Fиксни биноми у енглеском и српском: формални и садржински аспекти
Fixed Binomials in English and Serbian: Formal and Semantic Aspects

Summary/Abstract: This paper deals with the formal and semantic analysis of fixed binomials in English and Serbian. On the basis of previous research the paper is based on the assumption that fixed binomials in English reflect a parallel structure on various linguistic levels: phonological, morphological and semantic. Therefore, the aim of this study is to determine whether the same tendency is characteristic for fixed binomials in Serbian. The corpus on which the research has been conducted consists of 300 fixed binomials in English and 170 fixed binomials in Serbian compiled from various monolingual phraseological dictionaries in English and Serbian. The formal analysis tries to determine the basic phonological and rhythmic characteristics of fixed binomials in two languages and the most prominent structural patterns whereas the semantic analysis explores the degree of semantic idiomatization of fixed binomials in English and Serbian and the semantic relation between the constituents of fixed binomials. The results of the analysis show that there is a high degree of similarity between fixed binomials in English and Serbian regarding their phonological, morphological and semantic aspects. Alliteration and rhyme are prominent phonological factors which serve as mnemonic devices and bring musicality and rhythm. Rhyme is present in fixed binomials in both languages, while alliteration is more productive in fixed binomials in English. In both languages the largest number of fixed binomials has the structure noun+and+noun. The highest degree of similarity is apparent in those binomials which consist of the same word that denotes body parts. Furthermore, fixed binomials which have the structure adverb+conjunction+adverb show the highest degree of similarity in form, meaning and function when compared to other structural types. Parallel morphological structure is more prominent in fixed binomials in Serbian since there is a repetition of the same conjunction within the binomial, as well as the same inflectional and derivational suffixes. The semantic analysis shows that fixed binomials in both languages follow two tendencies: they are either semantically transparent or semantically opaque. In semantically opaque fixed binomials the transfer of meaning is usually metaphorical. The analysis of the semantic relation between the fixed binomial constituents leads to the conclusion that the most common semantic relation between the constituents in both English and Serbian are synonymy, antonymy and complementarity. Partial synonyms in fixed binomials in English and Serbian form tautological constructions whose function is twofold: (1) they emphasize the meaning of the expression if the partial synonyms differ in association and (2) they specify the meaning if the partial synonyms differ in added implication.

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