Preliminary communication
The juice made of apple or apples --- Croatian substance genitive of fruit and vegetable nouns denoting a substance
Aida Korajac
; Faculty of Philosophy, University of Zagreb
Tanja Salak
orcid.org/0000-0002-7551-2524
; Faculty of Philosophy, University of Zagreb
Abstract
Croatian grammars state that substance genitive is used in singular as a noun that denotes a substance is uncountable. If such a noun is used in plural, its meaning changes --- the noun becomes countable and denotes several different sorts of one thing. However, neither Croatian grammars nor other literature speak about sentence structures when fruits and vegetables are a substance, as both singular and plural forms are appearing in substance genitive, and in this case the plural form doesn't denote different sorts of one thing. It is hypotesized that native speakers confirm use of singular or plural form is semantically determinated, mostly by the noun that means fruit or vegetable product, or by the verb which means relation to a certain product. For the purposes of this paper questionnaire has been conducted among 44 Croatian native speakers and 46 Croatian non-native speakers. The results among native speakers show that with verbs like naručiti to order, voljeti to like, jesti to eat, piti to drink the singular form is used more often (eg. to like ice-cream made out of banana), while with the verbs like pripremiti or pripremati to preapare, kuhati to cook and praviti to make, the plural form is used more often (eg. to make pie out of apples). With the nouns sladoled ice-cream, sok juice and juha soup singular form is used more often (soup made out of carrot, juice made out of cherry), while with the nouns kolač cake, pita pie and marmelada marmalade the plural form is used more often (marmalade out of peaches). The nouns seem to be stronger determinator than the verbs, as could be seen in examples kuhati juhu od brokolija to cook a soup out of brocolli and praviti sladoled od banana to preapare an ice-cream out of banana. Although verbs praviti to prepare and kuhati to cook usually determine plural forms, subjects use singular form more often because nouns juha the soup and sladoled the ice-cream usually determine singular. It seems that for native speakers the nouns which denote food product are more stronger determinator of the plural or singular form in substance genitive than the verbs which denote relation to a food product. Non-native speakers did not show such big difference in deciding between singular and plural as native speakers, most of them tend to use singular forms regardless of semantic determinators like nouns or verbs.
Keywords
substance genitiv; fruit; vegetable; countability; semantic determination
Hrčak ID:
111210
URI
Publication date:
28.12.2012.
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