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This article is dedicated to analyses of Bulgarian idioms stemming from semantic fields centred round "earth” and "desert” from the point of view of cultural linguistics. An attempt has been made to classify cultural markers which were found in our material published in the phraseological dictionaries.
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This paper deals with the analysis of sports discourse in Croatian through the theoretical framework offered by conceptual metaphor theory. Within this framework, certain metaphorical expressions found in sports discourse are analyzed as expressions of two conceptual metaphors: sport is war and sport is force. The analysis of these metaphorical expressions combines the methodology of cognitive linguistics with corpus linguistics, resulting in the proposal of a new method for discourse analysis in general. In our research, we introduce the notion of the specialized digitized corpus as a basis for further quantitative and qualitative research. On the basis of the specialized digitized corpus created for the purposes of this research, it is shown how the formation of sports discourse is dependent on three categories of metaphorical expressions relative to the degree of their conventionalization within sports discourse: (a) conventionalized, (b) semi-conventionalized, and (c) innovative metaphorical expressions. Each of these categories is analyzed according to their frequency and various aspects of meaning that it entails. Through the introduction of the semi-conventionalized metaphorical expression category, we aim to examine the gradable line between language creativity and conventionality as it is formed within the discourse of sports.
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This paper investigates the syntactic structure of nominal expressions in Croatian and proposes their analysis in terms of a split DP. Within the split DP-approach, the nominal left periphery contains functional projections DefP, FocP, TopP and DP. I will show that these functional categories host different lexical items (e.g. determiners, demonstratives, possessives, etc.) that contribute to the (in)definiteness and specificity of the Croatian noun phrase. A reanalysis of the nominal left periphery in terms of a split DP allows for the explanation of DP-internal word order variations, along with some other syntactic phenomena.
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In this work, based on relevant methodology and current literature in the field of normativity, errors in writing abbreviations in secondary education students’ essays are reviewed. The research covered 500 students (1594 essays in the Serbian language and literature) one classical and one specialized grammar school students, as well as two secondary technical schools. The work aimed to determine whether the students and in which way incorporated orthographic rules and, in connection with abbreviating words and expressions, when their orthographic knowledge is not the focus (unlike tests aimed at testing and evaluation achievements in the field orthography).Survey research has shown that students rarely use abbreviations in their writing tasks (at the random sample of 100 essays there was a total of 42 abbreviations), so that there is a small number of errors (only 35 errors were recorded in the use of abbreviations), what is undoubtedly influenced by a type of written text, lack of knowledge of orthographic norms when it comes to abbreviations, which has been confirmed by a short test given after the research.
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Due to its inconsistency, the prosodic norm of the Serbian language has generated a lot of discussion within the linguistic community. What has particularly been obvious in recent times is the major discrepancy between the prescribed and the actual language in use. Deviations from the norm relate to the sequence of accents and the repertoire of prosodic units. However, one of the most unstable positions is considered to be the pronunciation of the post-accentual length, which, based on the conducted research, is often equalized with the post-accentual shortness in younger population. This paper studies the pronunciation of the post-accentual length in the speech of western Serbia, and employs an acoustic analysis of duration and listening perception to examine the patterns of the disappearance of the post-accentual length (depending on the position within a word, type of syllable, type of accent, etc.).
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The article presents new etymological interpretations of the words kori : korja ‘hearth’, melek(as) ‘stock pigeon’, rahe(-): rahejalg, kooljarahe ‘bier’ and rikkuma ‘to spoil, ruin, break, etc’. Kori : korja ‘hearth’ is a forgotten word in modern Estonian, which is known from northwestern Läänemaa as well as Hiiumaa. Nikolai Anderson suggested over a hundred years ago that kori belongs together with the Finnish word korju ‘bear’s (above-ground) winter lair’. Anderson’s comparison has been cited by Andrus Saareste as well as, with some hesitation, in Finnish etymological dictionaries. Julius Mägiste did not attempt to explain the word’s origin in his Estnisches etymologisches Wörterbuch. Due to both phonetic and semantic considerations, an etymological link between Estonian kori : korja and Finnish korju is impossible. I suggest that kori : korja is a Baltic loan from the word family represented in modern Baltic languages by Lithuanian kùrti (kùria, kū́rė) ‘to heat up, start a fire etc’, ùžkura(s) ‘oven full of wood; widower’, užkurỹs ‘man who has married a widow and moved into her home; man living in his wife’s parents’ house’. This Baltic word family has equivalents with fire- and hearth-related meanings in other Indo-European languages, e.g. Old Russian курити ‘to start a fire, ignite’, Old English here ‘fireplace, hearth, small oven’ and the stem variant with a final dental consonant heorð ‘hearth, fireplace, home etc’. Kori : korja presumes a Baltic loan base with the stem i̯a-, *kuri̯a-, presumed original meaning ‘fire, fireplace’. Melek(as) ‘stock pigeon’ occurs sporadically in different parts of northern Estonia. This bird name has been seen as onomatopoetically motivated (Andrus Saareste, Mart Mäger, and with hesitation Alo Raun), a view which has been rejected by Julius Mägiste. Another suggestion is that melekas derives from a common Finnic-Mordvin stem, in which -l- may have developed from the affricate *č, cf. dialectal Finnish mettinen ‘turtle dove’, Erzya Mordvin m´eče, m´eča ‘dove’ (Y. H. Toivonen, Mikk Tooms), but Mägiste is skeptical of this explanation as well, and sees the word as more likely a contamination of mehikas ~ mehekas ‘wood dove’ + meltsas ‘green woodpecker, wood dove’. I argue that the explanation of the origin of the word melek(as) must take into account the observation of the Lithuanian linguist, who in the 1880s-1890s drew a parallel to the Lithuanian bird name meletà ‘Picus viridis, Dryocopus martius, Merops apiaster, Coracias garrulus; chatterbox, sweet-talking person’. Baltic *melatā ~ *meletā is etymologically related to the Balto-Slavic word family *mel- ‘to rub, grind; chatter’: Lithuanian málti ‘to grind; speak too much, blather, prattle’, dialectal Russian мелея́ ‘grinder; blabbermouth etc’, dialectal Belarusian мэ́ лю́х ‘lblabbermouth’. Phonetically, there is no reason not to accept the Baltic etymology. The final syllable *-tā of the Baltic loan base has been replaced by the very productive affix k(as), which appears in many bird names. (k)rae- in the compound words (k)raejalad, (k)raepuud ‘trestle table, stretcher, barrow’ derives from the Low German schrage ‘(transverse) stand (with two pairs of crossed legs) etc’ (Udo Uibo). According to older lexicography, Estonian has known the compound words kooljarahe and rahejalg ‘bier, coffin base’, which are not related to the aforementioned Low German loan base, because in Low German loans in Estonian, word-internal -g- is replaced by the partially voiced medial stop -g-, in some cases also -j-, but never -h-. Mägiste has presumed that rahe(-) is related to the Finnic word family rahi: Courland Livonian ra’i ‘chair’, dialectal Finnish rahi : rahin ‘bench with no backboard; stool etc’, Ingrian rahi ~ rähi ‘bench, stove-bench etc’, North Karelian rahi ‘bench’. I propose a Baltic etymology for the word rahi: < Baltic *krasi̯a-, cf. Lithuanian krãsė ‘chair, reclining chair, stool; low footstool; seat’, krasià ‘sofa-like wooden bench with backboard; (reclining) chair; standing/walking chair for a small child; footrest etc’. This Baltic stem has plausible etymological correspondences only in Eastern and Western Slavic languages, e.g. Russian крéсло́ ‘armchair, reclining chair, backrest in a sleigh’. An analogous substitution, i.e. Finnic h < Baltic *s, is e.g. Estonian lahja ‘lean, thin’, dialectal lahi, laih, Finnic laiha etc < Late Proto-Finnic *laiha < Early ProtoFinnnic *lajša < Baltic *laisa-. Estonian rahe ‘hail’ has conformed to other nouns ending in e. Rikkuma, in dialects also rikkima, rikma ‘to break, ruin, damage, smash, destroy; negatively influence someone; decay, deteriorate; (dialectally) go bad, become spoiled’ is a wide-ranging word family found in all Finnic languages: Finnic *rikkoi- < Early Proto-Finnnic *rikka. A Germanic etymology has been proposed for it (Christfrid Ganander 1787), which is rejected by etymological dictionaries of Finnic languages. Another rejected explanation is that of Lauri Hakulinen, who suggested that it is related to the word family rikka : rikan ‘dust, scrap, litter’. I propose a Baltic etymology for this Finnic verb stem, deriving from either 1. Baltic *rika-, on the successors of which are Lithuanian rìkti (riñka ~ reñka ~ rinksta, rìko) ‘to disintegrate, break into pieces, be crushed; to be wrong, confuse, err, act wrongly or imprecisely (e.g. when speaking or enumerating), stumble’, aprìkti ‘to confuse, mix up, garble; to be wrong, do something wrong etc’ or 2. Baltic *trika-, the successors of which are Lithuanian trìkti (triñka, trìko) ‘to be wrong, make a mistake, stumble, get stuck (when speaking, enumerating, etc), stutter; disintegrate; break, be ruined; to be ruined, go out of order (e.g. health); to prematurely give birth; to go crazy, lose one’s mind, rave; to get rabies (of dogs); to get angry; to get confused, puzzled; to engage in mischief, act strangely, impolitely; bother, disturb, annoy etc’. Phonetically, the German and Baltic loan bases are equally plausible, but semantically the Baltic explanation is a better fit. The core meaning of both the Baltic and Finnic word families is ‘to do material damage (i.e. break, ruin)’, from which (likely independently of one another) the other semantic lines have branched off.
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The article attempts to present the comparison of two translator’s achievements: Zbigniew Dmitroca’s Radio Swoboda and Jerzy Czech’s Wdrapałem się na piedestał. The anthologist’s work is considered here as both the act of translation and revelation — joining the translation of literary texts and their compilation in anthologies with scrutinizing the particular writers and literary phenomena as well as the process of translation itself, and introducing a new, transforming quality to the native poetry. A translator-anthologist can be perceived in that perspective as a link between two literary cultures, and also as an initiator of changes and an independent creator who develops, in his own language and on his own conditions, a certain new Polish canon of Russian poetry
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The aim of the present study is to demonstrate the usage of an annotated corpus in the field of experimental psycholinguistics. Specifically, we demonstrate how the manually annotated Corpus of Serbian Language (Kostić, Đ. 2001) can be used for probability estimates of grammatical forms, which allow the control of independent variables in psycholinguistic experiments. We address the issue of processing Serbian inflected forms within two subparadigms of feminine nouns. In regression analysis, almost all processing variability of inflected forms has been accounted for by the amount of information (i.e. bits) carried by the presented forms. In spite of the fact that probability distributions of inflected forms for the two paradigms differ, it was shown that the best prediction of processing variability is obtained by the probabilities derived from the predominant subparadigm which encompasses about 80% of feminine nouns. The relevance of annotated corpora in experimental psycholinguistics is discussed more in detail .
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The paper considers the anomalous use of definiteness and gender in Bulgarian noun phrases containing hypocoristic names, nicknames or sometimes even legal personal names. Proper names of people, being semantically definite, usually do not take the definite article in Bulgarian. But in the cases considered it is just the opposite – in informal conversation, in fiction or in ironic statements the use of a definite article is either obligatory or facultative depending on the formal and semantic features of the names. The factors to trigger the anomalous use described may be the female sex of the designee, the less typical ending of the noun, its being grammatically neuter or its inclusion in an attributive phrase. Thus the female legal personal names (e.g. Marija, Elena) may take a definite article on some special occasions (Marijata, Elenata) but male legal personal names (e.g. Boris) cannot. Male legal or hypocoristic names ending in -o (Stojko, Borko
This paper analyzes the structural characteristics of male and female names confirmed in the manuscript collection of folk songs that were recorded in Tešanj area. Structural features of names are compared with the situation in the today's language.
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Reliable language corpus implies a text sample of size n that provides stable probability distributions of linguistic phenomena. The question is what is the minimal (i.e. the optimal) text size at which probabilities of linguistic phenomena become stable. Specifically, we were interested in probabilities of grammatical forms. We started with an a priori assumption that text size of 1.000.000 words is sufficient to provide stable probability distributions. Text of this size we treated as a "quasi-population". Probability distribution derived from the "quasi-population" was then correlated with probability distribution obtained on a minimal sample size (32 items) for a given linguistic category (e.g. nouns). Correlation coefficient was treated as a measure of similarity between the two probability distributions. The minimal sample was increased by geometrical progression, up to the size where correlation between distribution derived from the quasi-population and the one derived from an increased sample reached its maximum (r=1). Optimal sample size was established for grammatical forms of nouns, adjectives and verbs. General formalism is proposed that allows estimate of an optimal sample size from minimal sample (i.e. 32 items).
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The first part of the paper provides an overview of the linguistic norm of the Bosnian-Herzegovinian Newspaper, the first official newspaper published during the Austro-Hungarian rule. Insight into the language structure proves that the newspaper used the norms of the Zagreb Philological School and Croatian terminology. The usage of the Zagreb Philological School norms reveals that Bosnian-Herzegovinian press did not always use the same type of language in the period between the Turkish and Austro-Hungarian rule. The second part of the paper is focused on the Austro-Hungarian language policy and language denomination. It is obvious that the Austro-Hungarian administration did not develop clear guidelines related to the implementation of language policy. It is interesting to note that the language used in the Bosnian-Herzegovinian Newspaper was called Bosnian even though it conformed to the Zagreb Philological School norms. Other terms were also in use during the same period e.g. Croatian, Native, Native Bosnian etc.
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Balkan linguistics as a comparative discipline of Indo-European linguistics has to deal with languages spoken in the Balkan peninsula, as there are Bulgarian, Macedonian, Bosnian, Serbian as South Slavic languages, except Croate and Slovene, but also Albanian and Rumanian with its different representations in the Balkans. There are a lot of similarities and parallels between the grammatical forms and lexical elements in these languages, the socalled “Balkanisms”, a term described since the middle of the 19th century. Since this time Balkan linguistics has found and described not only a large number of Balkanisms, but developed also new directions and methods, as there are today the wider fields of “Südosteuropa- Linguistik” and “Eurolinguistik” including not only Balkan languages, but also Baltic and Scandinavian languages. Over the last years the so-called “field-work” has gained importance. This is a method aimed at finding new balkanisms but also aimed at describing their spreading out within the dialects of Balkan languages. Attempts have been made to realize the project of a “Balkan Sprachatlas” in Marburg, but nowadays there seems to be no possibility to continue this project.
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