Истраживања (Dec 2015)
MONEY IN SERBIAN, FRENCH AND SPANISH PHRASEOLOGY
Abstract
Combining conceptual metaphor and field, we have got layered and colorful image about perception of money in Serbian, French and Spanish. The main aim of this research is to show that the phraseological units with component Sr. novac (‘money’) / Fr. argent / Sp. Dinero and semantically similar lexemes are numerous in three languages and in colloquial language. The semantic field of ‘money’ is intertwined with semantic fields of ‘wealth’ and ‘poverty’. We defined five groups and determined that expressions in our corpus primarily reflect possession of large amounts of money, current shortage of money and irrational waste of money. Despite the numerical consistency of phrasemes, money is not perceived identically in Serbian, French and Spanish. As it was confirmed by the results in 169 idioms, formal and semantic overlap- ping in the three languages appears in only 24 cases, in two languages in 30 cases (Serbian/French – 3, Serbian/Spanish ‒13, French/Spanish ‒ 14). The most numerous are the expressions that exist in only one language: Serbian ‒ 49, French ‒ 36 and Spanish ‒ 30.
