engleski

When neutral is not ordinary: Croatian verbs of speaking in special discourses

Verbs of speaking have a very special place in communication. These verbs contribute directly to the exchange of information between interlocutors and of what goes on in their minds: they enable us to talk about our thoughts, ideas, emotions, i.e. everything that belongs to our “inner world”. Due to their importance for describing the “mental space” they are very interesting for cognitive linguistic research. In this study we focus on those verbs that encode verbal activity and belong to the semantic field (Trier 1934, in Lyons 1977, 253) of verbs of speaking. Although these verbs have been studied in Croatian from the cognitive linguistic perspective (e.g. Tuđman Vuković 2010), there are no comprehensive studies that would include all the Croatian verbs that belong to this semantic field. The verbs were excerpted from general dictionaries of the standard Croatian language and the hrWaC corpus. The next step consisted of creating a semantic network on the basis of which specific groups of verbs of speaking were identified. The core group consists of ‘neutral’ verbs which are not marked for direction and do not express the manner of speaking and are present in all types of discourse. The remaining verbs indicate that the network develops in two major directions: ‘mutual verbs’ (verbs that imply the obligatory presence of at least two interlocutors) and ‘directed verbs’ (communication is directed towards an interlocutor) which are linked to the ‘neutral verbs’ via ‘transitional verbs’(an interlocutor is not obligatory). The semantics of the ‘directed verbs’ indicate development in seven main directions: ‘manipulation’, ‘detrimental/nasty speech’, ‘small talk’, ‘sound prominence’, ‘query’, ‘positive’ and ‘negation of the action’. One of the groups consists of those verbs which are typical of special discourses (academic, publicist, business, artistic, sacral). Examples of such verbs include: izjaviti (‘to state’), naglasiti (‘to stress’), ispovjediti (‘to confess’), recitirati (‘to recite’), zboriti (‘to talk’), etc. We analyse their semantic contribution (i.e. specific traits) in relation to the other groups of verbs of speaking. Our aim is to describe their pragmatic roles and gain insight into the semantic and pragmatic principles that govern their use. Therefore, we will not only analyse them as markers that signal that a text belongs to one of the special discourses, but also as conveyors of meaning that can be described as a “neutral” meaning of the activity of speaking. It is this semantic “neutrality” that is particularly interesting because this group of verbs that belong to special discourses significantly increases the total number of “neutral” verbs of speaking with its inventory – in everyday communication (the one that does not belong to special discourses) the number of such verbs is quite low and analysis has revealed that verbs with non-neutral meanings are more numerous. References Lyons, John. Semantics. London: Cambridge University Press. 1977. Tuđman Vuković, Nina. 2010. Glagoli govorenja: kognitivni modeli i jezična uporaba. Zagreb: Hrvatska sveučilišna naklada.

verbs of speaking, Croatian

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