic-level verbs in the sense of Rosch (1973), thus being used
more often than more abstract or more specific verbs in the description of events in that
domain. In this section we briefly introduce the linguistic facts for each language, discussing
data relevant for our basic hypotheses in the exploratory study.
3.1 The Bulgarian verb pairs
The Modern Bulgarian verbs for walking, running, and crawling deserve somewhat special
attention. As is widely assumed, language does not tolerate redundancy in the lexicon. True
synonyms are rarely attested cross-linguistically (Lyons 1977, among others). Now, a quick
look up in standard mono-lingual Bulgarian dictionaries reveals very similar, if not
overlapping, definitions. Quite often, one of the verbs is used to explain the meaning of the
other. There is indeed some complementarity in the use of the respective verbs, xodja / vurvja
(walk1/walk2), tičam / bjagam (run1/run2) and pulzja / lazja (crawl1/crawl2), and native
speakers experience problems in explaining the potential difference between the two verbs in
the pair 4 . Furthermore, it has not been attested in research whether they agree on how to use
those verbs, either. One way to approach this issue is to look for differences on the level of
language as a system revealed in patterns of occurrence and collocational restrictions, and in
restrictions on the mapping of conceptual and semantic information to syntax. Another
approach, empirical in nature, can simply test how native speakers use the items in question.
We briefly sketch the differences observed at the level of grammar.
One distinction are constraints as regards use in certain idiomatic expressions. Thus, of
the two walk verbs, only xodja (walk1) occurs in fixed collocations, such as xodja na-PP
(attend), as shown in (2a) below. In contrast, only vurvja (walk2) can be used in the context of
Imperatives, most likely because Imperatives are usually associated with a bounded event, i.e.
a directed motion situation. An example is given in (2a’) below featuring the two directed
motion verbs vurvja (walk2)/otivam (go) vs. the ungrammatical xodja (walk1).
Likewise, in aspectual processes involving reference to walking/running situations, only
one of the two verbs (verb2) can give rise to an aspectually completed bounded event. This
process is characterized by promotion of the prepositional phrase (PP) that expresses the path
to direct object accompanied by aspectual prefixation on the verb. In such cases, more often
4 As revealed in random elicitation queries in the preparation of the experiment.
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