Proto-Slavic verbs with the prefix *ob-/o-: morphophonology, derivation, semantics

The article examines Proto-Slavic verbs with the prefix *ob-/o-, which was reconstructed in the Etymological dictionary of the Slavic languages (issue 26– 31). The author comes to the conclusion that the original morphophonological principle of the prefix distribution (ob- before root vowels and sonorants, obefore obstruents) had already been defied in the Late Proto-Slavic language under the influence of two main factors: derivational and semantic ones. Words formed from nouns retained the original distribution more consistently than those derived form verbs. The deviation from the rule in the latter (in particular, the appearance of the allomorph ob- before obstruents) is associated with certain semantic types (the semantics of circular motion, whole coverage, distribution and others), which started taking the variant ob- in contrast to the variant oassociated with other semantic types.