engleski

Local constraints on idiom variation in Croatian

The aim of this paper is to show that Croatian idioms containing a verb which designates object motion or self-motion and u + accusative are schematic and that they vary systematically relative to a stable conceptual core, i.e. the (specific) relation between a trajector and a location expressed by the prepositional phrase. More specifically, based on a study of 66 idioms conducted in the Croatian National Corpus we will show that variants are subject to a local constraint: the state conceptualized as the location. The results show two things. Firstly, the idioms share a common schematic core element (the trajector-landmark relation), which may be construed from different perspectives – as self-motion or caused motion. Secondly, there also seems to be a local constraint on variant realizations, restricting the variance of lexical items. Thus, different perspectivizations of the scene around the nominal element which makes up the conceptual core (Langlotz 2006: 277) seem to be inextricably tied to the constructional meaning of the expression.

idiom; variation; spatial schema; local constraint; Croatian

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