engleski

Complex interplay of metaphor and metonymy: the case of pred- prefixed verbs

This paper explores Croatian verbs formed with the prefix pred- 'before'. Pred- is a native Croatian prefix used to form nouns, verbs and adjectives (Babić 2002). For the purposes of this study, pred- prefixed verbs (freq ≥ 10) were extracted from hrWaC, a large web corpu, HNK, the Croatian national corpus, and the Riznica corpus. A total of 32 verbs were obtained and then analysed within the model of morphosemantic patterns (Raffaelli 2013), a framework based on Cognitive Linguistics tenets which considers motivated lexemes to be both formally and semantically motivated, thus implying a grammar (word-formation)-lexicon continuum. The analysis has demonstrated that pred- produces two types of derivatives: 1) several verbs in which only the prefix undergoes a metaphorical extension (e.g. predugrijati 'preheat', where pred- has a temporal meaning (PAST IS BEHIND, Lakoff and Johnson 1980:467-469)), while the base (grijati 'heat') retains its concrete meaning), and 2) verbs which develop an extended meaning as a whole. Most of the second type verbs denote ‘leadership’ (e.g. predvoditi 'be the leader'), ‘foretelling’ (e.g. predvidjeti <pred- + vidjeti ‘see’> ‘foresee’) or ‘presenting’ (predstaviti ‘introduce’). For instance, predvoditi 'be the leader' is formed from pred- 'before' and voditi ‘to guide’. Its meaning does not express (physical) guiding, but ‘leadership’ on the basis of a LEADING IS BEING AHEAD metaphor (an entailment of the GOOD IS IN FRONT metaphor (Belaj 2008:128)), but it also has a metonymical basis (where the property of being in front is used to refer to ‘leading’ (SALIENT PROPERTY FOR CATEGORY, Littlemore 2010:20)). The meaning of the verb predstaviti ‘introduce’ is based on the PEOPLE ARE OBJECTS metaphor due to which introducing is conceptualized as putting the introduced person in front of someone, but the verb also has a metonymical basis because being in front of someone is part of the act of introducing (SUB-EVENT FOR WHOLE EVENT, Littlemore 2010:22). The analysis has proved that the meaning of pred- prefixed verbs is a result of a complex interplay of metaphor and metonymy. This paper is a step forward in exploring the semantic motivation behind motivated words, which remains a rather unexplored area of morphology (cf. Onysko and Michel 2010:18).

prefixation, metaphor, metonymy, Croatian

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