Near-synonymy analysis of the descriptive adjective "debeo, -la, -lo" in Sebian and its English couterpart "fat"

Abstract

This paper highlights certain semantic similarities and differences between the descriptive adjective "debeo, -la, -lo" in Serbian and its English equivalent "fat". A multi-faceted approach is used to perform a collocational and componential analysis of the collocates extracted from various corpora. A contrastive analysis is also undertaken. Furthermore, a specific emphasis is placed on the presence of grammatical gender in Serbian, and the lack of such gender in English. Thus, the results of the analysis illustrate how the semantic (and grammatical) aspects of these adjectives in the two languages are reflected in the use of the words and how they collocate. In addition, the collocational framework of the adjective "debeo, -la, -lo" in Serbian was found to change, based both on the grammatical gender (masculine, feminine, neuter), and also on the sequence of its near synonyms. The same changes were not found in English which lacks grammatical gender. The paper uses electronic databases and corpora to analyse the frequency of the collocations found for the selected adjectives in both languages. The results suggest that there are distinct idiomatic meanings to the analysed adjectives in both Serbian and English.