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Cognitive Explorations into Metaphor and Metonymy

Frank Polzenhagen, Zoltan Kövecses, Stefanie Vogelbacher and Sonja Kleinke

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Croatian place suffixations in –ište: Polysemy and metonymy: Mario Brdar and Rita Brdar-Szabó

1. Introduction


Croatian place suffixations in –ište: Polysemy and metonymy

              Mario Brdar (Osijek)Rita Brdar-Szabó (Budapest)

The focus of this chapter is on Croatian nouns ending in the suffix –ište which denote various places. These suffixations have always been relatively popular in the literature dealing with word formation in Croatian (and Serbian). They are discussed in comprehensive works on Croatian (and Serbian) as well as in more specialized works (cf. Babić 1986; Maretić 1931; Stevanović 1991; Belić 2000; Hraste 1957; Kiršova 1980; Jovanović 2008; Štasni 2007).

According to Babić (1986: 123), there are actually five related suffixes forming a cluster: –ište, –lište, –elište, –ilište, and –ovište). The first two are claimed to be productive, while the rest are either mildly productive or unproductive (i.e. they occur only in a handful of formations). Their distribution seems to be morphologically and phonologically conditioned in an intricate way, but for our purposes the variant –ište will be treated as the underlying form and the rest as its allomorphs.

If we exclude the last allomorph above because it is not used to form nomina loci but to derive suffixations with an augmentative and pejorative tinge denoting people (e.g. čudovište ‘monster’), the cluster is semantically very compact. Apart from a small number of suffixations denoting parts of physical objects (specifically, handles of various tools named by the base, e.g. sjekirište ‘axe-handle’, or kosište ‘snaith, a part of...



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