Naslov
Ditransitive predicates in Spanish and their translation to Croatian: structures with direct and prepositional object

Autori
Mikelenić, Bojana

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Sažeci sa skupova, sažetak, ostalo

Skup
STAS2018: The shaping of transitivity and argument structure, theoretical and empirical perspectives

Mjesto i datum
Pavia, Italija, 25.10.2018. - 27.10.2018

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Predavanje

Vrsta recenzije
Međunarodna recenzija

Ključne riječi
Spanish ; Croatian ; ditransitive predicates ; direct object ; prepositional object

Sažetak
Prepositional objects (PO) in Spanish were introduced as verbal arguments by Alarcos Llorach (1968), who separated them from adjuncts or circumstantial complements (CC) and stated their semantic similarity to direct objects (DO). Since then the PO has been a frequent topic in Spanish syntax (see e.g. Serradilla Castaño, 1997-98, or Santiago Guervós, 2007). Other than the criteria for its identification and the nature of its preposition, a recurrent subject is its relation to other verbal complements. As Alarcos first postulated, the PO could not appear in the same predicate with the DO, because the presence of either one of them marks the predicate as complex or transitive. This incompatibility was later refuted (Bosque, 1983) and the notion of double transitivity or ditransitivity began to be used not only to designate the argument structure with both direct and indirect object (IO), but also to signify the combination of direct and prepositional object (see e.g. Cano Aguilar, 1987 ; Santiago Guervós, 2007 ; Candalija Reina, 2013). Croatian grammars (Silić and Pranjković, 2007 ; Katičić, 2002) traditionally distinguish between objects on one side (DO and IO) and adjuncts (CC) on the other. Because of the inflexional richness of the Croatian language, where nouns can be marked for seven different cases, the syntactic analysis is usually highly formalized in the sense that the verb requires the case of its object, and the case determines the object type. Even though cases take on certain functions which are expressed by prepositions in Spanish, the prepositions are still very common and their role in the argument structure is still complex. For example, the prepositional phrase can only ever be an indirect object (Silić and Pranjković, 2007:303 ; Katičić, 2002:136), but the topic of a prepositional phrase with an accusative marked noun is systematically avoided. We adopt the approach of contrastive analysis from a corpus linguistics perspective as described in, for example, Ebeling (1998) or Gómez Castejón (2012), to explore how these ditransitive predicates in Spanish are translated to Croatian, comparing them both syntactically and semantically in order to identify patterns in their argument structure. We used the ADESSE Database (García- Miguel et al., 2010) to extract Spanish verbs with a ditransitive structure: “active S D R(prep)”, where S stands for subject, D for direct object, and R for prepositional object with a specific preposition stated for each one. We then proceeded with searching these verbs in a Spanish-Croatian parallel corpus to see their translations. To obtain the Croatian verbs’ argument structures, we used CROVALLEX – The Croatian Valency Lexicon of Verbs (Mikelić Preradović, 2014). Both databases are also annotated for semantic roles, so we analysed similarities and differences between the two languages in this respect as well. This research intends to augment a small number of papers which compare Spanish and Croatian on any level, and set the basis for further contrastive analyses of verbs and verbal arguments. Also, these findings will be useful for the syntactic and semantic annotation of the Spanish-Croatian parallel corpus and hopefully aid in translation between these two languages.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Filologija

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