Development of a Productive Derivational Pattern on the Basis of Loan Translation?

Abstract

This paper deals with the question of the formation of Croatian adjectives with the prefix među-. While such adjectives were very rare in late 19th and early 20th century, an analysis of relevant lexicographic works and digital corpora demonstrated that their number started to become larger in later 20th century, culminating in recent decades. Today, the [među-N-Suff]Adj derivational pattern is a productive, accounting for 134 adjectives with a frequency of ten occurrences or more retrieved from the largest extant Croatian web corpus, hrWaC. On the basis of an analysis of available older lexicographic works and digital corpora, it can be concluded that među- prefixed adjectives first entered into Croatian as loan translations (calques) of Latin(ate) and German terms. According to more recent lexicographic works and digital corpora, later on, and especially in recent decades, which coincided with a growing English influence on Croatian, među- prefixed adjectives were probably produced as equivalents of English inter- prefixed adjectives. The number of među- prefixed adjectives, as well as the variety of semantic domains in which they are used, testify to the fact that the [među-N-Suff]Adj pattern is well-established and productive in contemporary Croatian. The analysis of Croatian među- prefixed adjectives in this paper could contribute to shedding more light on the question of morphological borrowing phenomena in general.