Abstract
Nonce words or occasionalisms are coined for a particular occasion and usually they are used just once. It is especially difficult when such newly created words have to be translated to another language. This article studies John Harding’s novel Florence & Giles and its Bulgarian translation (by Vladimir Molev). It is a sinister Gothic story told by the 12-year-old Florence living in an isolated New England mansion in 1891. She distorts words by transforming them into other parts of speech, e.g. nouns and adjectives are turned into verbs, nouns into adjectives, adverbs and prepositions into verbs, etc. At first, it could be annoying to the reader, however, once you get used to her narration, it is both fanciful and charming. This research studies the intensely concentrated nonce words in the text and their equivalents in Bulgarian from the point of view of their grammatical, word-formative and semantic characteristics. The contrastive method when applied to the parallel corpus shows some similarities and a lot of differences in the particular characteristics of nonce words due to the specifics of the two languages under discussion.
Highlights
Florence & Giles is an ominous Gothic tale set in a distant and dilapidated New England mansion
The contrastive method when applied to the parallel corpus shows some similarities and a lot of differences in the particular characteristics of the nonce words due to the specifics of the two languages under discussion
Summing up the analysis of the peculiarities of author’s occasionalisms it should be taken into account that the differences in the original and translated nonce words are due to the distinctions in the morphology and word-formation models of Bulgarian and English
Summary
Florence & Giles is an ominous Gothic tale set in a distant and dilapidated New England mansion. The children live in isolated existence and their uncle never visits them, he provides for their needs Under his instruction the 12-year-old Florence is not to be educated but in spite of his will she has educated herself by secretly devouring the books that remain untouched on the dusty and neglected shelves hidden away in the library. Inspired by the works of Dickens, Trollope and her true love, Shakespeare, Florence has developed a unique language of her own. She narrates her own story in a fairly unusual style. At first the reader could be a little vexed and distracted because of Florence’s unique style of communicating, as she is persistent in the use of her nonce words, the reader gets used to her narration
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
