COMPARATIVE PHRASES IN THE VOJVODINIAN PHRASEME CORPUS

Abstract

A significant part of the Vojvodinian phraseme corpus is made up of comparative phrases. In the phraseme-card collection of the Penavin-heritage this type constitutes quite a heterogeneous group. Comparative phrases in the traditional sense of the word are the most numerous and they form a separate type, which are often not idiomatic, they simply indicate comparison. The second group of comparative phrases (also a numerous one) relate to some kind of a local event or they refer to a story or anecdote. In the case of the latter, the phrase-user knows only the usage of the phrase itself, while the story behind it is often forgotten or obscure. Two more recent types of comparative phrasemes fall into two smaller groups: phrases showing humorous overstatement (maybe irony), where the main clause is never idiomatic, and its structure follows the pattern so/so big/so much (...), that, and those that intend explicitly to show irony by antonymic relations in phrasemes (phraseologic antonyms). In the case of the latter group, considering their form only a small number of phrasemes belong to the system of comparative phrasemes. This study analizes Vojvodinian comparative phrasemes according to their typological, structural, semantic and linguistic-dialectal characteristics.