Original scientific paper
Predicative adjectives in some Germanic and Slavic languages: On the role of metonymy in extending grammatical constructions
Mario Brdar
Rita Brdar-Szabo
Tanja Gradečak-Erdeljić
Gabrijela Buljan
Abstract
It has often been noted that English predicative adjectives frequently find their counterparts
in Croatian in items belonging to some other word classes, particularly in verbs and
adverbs, although direct structural correspondents do in fact exist. Contextual and/or stylistic
factors certainly play an important role here, but we also note that even when there is
no contextual pressure, nonadjectival predicates are very frequent. What is more, this peculiar
contrast obtains not only between English and Croatian. Some other Slavic languages
pattern like Croatian, while Germanic languages seem to be split in this respect, Flemish
and Danish being closer to English, and German closer to Slavic languages. It is argued
that these contrastive facts can be well motivated by taking into account how much a language
relies on metonymy in organizing its predicate-argument structure, specifically in extending
the ascriptive construction with predicative adjectives.
Keywords
predikatni pridjevi; pridjevi; metonimija; germanski jezici; slavenski jezici; kognitivna lingvistika
Hrčak ID:
16354
URI
Publication date:
28.9.2001.
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