Naslov
Impact of English on Croatian prepositional structures

Autori
Drljača Margić, Branka ; Memišević, Anita

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

Izvornik
4th Annual Meeting of the Slavic Linguistic Society (Knjižica sažetaka) / - Zadar : Sveučilište u Zadru - Institut za hrvatski jezik i jezikoslovlje, 2009, 36-37

Skup
4th Annual Meeting of the Slavic Linguistic Society

Mjesto i datum
Zadar, Hrvatska, 03.09.2009. - 06.09.2009

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Predavanje

Vrsta recenzije
Međunarodna recenzija

Ključne riječi
prepositional structures ; language impact ; English ; Croatian

Sažetak
Prepositions belong to the group of grammatical words and their function is to express relations in language (spatial, temporal, etc.). However, they do so differently in different languages, and this according to some authors reflects different perceptions of reality that are conditioned by expressive means of a particular language (cf. Slobin’s thinking-for-speaking hypothesis). According to Talmy (1985) there is a difference between the content expressed by grammatical as opposed to lexical words – grammatical words such as prepositions express content that is cognitively limited. English as a global language exerts an overwhelming influence over other languages (Picone 1996 ; Görlach 2002 ; Anderman, Rogers 2005 ; Onysko 2007 ; Fischer, Pułaczewska 2008). This influence is most obvious on the lexical level ; however, influence of the English language on other levels, such as syntactic, is far from negligible. Over the past years an increase in the use of inappropriate prepositions in both public and private communication in Croatia has been noticed. The same phenomenon has been noticed in other languages, such as German (in Deutsch instead of auf Deutsch, in 1978 instead of im Jahre 1978 ; Muhvić-Dimanovski 1992), and Spanish (unnatural prepositional constructions influenced by English: en línea con (Engl. in line with), en orden a (Engl. in order to) i en profundidad (Engl. in depth) ; Smith 1997). According to Melchers and Shaw (2003) grammatical calquing shows the deepest influence of one language on the other, and not infrequently it has been subject to puristic reactions. Thomas (1991) believes that calques may incur restructuring of the word-formational and syntactic system and hence constitute a greater danger than loanwords, whose presence does not pose a threat at the grammatical level, and Picone (1996) describes the borrowing of syntactic elements as a matter of great concern, which could be an indicator that the integrity of the recipient language is at risk. The aim of this paper is to find out whether native speakers of the Croatian language will recognize Croatian prepositional structures influenced by English structures as incorrect in the standard Croatian language. Since results of neurolinguistic research (e.g. Fabbro 2001 ; Wartenburger et al. 2003) indicate that prepositions and other words that belong to the closed classes of words are processed by implicit memory which implies a high level of automaticity, the paper also aims to see if there will be any difference in the speed of processing of structures influenced by English structures compared to the acceptable structures of the standard Croatian language, which should reflect the level of automaticity with which they are processed. The experiment is conducted using E-prime 2 software. The sample includes 40 students of the English language at the University of Rijeka. The authors focus on several structures that have appeared in the Croatian language in recent years that are literal translations of English structures, such as zainteresiran u (Engl. interested in) instead of zainteresiran za (Engl. interested for), hvala za (Engl. thank you for) instead of hvala na (Engl. thank you on) and u hrvatskome (Engl. in the Croatian language) instead of na hrvatskome (Engl. on the Croatian language). The structures of this type are incorporated into three types of sentences. The first type of sentences are those that include prepositional structures that are correct in the standard Croatian language, the second type is sentences that include the structures that follow the English pattern (incorrect A), and the third type is sentences in which the prepositional structures are incorrect in Croatian, and do not follow the pattern of English structures (incorrect B). In total the research employed 54 sentences (6 types of structures x 9 sentences incorporating prepositonal structures – correct, incorrect A and incorrect B – in initial, medial and final position). The analysis of overall responses shows that in over 90% of cases subjects recognize the correct and incorrect B structures, but in case of incorrect A structures they recognize them as incorrect in only 45% of cases. The analysis of correct responses shows that out of six different structures tested in case of five in over 50% of cases subjects tend to accept incorrect A structures as correct and only one type of structure was convincingly recognized as incorrect. This indicates that the knowledge of English and its presence in every day life coupled with bad translations present in the media and insufficient instruction in Croatian in schools have led to structures that follow English pattern being considered acceptable in the standard Croatian language. Reaction times (RTs) to incorrect A structures in cases when they are deemed acceptable by the subjects indicate a high level of automaticity, which confirms that the subjects in such cases perceive incorrect A structures as correct in the standard Croatian language.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Filologija

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