Phraseological adjective + noun calques loaned from English into Croatian

Abstract

This paper describes phraseological calques loaned from English into Croatian whose common denominator is their adjective + noun structure. Eighteen such idioms found in literature as confirmed examples of calques from English have been included in the analysis, and they have been divided into subclasses based on their degree of desemantization. A corpus (Hrvatska jezična riznica) and the internet (Google search engine) were analyzed in order to obtain insight into the use of these idioms and their degree of desemantization. In instances of idiomatic use in Croatian, it is concluded that calques with an adjective + noun structure are idioms in the full sense of the word, and should as such be rightfully included in phraseological classifications.

Keywords

• phraseological calques
• English
• Croatian
• adjective
• noun