Naslov
Is there truly a tool for any task? A cognitive linguistic look at the polysemy of -ač in Croatian

Autori
Mikić Čolić, Ana ; Milić, Goran

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

Izvornik
Book of Abstracts / - Cambridge : Boston : Harvard University, 2019, 44-45

Skup
16th conference of the Slavic Cognitive Linguistics Association

Mjesto i datum
Cambridge (MA), Sjedinjene Američke Države, 12.10.2019. - 14.10.2019

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Predavanje

Vrsta recenzije
Međunarodna recenzija

Ključne riječi
polysemy ; word formation ; suffix -ač

Sažetak
The paper builds on fledgling cognitive linguistic studies (Brdar and Brdar Szabo 2008, Buljan 2015) of an otherwise underexplored topic in Croatian linguistics, viz. polysemy of derivational units. Problems with the latter start at the very level of terminology, with the same phenomenon referred to as polyfunctionality and/or multifunctionality (Luschützky and Reiner 2011), derivational polysemy, or polyvalence (Babić 1991). There is, however, a distinction between the terms, with multifunctional suffixes restricted to those that can be added to different word classes/bases, and polysemous suffixes being those able to perform more than one (semantic) function. The present paper aims to provide a cognitively plausible description and semantic analysis of -ač, a suffix both polysemous and polyfunctional, as it is added to both verbal (dodavač) and nominal bases (apač). The suffix displays a wide network of meanings, with nouns in -ač referring to Agents (hrkač, pljuvač, zaglupljivač), an Instrument (razgrtač, punjač), those denoting either of the latter two (usporivač, pritiskivač), a muscle (odmicač) and other, more peripheral ones, to be isolated through the present analysis. The analysis of the polysemy of -ač is done on a corpus of neologisms extracted through a survey and cross-comparison of two major monolingual dictionaries of Croatian (Hrvatski enciklopedijski rječnik (2004) and Veliki rječnik hrvatskog standardnog jezika (2015) based on a time span hypothesized to be sufficiently long for a significant number of target items to enter the lexicon. Currency of examples is ensured through their extraction from Croatian print and electronic media.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Filologija

POVEZANOST RADA