engleski

Figurative Expressions with verbs of ingesting in Croatian

This paper explores figurative expressions in Croatian which contain verbs of ingesting, more specifically eat verbs and gobble (manner of eating) verbs. The aim is to determine which aspects of the source domain serve as the basis for metaphorization and whether there is any difference between the two types of verbs with regard to their figurative potential. We conducted a study of seven verbs of ingesting in the Croatian web corpus hrWaC. The results show that metaphorical expressions with eat verbs profile ingestion with all its phases, e.g. pojesti živce komu (lit. eat up someone’s nerves) ‘drive someone up the wall’. In contrast, figurative uses of gobble verbs focus on drawing something down the throat (usually hastily), e.g. gutati samoglasnike ‘swallow syllables’, žderati resurse ‘devour resources’. The results also show that eat verbs are predominantly used literally, whereas the uses of gobble verbs are mostly figurative. Furthermore, figurative meanings of gobble verbs are associated with specific lexico-grammatical patterns. On a more general level, this study shows that metaphoricity is dependent on local factors such as lexical features of words from the source domain as well as grammatical constructions.

verbs of ingesting ; figurative expressions ; metaphorization ; lexico-grammatical patterns ; Croatian

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