The Canonical Form in Murky Waters: Idiom Variation and the Croatian National Corpus (original) (raw)
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Idiom variability in Croatian: the case of the CONTAINER schema
Cognitive Studies | Études cognitives, 2009
In cognitive linguistics most idioms are considered to be motivated by various cognitive mechanisms which link the meaning of the idiom with the meanings of its constituents. One of these mechanisms is the CONTAINER image schema. In Croatian it is reflected in idioms containing the preposition u (‘in’). The CONTAINER schema serves to structure abstract conceptual domains like SITUATIONS, EVENTS and STATES. For example, being in a difficult situation is conceptualized as being in a container. In addition to motivating the idioms with the constituent u, the CONTAINER schema also constrains their variability. This means that variations are not unpredictable, but are dependent on the underlying cognitive mechanism. The aim of the paper is to show that the Croatian idioms describing difficult situations vary their lexico-syntactic structure systematically to reflect the CONTAINER image schema. Based on the data from the Croatian National Corpus, we will show that the idioms share a common element, the construction u + NP, which constitutes the fixed core of each of the expressions and serves as the basis for variant realizations. The lexical and syntactic variations reflect the different ways in which the relation between the trajector (a person) and the landmark (a container-like object) is conceptualized. The variability of the expressions raises the issue of the criteria used in establishing the citation form in monolingual dictionaries of idioms.
Phraseological Derivation in Croatian: Nominalization of Verbal Idioms
Reproducible Language Units from an Interdisciplinary Perspective: Volume 4, 2020
https://repozytorium.uwb.edu.pl/jspui/handle/11320/12361 This paper deals with Croatian NP idioms which are derived from verbal idioms that are caused-motion and self-motion constructions, e.g. bacati/baciti rukavicu u lice komu (lit. throw a glove in someone's face 'to challenge') → bacanje rukavice u lice (lit. the throwing of a glove into someone's face); bacač rukavice u lice (lit. a thrower of a glove in someone's face); rukavica u lice (lit. a glove in the face 'a challenge'). The aim is to give a cognitive linguistic account of nominalization of verbal idioms using corpus data. More specifically, we will show that reificationthe conceptual shift from a relational concept to a thing-is constrained both globally and locally. The most common patterns of nominalization are those in which the relation is still present. This is in line with the nature of verbal idioms, which are used to describe the characteristics of a specific situation.
2017
s accepted for presentation at the 15 th Slavic Cognitive Linguistics Conference Ekaterina Barancheeva. Метафорические модели описания памяти в русском языке: опыт дискурсивного анализа Martina Björklund. Russian ‘fear’ in causative constructions using iz, ot, and s + Gen Steven Clancy, Veronika Egorova, Oksana Willis, Daniel Green. Russian Modules: A cognitive and construction-based approach to teaching Russian Steven Clancy, Sara Kališnik Verovšek, Quang Nhat Le, Joseph Borkowski, Nicholas Tomlin. Visualizing Patterns in Language: Topological Data Analysis of Very Large Corpora Jovan Čudomirović. From temporal sequence to disagreement: semantics/pragmatics of Serbian pa ‘and then’ from a multi-domain perspective Ewa Dabrowska, Dagmar Divjak. L2 learners’ productivity with Polish dative inflections Stephen Dickey. A Dynamic Systems Approach to Biaspectual Verbs in Russian Polina Eismont. The magic labyrinth of words: verbs of speech in child language Olga Fedorova, Andrej Kibrik. Я...
A Linguistic Analysis of the Croatian Verb brijati
SRAZ, 2003
This paper examines different linguistic aspects of the verb brijati in urban spoken Croatian. It explores an unusually wide range of meanings that this verb and its derivatives have in authentic sentences taken from Internet newsgroups and interviews with a great number of native speakers of Croatian. The verb's polysemic structure is briefly described but the semantic motivation for extending its meaning remains a puzzle. 1 The idea for this paper occurred to me during a postgraduate lecture in Semantics, when prof. dr. Milena Žic Fuchs remarked that brijati was an idiosyncratic example of polysemy in urban spoken Croatian.
Idiom variation and grammaticalization: a case study
Language as Information. Proceedings from the CALS Conference 2012., 2014
This paper deals with similes following the (as) + adjective + as + NP pattern (e.g. (as) white as snow) and cognate adjectival forms (snow-white) in English, Swedish and Croatian. Previous studies and dictionaries show that similes and adjectival forms have similar meanings: they typically refer to objects and humans (their physical properties and character). However, corpus research has shown that adjectival forms may occur with a different set of nouns and have different meanings. The aim is to show that differences in structure between similes and adjectival forms reflect differences in meaning. More specifically, we will show that the changes which adjectival forms undergo are the result of their grammaticalization. We conducted a study of 454 similes in the British National Corpus, the Swedish PAROLE corpus and the Croatian National Corpus, looking for items which have cognate adjectival forms. The results show that adjectival forms are used with a wider range of nouns and have a different or wider range of meaning, and that they typically occur in prenominal position. Furthermore, they show that the properties of adjectival forms are the result of grammaticalization and that they reflect systematic variation of the idioms’ conceptual core. This indicates that idiom variation may be viewed as a phenomenon which includes both structure and meaning.
As the Wind Blows. Aspects of lexical and structural borrowing in contemporary Serbian
J. Czai, I. Jermaszowa, M. Wójciak, B. Zieliński (edd.), Słowiańska Wieża Babel, Tom II: Język i tożsamość, Poznań, 2018, 173–179., 2018
The paper deals with English language influences on today's spoken and written Serbian in the domains of Kulturwörter, international words, and hybrid formation, as well as in what the author considers to be the zone of hardest impact: lexical semantics, phraseology, and syntax. The virtual breakdown of idiomaticity in much of contemporary Serbian usage is compared to known symptoms of language endangerment.
A Contrastive Analysis of Hungarian and Croatian Idioms Containing the Component Head
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Idiomaticity in Contemporary English-Polish Idiom Dictionaries
In Nenonen, M., Niemi, S. (eds). Collocations and Idioms 1. Joensuu: Joensuu Univeristy Press, 342-353., 2007
The I990s in Poland witncsscd a great lcxicographic boorn as lar as dictionarics of English idioms were concemed. This rnay be cxplained, firstly, by thc fact that on the Polish book rnarket, previously dorninatcd exclusivcly by state-owned publishing houscs, there appearcd many publishers who had morc frccdotn in thcir choice of publications, and sccondly, by a growing necd (of thc Polish audiencc) for idiorn dictionarics crcatcd by thc introduction of thc English languagc into
Not My Cup of Tea or Must Have: Borrowing of English Multi-Word Units intо Serbian
Зборник Матице српске за филологију и лингвистику, 2022
Following the theoretical and methodological frameworks for the study of phraseological anglicisms and the pragmatic approach to the study of borrowing, this corpus-based study examines formal and functional aspects of several multi-word borrowings from English into Serbian. The examples include multi-word units must have, all inclusive, doing business lista, stakleni plafon (‘glass ceiling’), nema besplatnog ručka (‘there is no free lunch’), and nije moja šolja čaja (‘it is not my cup of tea’), taken from three e-corpora of contemporary written Serbian, as well as a personal corpus of contextualized examples from the press. Structurally, they are classified into different syntactic types, while according to the type of adaptation process they may be direct borrowings, various types of hybrid borrowings, and indirect borrowings (loan translations, calques). From the pragmatic perspective, the qualitative analysis involves a discussion of genre, discourse, as well as cultural and social contexts relevant for the use of these multi-word anglicisms. Key words: borrowing, phraseological anglicisms, Serbian, pragmatics.