29.3927, Sum: Contactemes which Develop a Productive Pattern

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LINGUIST List: Vol-29-3927. Wed Oct 10 2018. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 29.3927, Sum: Contactemes which Develop a Productive Pattern

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Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2018 13:29:45
From: Marin Kežić [mmkezic at gmail.com]
Subject: Contactemes which Develop a Productive Pattern

 
I'm in the process of finishing my Master's theses where I'm examining the
features of light verb constructions in Croatian and English (e.g. take a nap
= baciti spavanac). What I've discovered, through a corpus search, is that
Croatian light verb constructions with the verb ''baciti'' (throw) are an
emergent property of the conversational style and that they are on their way
of becoming a very productive group. The most attested among these
constructions are arguably ''baciti pogled'' (take a look, lit. throw a look)
and ''baciti đir'' (take a stroll, lit. throw a circle).

Now, my hypothesis is that the first attested construction of this type was
indeed ''baciti pogled'', which might very well be a calque from the German
expression ''einen Blick werfen'' (take a look, lit. throw a look). I once
stumbled upon an article by a Croatian scholar who argued that some
contactemes (linguistic units borrowed through language contact) can over time
become very productive in the L2, thus surpassing their limited use in the L1.
I think this is what happened in Croatian. Croatian took over the German
structure ''throw'' + N and later extended its use to a whole variety of nouns
(baciti ples, baciti drijemku, baciti kupanac...), whereas German did not take
in any new members of this category.

Sadly, I can't find the article I've read. Does anybody know how this process
is called in contact linguistics?
 

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics
                     Linguistic Theories
                     Semantics
                     Syntax
                     Typology

Subject Language(s): Croatian (hrv)
                     German (deu)

Language Family(ies): Indo-European



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