Семантички потенцијал именице stomachus и њених изведеница у Цицероновим делима
The Semantic Potential of stomachus and Its Derivatives in Cicero

Summary/Abstract: The conceptual metaphorisation of the noun stomachus, whether it originated in Latin language or was borrowed from Greek, happened no later than the period of pre-classical Latinity. — In an examination of the semantic potential of the noun stomachus and its derivatives in classical Latinity a special place belongs to Cicero. As it has already been noted, the noun stomachus is most frequently found in Cicero's letters. Hence, the noun exhibits the biggest semantic potential in these works - from the neutral ‘taste’ to the negative ‘rage’, ‘anger’. From the emphasised self-referentiality and political connotation which were extensively analysed in earlier scholarly works on the subject, in this paper the focus has been shifted to the more universal applicability of the noun stomachus. We have established that the frequency and semantic potential of its derivatives (stomachari, stomachosus, stomachose) in Cicero's letters is much lower than in the case of the noun itself. The significant semantic potential of the noun stomachus is obvious in Cicero's orations, in which this word exhibits a wide variety of meanings, in spite of its lower frequency. The noun has the lowest frequency in Cicero's rhetorical works, which do, however, contain its derivatives - such as the verb stomachari and the adjective stomachosus. Due to the genre particularities, the narrow semantic potential of the verb stomachari in Cicero’s philosophical writings is found to be even more reduced. Contrary to the other genres, the noun stomachus appears here primarily in its basic meaning. — Considering all the above mentioned findings, we may conclude that the noun stomachus in Cicero's works has a strong semantic potential. Although the verb stomachari has an almost equal frequency, which is in itself specific for Cicero's corpus, its semantic potential is lower. Contrary to the formerly presented thesis that the given verb has a distinctly colloquial dimension, for which reason it does not appear often in Cicero's orations, our analysis has proven that it was suitable for the genres in which colloquial expressions were even less appropriate, e. g. in his rhetorical and philosophical works. Consequently, despite the untypical genre variety and the size of the preserved Cicero's corpus, the frequent and semantically diverse use of the noun stomachus and, up to a much lower degree, its derivatives speaks in favour of the conclusion that this is a specific characteristic trait of Cicero's idiolect.

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