Verb – noun collocations in the Croatian and German common language of science

Šnjarić, Mirjana. (2018). Verb – noun collocations in the Croatian and German common language of science. PhD Thesis. Filozofski fakultet u Zagrebu, Department of Linguistics.
(Poslijediplomski doktorski studij lingvistike) [mentor Petrović, Bernardina and Borucinsky, Mirjana].

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Abstract

The main aim of this paper is to analyse how the current scientific and theoretical knowledge on the linguistic phenomenon of collocations is reflected and practically applied in the CroatianGerman general bilingual lexicography. The objective of the research is to provide a lexicographic representation of one type of multiword lexical units, i.e. German (verb – noun) collocations, which are a typical feature of the language of science, and to contrast them with the collocations of the Croatian language of science. The terms language of science and collocations in the language of science are introduced, discussed and arguments are provided as to why these collocations should be included in general language dictionaries. This paper does not purport to find or describe deficiencies of existing dictionaries, but to offer methods for making the collocations qualitatively and quantitatively more available in both types of dictionaries (i.e. the German-Croatian dictionary and the Croatian-Gemran dictionary), with the main focus being placed on the needs of the speaker of Croatian (L1) and learner of and German (L2). For research purposes, verb-noun collocations such as den Ansatz / Zugang wählen ‛to select a scientific approach’, dem Ansatz folgen ‛to adopt a scientific approach’, einen Ansatz verfolgen ‛to favour a scientific approach’, ein Argument heranziehen: ‛to consider an argument’, Eigenschaften herausarbeiten ‛to depict features’, Unterschiede herausstellen ‛to emphasise differences’, einer Frage nachgehen ‛to consider a question/an issue’ / eine Frage verfolgen ‛to pursue a question/an issue’, etc., which are commonly found in scientific writing in German have been selected and lexicographically analysed. Furthermore, the term lexical equivalence, i.e. formal-semantic equivalence is distinguished from translation equivalence as being only one aspect of the dictionary entry and description of collocations. Accordingly, a lexicographic analysis of Croatian verb-noun collocations of the language of science is analysed so as to ascertain how well they are represented in the CroatianGerman dictionary (Jakić & Hurm 2004) and what their functional translation equivalents are. The collocations were selected from a corpus of the contemporary Croatian language of science which has been compiled for the purposes of this research. It is believed that the number of collocations represented in a dictionary and their assigned position is determined by the purpose of the dictionary and the direction of translation from L2 to L1 or L1 to L2 respectively. Methodologically, the research is based on the dictionary typology originating from the 1980s which presupposes the correct entry of collocations and meeting users’ needs for translation equivalents of collocations encountered in the language of science. Finally, problems and difficulties of the lexicographic representation of German and Croatian collocations, which are typically found in the language of science is presented, based on the needs of users whose L1 is Croatian. The relation to translator’s work and the growing need for bilingual dictionaries is shown, i.e. dictionaries in which the user and especially the translator working on scientific texts will be able to find exact collocations for his/her practical work and thus for the dissemination scientific thought.

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