Semantic Prosody in Translation: Slovene and English ADV-V combinations

Primož Jurko

doi:10.4312/elope.18.1.187-209

Authors

Primož Jurko University of Ljubljana

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.4312/elope.18.1.187-209

Keywords:

semantic prosody, translation, extended unit of meaning, top-down approach

Abstract

Semantic prosody is perhaps the most elusive meaning component established to date, and the present paper is a corpus-driven attempt to elucidate the meaning-forming process in some of the most frequent lexical items in Slovene and English. The underlying methodology is based on the novel top-down approach, which provides a semantically unmotivated point of view and is based on raw data, i.e., frequency of occurrence. The paper features a comparison of the pervasiveness of evident semantic prosody in high-frequency lexical items in Slovene and English, respectively. In closing it also deals with the problems involved in L1-L2 translation of the observed extended units of meaning, where possible translation equivalents exhibit varying levels of (mis)match in their semantic prosodies.

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