Naslov
Gradability of figurative meanings of Croatian ingesting verbs

Autori
Tušek, Jelena ; Parizoska, Jelena

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

Skup
The eighteenth conference of the Slavic Cognitive Linguistics Association (SCLC-2023)

Mjesto i datum
Cambridge (MA), Sjedinjene Američke Države, 01.06.2023. - 03.06.2023

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Predavanje

Vrsta recenzije
Međunarodna recenzija

Ključne riječi
metaphoricity ; gradability ; ingesting verbs ; Croatian

Sažetak
This paper explores speakers’ ratings of figurativeness of three Croatian ingesting verbs – jesti ‘eat’, žderati ‘devour’ and gutati ‘swallow’ – in SVO constructions. We hypothesize that a meaning will be rated as more figurative if the object is a noun which does not refer to food, and if the subject is inanimate or abstract. We also hypothesize there will be differences among the three verbs as to how their meanings are rated. One hundred native speakers of Croatian filled in a questionnaire with 60 sentences, 30 of which contained the three ingesting verbs. Sentences with ingesting verbs comprise four groups based on their common collocates in the hrWaC corpus. The participants rated a verb’s meaning in each sentence from 1 (‘completely literal’) to 5 (‘very figurative’). The cutoff threshold for figurativeness was set at 3.5. The results show that the degree of figurativeness of the three verbs’ meanings depends on the type of SVO pattern in which they occur, with those containing the least prototypical subject (abstract noun) and object (human) being rated as the most figurative. Furthermore, there are significant differences in the ratings of the three verbs’ literal meanings. The findings suggest that gradability of figurative meanings has psychological reality.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Filologija

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