Naslov
Aspectual Verb Pairs in Croatian Driven by the Cognitive Process of Metonymy

Autori
Srebačić, Matea ; Šojat, Krešimir

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Sažeci sa skupova, neobjavljeni rad, znanstveni

Skup
Slavic Cognitive Linguistics Conference 2012

Mjesto i datum
Zagreb, Hrvatska, 27.09.2012. - 29.09.2012

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Predavanje

Vrsta recenzije
Međunarodna recenzija

Ključne riječi
Verbal aspect ; aspectual pairs ; metonymy ; Croatian

Sažetak
Metonymy has been pointed out by various cognitive linguists (Kövecses&Radden (1999), Panther&Thornburg (1999), Peirsman&Geeraerts (2006), Croft (1993)) as an omnipresent phenomenon resulting in various semantic shifts. Metonymy is defined as consisting of a source concept which provides mental access to a target concept in a given context (Janda, 2011: 360). Janda (2011:360) distinguishes lexical metonymy and metonymy in word- formation. In lexical metonymy, highly prevalent in languages with poor morphology, the source concept is the uttered word, the target is the actually accessed meaning whereas the context is the remainder of the utterance. In word-formation metonymy the source concept is the base word, the context is provided by affixes and the target concept is the one associated with the derived word. It is especially frequent in morphologically rich languages, as e.g.Croatian. Metonymy via its indisputable connection to word-formation thus enters in the field of morphosemantics. In this paper we focus on the interplay between metonymy and word-formation on the example of Croatian aspectual verb pairs. Verbal aspect is the grammatical category inherent to all Croatian verbs that thus form a very complex system. Due to the lack to its uniformity it is very hard to capture and describe its regularities. Aspectual pairs are formed either by suffixation or prefixation. Although most verbs have three aspectual phases, e.g. pisati – ispisati – ispisivati ('to writeipf – to write outpf – to write outipf'), a large number cannot form second imperfective, e.g. micati – maknuti ('to moveipf – to movepf'), pisati – napisati ('to writeipf – to writepf'). In this paper we want: a) test whether the metonymy model as described in Peirsman and Geeraerts (2006:270) and applied to Russian perfective verbs by Janda (2008), could be applied to the word-formation of Croatian aspectual verb pairs, b) examine what is the nature of the relationship between metonymy and the aspectual phases derivation. In order to show whether Croatian perfectives fit this model, three characteristics of the metonymy model (strenght of contact, boundedness and domain) are taken into acccount. Firstly, all types of metonymy present in aspectual pairs fall into domain of actions, events and processes. Secondly, boundedness captures the main difference between perfectives and imperfectives, i.e. designation of bounded vs. unbounded actions (see Janda 2008: 81). Thirdly, the four types of contiguity in respect to strenght of contact (contact, adjacency, part-whole, containment) are directly related to the four types of perfectives in the cluster model of Russian aspect: Natural, Specialized, Complex Act and Single Act Perfectives Janda (2008: 81). We will show that these types fit almost perfectly to the Croatian aspectual pairs as well. Further, we argue that the impossibility of second imperfectives formation is a result of the specific metonymy type. E.g., on the one hand, the nature of contact relation between a process and its result (pisati – napisati, 'to writeipf – to writepf')) disables the formation of the second imperfective from natural perfectives (*napisivatiipf). On the other hand, the nature of the adjacency relation between an imperfective and more specific perfective action enables this kind of formation (pisati – potpisati – potpisivati, 'to writeipf - to write outpf – to write outipf'). Finally, in this paper we demonstrate that morphology and semantics (or grammar and lexicon) form a continuum (see Raffaelli&Kerovec 2008) in a way that metonymy on a semantic level drives word-formation on a morphological level, i.e. metonymy as a cognitive process either enables or blocks certain word-formation processes.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Filologija

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