THE ROLE OF CONCEPTUALIZATION OF MICRO-, MESOAND MACRO-LEVEL SOCIAL UNITS IN THE FORMATION OF METAPHORICAL COLLOCATIONS WITH CROATIAN NOUNS FOR PERSON, FAMILY AND NATION

Abstract

In this paper we investigate the role of the meaning of Croatian collocational bases osoba (‘person’), obitelj (‘family’) and narod (‘nation’), representing the conceptualization of social units at the micro-, meso-, and macro-levels, in the formation of
metaphorical collocations. In order to address the main research question of whether collocational bonding patterns are interconnected and to what extent they are congruent for terms within the same lexical-semantic field (LSF), a lexical-semantic analysis was conducted. Qualitative analysis was supported by quantitative data from the Croatian web corpus hrWaC with the help of the Sketch Engine application. Identified metaphorical collocations were analysed and systematized according to the typology of Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff, Espenson, and Schwartz 1991). The aim of this analysis is to explore patterns of collocational bonding for concepts belonging to the same lexical-semantic field, and to determine the degree of their congruence. The main findings of the research indicate the undeniable contribution of conceptual metaphor and metonymy to the process of collocational bonding and show that metaphorical and metonymic transfers are similar for  concepts belonging to the same lexical-semantic field. However, significant differences were observed in the  conceptualization of terms for social units representing different levels of social reality. This results in the variability of  collocates with which the collocational bases person, family and nation form collocational bonds, and in the emergence of  specific collocational patterns visible at the syntagmatic level.