engleski

Croatian daj-constructions in adult and child language use

In this study we focus on daj, the 2nd person singular imperative form of the verb dati ‘give’, and the processes of grammaticalization and pragmaticalization it undergoes in different constructions, based on corpus data from the Croatian web corpus (hrWaC) and Croatian CHILDES corpus. The two corpora were chosen in order to explore the grammatical and pragmatic relationship between the chosen verbal predicate dati ‘give’ and mood by comparing the communicative potential of the element daj in adult language use and the interaction between adults and children. By examining daj constructions we want to approach the topic of verb polysemy from a different perspective than what is typically regarded as lexical polysemy. That is, we regard daj- constructions as a specific case of verbal polysemy of the verb dati, which have emergent properties stemming from the argument structure and propositional content of the verb but also from the properties of imperative mood. Therefore, the main research hypothesis is that the imperative mood (conveying request, order or prohibition) is a significant factor in the grammatical split of the canonical argument structure of dati, providing daj- constructions with additional pragmatic features realized in diverse communicative situations.

daj-constructions ; ditransitive verb ; imperative ; verb-based pragmatic marker ; Croatian

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