DOUBLE DISTALS ANAMON AND ANAMONAJ AND RELATED EXPRESSIONS IN BOSNIAN

Abstract

The paper describes the grammatical features, meanings and pragmatic features of expressions composed of the distal adverb ànamo and the forms of personal pronouns on, òna... or the distal demonstrative pronouns onāj, onā... Such expressions are called “double distals”. In the Bosnianlanguage, there are a number of “double distals”, and among them anamon, anamòna, anamonāj, anamonā, ànamo on and ànamo onāj are of particular interest. Although they behave differently in terms of grammar, all of these expressions can have the same meanings and the same pragmatic features. However, they are used very rarely and are not even recorded in most dictionaries of the contemporary Bosnian language. Many Bosnian speakers are often uncertain about their inflections, but they usually know at least one of several meanings of these terms or know how to describe the appropriate contexts in which they are used. Therefore, the author has investigated the grammatical, semantic, and pragmatic behavior of these
words. The conclusions are based on the results of a corpus and internet search (61 examples) and a survey conducted on 150 respondents.