Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Variation of Adjectival Slots in kao (‘as’) Similes in Croatian: A Cognitive Linguistic Account

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Computational and Corpus-Based Phraseology (EUROPHRAS 2017)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 10596))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

This paper deals with variation of Croatian similes which follow the pattern adjective + kao (‘as’) + noun (e.g. crven kao rak lit. red as a crab ‘having red skin or cheeks’). Previous studies have mostly focused on noun variations and their semantic relations with adjectives (e.g. crven kao rak/paprika lit. red as a crab/pepper), while variation in the adjective slot has not been explored. Corpus data suggest that adjectival slots also vary and that variant realizations are not restricted solely to adjectives. The aim of this paper is to show that variations of adjectival slots reflect different construals of the conceptual content of similes and to give a cognitive linguistic account of the mechanisms underlying this process. We performed a study of 98 adjectival similes in the Croatian web corpus hrWaC. The results show that adjectival slots can be filled by adjectives, adverbs and verbs (e.g. pocrvenjeti kao rak lit. turn red as a crab ‘be sunburnt or embarrassed’). Furthermore, adjectival slots may not be filled altogether or their lexical components vary widely, both of which suggest that similes undergo subjectification (in the Langackerian sense). This indicates that variation is dependent on the interplay of semantic and grammatical factors.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 74.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 95.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    We will adopt Norrick’s [1] labels the vehicle and the tertium for convenience.

  2. 2.

    For a discussion on different approaches to variation see [7, 10].

References

  1. Norrick, N.R.: Stock similes. J. Literary Semant. 15(1), 39–52 (1986)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Ortony, A.: The role of similarity in similes and metaphors. In: Ortony, A. (ed.) Metaphor and Thought, 2nd edn, pp. 342–356. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1993)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  3. Glucksberg, S.: Understanding Figurative Language: From Metaphors to Idioms. Oxford University Press, Oxford (2001)

    Book  Google Scholar 

  4. Chiappe, D., Kennedy, J.M.: Literal bases for metaphor and simile. Metaphor Symb. 16(3–4), 249–276 (2001)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Chiappe, D., Kennedy, J.M., Smykowski, T.: Reversibility, aptness, and the conventionality of metaphors and similes. Metaphor Symb. 18(2), 85–105 (2003)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Omazić, M.: O poredbenom frazemu u engleskom i hrvatskom jeziku. Jezikoslovlje 3(1–2), 99–129 (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Moon, R.: Conventionalized as-similes in English: A problem case. Int. J. Corpus Linguist. 13(1), 3–37 (2008)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Mokienko, V.M. (ed.): Ustojchivye sravnenija v sisteme frazeologii [Fixed similes in the phraseological system]. LEMA, Saint Petersburg/Greifswald (2016)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Hanks, P.: Similes and sets: The English preposition like. In: Blatná, R., Petkevič, V. (eds.) Jazyky a jazykověda: Sborník k 65. narozeninám prof. Františka Čermáka. Faculty of Philosophy, Charles University, Prague (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Moon, R.: Fixed Expressions and Idioms in English: A Corpus-Based Approach. Clarendon Press, Oxford (1998)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Wikberg, K.: Phrasal similes in the BNC. In: Granger, S., Meunier, F. (eds.) Phraseology: An Interdisciplinary Perspective, pp. 127–142. John Benjamins, Amsterdam/Philadelphia (2008)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  12. Hao, Y., Veale, T.: An ironic fist in a velvet glove: Creative mis-representation in the construction of ironic similes. Mind. Mach. 20, 635–650 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Veale, T.: A computational exploration of creative similes. In: MacArthur, F., Oncins-Martínez, J.F., Sánchez-García, M., Piquer-Píriz, A.M. (eds.) Metaphor in Use: Context, Culture, and Communication, pp. 329–344. John Benjamins, Amsterdam/Philadelphia (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Norrick, N.R.: Semantic aspects of comparative noun-adjective compounds. In: Asbach-Schnitker, B., Roggenhofer, J. (eds.) Neuere Forschungen zur Wortbildung und Historiographie der Linguistik, pp. 145–154. Gunther Narr Verlag, Tübingen (1987)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Novoselec, Z., Parizoska, J.: A corpus-based study of similes and cognate adjectival forms in English, Swedish and Croatian. In: Pamies, A., Pazos Bretaña, J.M., Luque Nadal, L. (eds.) Phraseology and Discourse: Cross Linguistics and Corpus-based Approaches, pp. 101–110. Schneider Verlag, Baltmannsweiler (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Fink-Arsovski, Ž.: Poredbena frazeologija: pogled izvana i iznutra. FF Press, Zagreb (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Langacker, R.W.: Cognitive Grammar: A Basic Introduction. Oxford University Press, Oxford (2008)

    Book  Google Scholar 

  18. Langacker, R.W.: Subjectification and grammaticization. In: Langacker, R.W. (ed.) Grammar and Conceptualization, pp. 297–315. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin/New York (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  19. Langacker, R.W.: Subjectification, grammaticization, and conceptual archetypes. In: Athanasiadou, A., Canakis, C., Cornillie, B. (eds.) Subjectification: Various Paths to Subjectivity, pp. 17–40. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin/New York (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  20. Ljubešić, N., Klubička, F.: {bs,hr,sr}WaC – Web corpora of Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian. In: Bildhauer, F., Schäfer, R. (eds.) Proceedings of the 9th Web as Corpus Workshop (WaC-9), pp. 29–35. Association for Computational Linguistics, Stroudsburg (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  21. Rychlý, P.: A lexicographer-friendly association score. In: Sojka, P., Horák, A. (eds.) Proceedings of Recent Advances in Slavonic Natural Language Processing, pp. 6–9. Masaryk University, Brno (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  22. Evert, S.: The Statistics of Word Cooccurrences: Word Pairs and Collocations. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Stuttgart (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  23. Lebedeva, L.A.: Ustojchivye sravnenija russkogo yazyka: Kratkij tematicheskij slovar’ [Russian fixed similes: A short thematic dictionary]. Flinta, Moscow (2011)

    Google Scholar 

  24. Parizoska, J., Novoselec, Z.: Idiom variation and grammaticalization: a case study. In: Peti-Stantić, A., Stanojević, M.-M. (eds.) Language as Information, pp. 179–192. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main (2014)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Teacher Education, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia

    Jelena Parizoska

  2. Croatian Academy of Sciences, Zagreb, Croatia

    Ivana Filipović Petrović

Authors
  1. Jelena Parizoska
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Ivana Filipović Petrović
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jelena Parizoska .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton, United Kingdom

    Ruslan Mitkov

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG

About this paper

Cite this paper

Parizoska, J., Filipović Petrović, I. (2017). Variation of Adjectival Slots in kao (‘as’) Similes in Croatian: A Cognitive Linguistic Account. In: Mitkov, R. (eds) Computational and Corpus-Based Phraseology. EUROPHRAS 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10596. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69805-2_25

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69805-2_25

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-69804-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-69805-2

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation