Phraseological structures in Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian language

Table of Contents

1. THEORETICAL ISSUES
1.1. Introduction
1.2. The development of phraseology as a linguistic discipline

2. PHRASEOLOGY IN SOUTH SLAVIC LANGUAGES
2.1. Defining phrasemes and their characteristics (terminology and definitions)

3. ON SEMANTICS
3.1. The semantic aspect of phraseology

4. PHRASEMES/ LEXEMES/ SYNTAGMAS
4.1. The relation between phrasemes, lexemes and syntagmas
4.2. Autosemanticity and two component structure as complementary features
4.3. Two-component structure at the expense of the autosemanticity

5. COMPOUNDING AND PHRASEOLOGY
5.1. Introducing
5.2. Compounding in Bosnian (Croatian and Serbian) language
5.2.1. Hyphenated compound words
5.2.2. One word phrasemes?

6. CONCLUSION

7. REFERENCES

1 THEORETICAL ISSUES

1.1. Introduction

This book discusses structural and semantic features that one form needs to have in order to be recognized as phraseme and trying to point out the importance of defining the phraseme as a structure that has at least two autosemantic components (not less than two). That is why the constructions treated differently in the phraseological literature are the main topic of this paper. Particular emphasis is placed on forms that do not meet this criterion but fully comply with the other requirements set by the definition of the phraseologism. Related to the indicated problem, the key question is whether a structural or semantic aspect of the considered constructions should be given an advantage, especially when the examples are compound words with its features.

1.2. The development of phraseology as a linguistic discipline

Interest in phraseology has increasingly grown within the last thirty years or so. Over the years linguists view of this language phenomenon has developed from detecting and collecting these language structures to classifying them and researching their meanings. However, there are still some different approaches in identifying a phraseologisms and defining these structures, sometimes not providing a clear definition or even not using the same term in naming.

The real beginning of the phraseological research actually is marked with a book Trait é de stylistique Francaise (1909) by Charles Bally. His contribution to phraseology is reflected in the analysis of the semantic features of phraseme and establishing the difference between the set of words that are not idiomatic and idiomatic one. V. Vinogradov will later continue these researches and observe the legality of the phenomenon and thus create preconditions for the development of phraseology as an independent linguistic discipline. The series of works by Russian linguists came after. However, all these Russian achievements were not accepted immediately among the linguists in Western Europe. One of the reasons for this might be hidden in a fact that linguists in Eastern Europe were mostly followers of structuralism, while linguists of Western Europe have developed cognitive linguistics in the spirit of rationalism. Such a rational understanding of language meant, in a mathematical language, that one entity plus another entity always equals the sum of entities, which was impossible to apply in phraseology. Phraseology just deviates from that. The idiomatic character of a set of words just rests on the deviation from the basic meaning of its components. That is why in a phraseology sum always equals z.

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Many different types of research in world literature show that phraseology is indeed a distinct linguistic discipline. Phrasemes can be studied through history, synchronically, with a psycho-linguistic and sociolinguistic aspect. It is possible to study them in the text, in spoken language, in different functional styles, all bearing in mind the semantic, pragmatic aspect of the phrasemes and the appearance of the linguistic universal phraseology. All this points to the fact that phrasemes are especially pronounced in language and can be used for showing the different mental and emotional state of speaker or writers. Phrasemes can also be used to awaken or maintain attention, establish a more intimate contact, emphasize social affiliation, etc.

Phraseological researches in regional linguistics was not that developed until the last two decades of the 20.th century. That is why there are very few works with the phraseology as a subject. In Bosnia and Herzegovina the situation was even worse. During the phase of Serbo-Croatian language there was a dictionary (Frazeološki rječnik hrvatskoga ili srpskog jezika, 1982) and it had many examples used all over the region, but still missing many phrasemes used in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

2 PHRASEOLOGY IN SOUTH SLAVIC LANGUAGES

2.1. Defining phrasemes and their characteristics (terminology and definitions)

A lot before the first phraseological research took place, some of the authors were collecting proverbs and sayings by just writing them down, with no ambition to analyze. Contemporary lexicology is trying to define all lexical units. Phrasemes are also units but their constituents are words and not just one word. Those are multiple words but again, not all multiple words are phrasemes. To make it easier let’s say that any language has many multiple word free combinations. Those are structures without deflection in meaning. They simply mean what they mean: piti kafu (to drink coffee), prati suđe (to wash dishes), etc.

There are disagreements in nonslavic phraseological literature as well:

Phraseologists must also decide how many elements a phraseologism is supposed to comprise... Similarly, if semantic unity were not required for something to count as a phraseologism, one could posit that in spite is a phraseologism: it involves two words (number and nature of elements) that co-occur more often than expected by chance, are adjacent and inflexible. However, it is obvious that a more reasonable assumption would be that the 'real' phraseologism is in spite of, which is what statistically more sophisticated approaches would recognize... (Gries 2008: 9).

On the other hand, some nonslavic authors agree that the phraseme is a compound of at least two words ,,that co-occur more often than expected by chance are adjacent and inflexible.” (Gries 2008: 9). The frequency, established form and structure that has at least two words in the composition, are the phraseological features highlighted by Sylviane Granger (2011:133) as well. Terminological and structural disagreements are reflected all over the literature. Trask (2005) states that the idiom (he uses this term) is an expression whose meaning cannot be derived from the meaning of its constituents. Even when the meanings of all the words in the group are known, the phraseological meaning cannot be guessed but must be taught separately (Trask 2005). Consequently, the phrasemes are ready made (Crystal 1985) multi-word expressions (Sabban 2008). Igor Mel'čuk (2012), for example, says that there are basically two different types of phrasemes: lexical phraseme and semantic-lexical phraseme: ,,The phrasemes of the first family are constrained only in their form (their meaning being free), those of the second family are constrained both in their meaning and in their form.” (Mel’čuk 2012: 31-56)

As we can see, the linguists have pointed out several important parameters that one structure needs to have to be recognized as a phraseologism. Some of the most important are: the nature and the number of elements involved in phraseologism, the number of times that expression must be observed before it counts as phraseologism and the role that semantic unity play in the definition. That brings us to the definition of phraseologism as the co-occurrence of a form or a lemma of a lexical item and one or more additional linguistic elements of various kinds which functions as one semantic unit in a clause or sentence and whose frequency of co-occurrence is larger than expected on the basis of chance. (Gries 2008: 6)

Although the phraseological literature in the world has multiplied in the last few decades, there is still no intensive dealing with this phenomenon in the wider South Slavic linguistics literature. Previous research is predominantly of a contrasting type and there are very few works dealing exclusively with the phraseology of south Slavic languages. The most significant authors of these works up to date are Dragana Mršević-Radović, Antica Menac, Željka Fink-Arsovski, Vladimir Ivić, Barbara Kovačević, Milenko Popović, etc. There are very few such works on the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the period related to the reaffirmation of Bosnian language (the last few decades), significant work is Frazeologija bosanskog jezika (2000) by Ilijas Tanović, which represents a more extensive work devoted to the study of phraseology. His approach to this linguistic phenomenon will be confirmed in scientific papers and books written by many linguists in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

It seems that the future of the phraseological researches in Bosnia and Herzegovina is oriented to taking up the results published so far in world linguistics. There is also the influence of the phraseologists from Croatia and Serbia since three names for the language are equally used in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The term phraseological unit is based on the lexeme phrase originated from the Greek word phrásis meaning expression, the way of speaking (Simeon 1969/1: 373). In South Slavic literature, different terms are used to name this phenomenon. These terms are synonyms for one single occurrence. In the older literature frazeologizam is the most frequently mentioned term (Antica Menac, Dragana Mršević-Radović, Abdulah Mušović, Milenko Popović, Željka Fink-Arsovski), but there are also terms frazem (phrase), frazeološki izraz (phraseological expression), frazeološka jedinica (phraseological unit), as well as terms: idiom, idiomatski izraz (idiomatic expression), idiomatska fraza (idiomatic phrase), ustaljeni izraz (established expression), okamenjeni izraz (smeared expression), automatizirana fraza (automated phrase), automatizirani element (automated element), leksikalizirani skup riječi (lexicalized set of words), nedjeljivi skup riječi (indivisible set of words) etc.

Apparently, all the explanations of this linguistic phenomenon are based on the words such as the expression, the statement, the pronoun, the established set of words, etc. That means that the term phraseological unit or phraseme is viewed as a structure composed of a set of certain words rather than as a single word. That is why the most cited definition of phraseme is the one that describes them as a semantical units reproduced in a speech, with at least two autosemantic words and at least one of them is experiencing semantic transformation, unit that is capable of incorporating into context and, like any other word, performs a certain syntactic service (Matešić 1982)¹. Some linguists expanded this view with the precise theory that phonetical words² (grammatical word + lexical word=prepositional phrases) cannot be phrasemes (Tanović 2000).³ Opposite to that, some other linguists represent the opinion that the phonetical words (prepositional phrases) are the least phraseological units (Menac 1978) consisted of one autosemantic and one, or more, synsemantic words (Fink 2002)⁴. These two linguists (Menac 1978; Fink 2002) took a stand that the expressions such as od oka (about, in the ballpark), bez veze (no connection, without connection) na silu (by force) (Fink 2002: 94) are also phrasemes, regardless the fact that they might be subject to orthoraphy and sometimes written as one word (odoka, bezveze, nasilu=approximately, suck, forcible), when used as an adverbs. The oaths like poštenja mi (on my fairness), časti mi (on my honour), duše mi (on my soul) are phrasemes as well (Menac 1978: 221).

Concerning the structure, the phraseme is defined as a multi-word compound with a unique semantics (Mršević-Radović 1987), or as a set of at least two autosemantic words (Tanović 2000; Šehović 2009). In order to give a precise answer to our dilemma, we have to look for some other very unique constructions such as proverbs, aphorisms, quotes, maxims and terms. Those constructions are very solid structured and determined by their stability. Therefore, there is opinion that these are some kind of peripheral phraseological units and commonly excluded from the phraseological researches (Hrustić 2001: 43). Even though they are not treated as phrasemes, we may say that some of them are used as a base for creating new phrasemes and they deserve to be mentioned here.

We will list some of them by the choice of Ahmet Kasumović (1990: 133-138):

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Concerning structures oriented like sentences, disagreeing are obvious. While Tanović (2000) insists on opinion that those are not phraseological units since they have closed sentence structure, some other linguists from Bosnia nad Herzegovina are issuing opinions that these structures, once they are used in some context, are no longer independent text because they show some concrete extra-linguistic reality with their transposed meaning (Šiljak-Jesenković 2003).

Despite definitions of phrasemes, or in favor of some of them, there are some different approaches to the phrasemes in a wider South Slavic literature. Those approaches could be generally divided into three different groups:

- The first group of linguists are those who advocate the theory that the phraseme is a fusion of at least two autosemantic words, where the structure (two components) and semantics (semantically independent words), as the features of the phraseme, are equally important (Josip Matešić, Ilijas Tanović, Amela Šehović, Meliha Hrustić, Ahmet Kasumović, Marijana Nikolić, Dragana Mršević-Radović, etc.).
- The second group consists of those who represent the theory by which the phraseme is a compound of two words, regardless of the fact whether these words are grammatical or lexical. That means that the prepositional phrases (one grammatical + one lexical word) with connotative meaning are also treated as phraseological units (Antica Menac, Abdulah Mušović, Željka Fink Arsovski, Alisa Mahmutović, Amina Šiljak Jesenković, Senija Midžić, etc.).
- The third group is made up of those who consider that the one word, actually compound, made of a grammatical word and lexical word (phonetical words), could be phraseme if lost the basic meaning in the process of compounding. The same group considers the hyphenated compound word made of two words, separated (or linked) from each other with a hyphen, that have lost their basic meaning, as a phraseological unit as well (Barbara Kovačević, Ermina Ramadanović 2013).

Therefore, while the autosemantics of the lexeme within the phraseological unit is treated as a very important feature by one group of linguists, others are emphasizing two-component structure as the most important. The third group claims that the compounds are also phraseological units if they are originated from phonetic words.

Can it really be that any word that indicates a semantic deflection is defined as a phraseme? What has happened with the structure? Is it important or not? What about the autosemanticity of the main constituents? Thinking of all these interpretations and differences in approaches, we decided to research the attitude towards this phenomenon in Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian language, with the special emphasis to dictionaries published in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

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¹ Original quote: ,,Frazemi su jedinice značenjskoga karaktera koje se kao cjelina reproduciraju u govornom aktu, raspolažući pri tome najmanje dvjema punoznačnim (autosemantičkim) riječima, od kojih barem jedna upućuje na semantičku pretvorbu, jedinice koje, zbog sposobnosti uklapanja u kontekst, poput svake druge riječi mogu vršiti sintaksičku funkciju u rečenici.” (Matešić 1982: VI)

² Phonetical word is one indipendent word with the attached proclitics and enclitics, like in examples od davnina (since ancient times), na brzinu (quickly), etc. (Menac 1978: 221)

³ Original quote: ,,U frazeme po našem mišljenju ne spadaju ni prijedložno-padežni spojevi tipa na nos, niz dlaku, iza leđa i sl.” (Tanović 2000: 73)

⁴ Original quote: ,,Govoreći o opsegu frazema, većina se frazeologa opredijelila za trostupanjsku podjelu. Opsegom najmanja jedinica jest fonetska riječ. To je frazem koji se najčešće sastoji od jedne autosemantičke i jedne (ili više) sinsemantičke riječi, pri čemu je najvažnije za taj strukturni tip da čini jednu akcenatsku cjelinu.” (Fink 2002: 8)