Semantic load of collocates in attributive free word combinations and collocations in English and Lithuanian

Abstract

The analysis zeroes in on the headword bachelor in English and its Lithuanian counterpart word viengungis with their nearest linguistic environment in which these words function as nouns. The research hypothesis is as follows: English and Lithuanian media corpora manifests differences in connotative meaning of collocates in attributive collocations with the headword bachelor/ viengungis in English and Lithuanian, which is predetermined by discourse prosody, and reflects the societies attitude towards the bachelor. The aim of the research is to characterise semantics of collocates with bachelor/viengungis and compare semantic load of these collocates in attributive free word combinations and collocations in English and Lithuanian taking into consideration discourse prosody. Qualitative approach is applied to investigate the data retrieved from the corpus following the principles of corpus linguistics. Descriptive method is used to identify semantic nature of collocates with the headword bachelor/viengungis predetermined by discourse prosody. For that purpose free word combinations and collocations with the headword bachelor/viengungis were selected from web as corpus. Google search engine was used to extract free word combinations and collocation from mass media texts in the period from 2012 to 2018. 48 English collocates and 33 Lithuanian ones of the node bachelor/viengungis in the collected corpora were found. The headword bachelor/viengungis with the collocates was used in all three types of discourse according to discourse prosody, i.e. positive, neutral and negative: in English 19 positive, 16 neutral, 13 negative; in Lithuanian 12 positive, 7 neutral, 14 negative. [...]