DERIVATION AND COMPOSITION OF NOUNS, ADJECTIVES, VERBS IN GREEK AND SERBIAN SWEAR WORDS

Abstract

"An impressive paradox seems to be the consolidated situation interwoven firstly with the use of obscene expressions characterized by a universal, diatopic and diachronic range and secondly with their inexplicable marginalization from thorough linguistic studies. Indeed, this unquestionable ascertainment acquires multidimensional extensions. As long as we think that, although social components vary continuously, rational beings sometimes shamelessly utter insulting words regardless of their nationality, sex, age, spiritual background, financial status or religious identity. While ignoring sociolinguistic conventions consciously or unconsciously they turn to the inexhaustible wealth of imaginative profanities which they utilize with a great frequency as an effective means of externalization of their underlying feelings and innermost thoughts. The orchestrated disapproval and the strong opposition, as they are manifested variously by traditional factors of constructional education and exemplary socialization (family, school) mainly come to be fruitless. In fact, they have not managed to remove the interhuman habit of swearing that is inseparable from everyday life, but not even to intercept its ecumenical onset. Starting from the aforementioned principles in this paper we give emphasis to the theoretical review of the fundamental social, cultural, and linguistic data that are noticed in these “undignified” lexical applications. The contrastive approach to their main subcategories in Modern Greek and colloquial Serbian on the basis of selected cases from reliable lexicographical works achieves the emergence of the functional similarities and structural differences in the derivation and composition of nouns, adjectives, verbs."