FinalZera wrote:
German seems to have used this prefix more successfully: befreien (to free), beträuben (to deafen), begraben (to bury (to dig a grave for)), belasten (to encumber). Could a native Germanophone tell me if this is still productive in the modern day?
I would say so - e.g., a relatively recent formation is
jemanden besimsen "send an SMS to someone", from
simsen "writing or sending an SMS" (both colloquial).
The be-prefix mostly forms transitive verbs; it is used to make intransitive verbs transitive:
leben "live"
beleben "to make alive, lively"
or two put a different or new complement into the object role:
schenken "to give (X as a gift to Y) ->
beschenken "to give a gift (to Y)"
Er schenkt meinem Bruder einen Hund <-> Er beschenkt meinen Bruder (mit einem Hund).
He gives to my brother a dog (as a gift / present) <-> He presents my brother with a dog.
In many cases, the derived meanings are idiosyncratic or at least lexicalised (sitzen "sit" / besitzen "own, possess"; schreiben "write" / beschreiben "describe" besides the expected "write upon", legen "lay" / belegen "document, substantiate" besides the expected "overlay, cover").
Radius Solis wrote:
- most for which there are already perfectly good morphologically related verbs (*He stronged it, *Cook until the sugar caramels, *Engineers heighted the building, *He golded the statue)
- many nouns that are derived from something else already (*He teachered for six years, *I warmthed my dinner, We are employeeing him)
I think the second restriction is a subgroup of the first - why say *
he teachers if there is
teaches or *
the company employees an accountant when there is
employs? So we can expect such verbs to be formed when there either is no basic verb or when the newly derived verb has a specialised meaning - e.g.
to lawyer in its meanings "to work as a lawyer, to practice law" and "to afflict s.o. as lawyer".