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Video games and video game reviews have become a valuable source of linguistics information and the focus of linguistic inquiry in recent decades. The correlation between video games and L2 vocabulary acquisition has been established by empirical research in the applied linguistics domain (Sylvén & Sundqvist 2012, Chen and Yang 2013, Zhonggen 2018, Vásquez & Ovalle 2019), which stimulated the idea of implementing different strategies in the paradigm of Game-Based Learning (cf. Santos 2017 and Kasemap 2017). Positive user-generated reviews are also shown to be correlated with increased playing time (Guzsvinecz 2022) and the use of NLP (Natural Language Processing) methodology allows us to analyse how different aspects of the game can have an effect on emotions experienced by the reviewers (Arik 2022, Britto & Pacifico 2020, Anees et al. 2020, Guzsvinecz 2022). Research by Cho et al. (2020) compares the feasibility and usefulness of qualitative human-based reviews versus automated text analysis methods and indicates that the machine-based methods can be successfully used for identifying the main topics of games, especially when dealing with large databases. This paper aims to employ a similar methodology as Cho et al. (2020) to compare the reviews of different game genres (e.g. Adventure, FPS, Sports, Strategy) collected from the GameSpot website (www.gamespot.com/). The reviews will be acquired via the rvest package (Wickham 2021) for webscraping in R and the analysis will be conducted using the traditional corpus linguistic methods for text analysis (e.g. collocations, keyword and n-gram analysis) from the quanteda package (Benoit et al. 2018). The main aim of the paper is to see whether there is a difference between reviews of games belonging to different genre in terms of the most frequent and/or the most representative words and phrases used.

U ovom se radu istražuje utjecaj tematskih uloga kao značenjskih čimbenika na tvorbu sintetskih složenica u engleskom (npr. firefighter) i hrvatskom jeziku (npr. vatrogasac). U radu se razmatraju prednosti i nedostaci formalnih i funkcionalističkih modela tvorbe sintetskih složenica. Za analizu je odabran teorijski okvir konstrukcijske morfologije koja čini podskup šire struje konstrukcijskogramatičkih pristupa i uporabnih modela jezika. Usmjerenost konstrukcijske morfologije k uporabnim modelima jezika opravdava i odabir korpusnolingvističkih i psiholingvističkih metoda u ovom radu. Korpusnolingvističkim metodama analizirani su podaci o produktivnosti, shematičnosti i učestalosti tvorbe sintetskih složenica u engleskom i hrvatskom jeziku. Analizom korpusa engleskog i hrvatskog jezika dostupnih putem alata Sketch Engine prikupljeno je ukupno 18.720 pojavnica sintetskih složenica u engleskom jeziku i 16.520 pojavnica u hrvatskom jeziku. Daljnjom statističkom analizom tih složenica utvrđeno je kako je tvorba sintetskih složenica u engleskom jeziku izrazito produktivan i shematičan proces, što se ogleda u relativno visokom omjeru hapaksa i pojavnica (0,110), relativno velikom broju pojedinačnih leksema (3.825) te relativno većem broju različitih tematskih uloga koje se u njima javljaju. Rezultati analize pokazali su i kako je tvorba sintetskih složenica u hrvatskom samo djelomično produktivan i shematičan proces, što pokazuje znatno niži omjer hapaksa i pojavnica (0,013), manji broj leksema (494) te manji broj različitih tematskih uloga. Nadalje, psiholingvističkim je metodama istražen utjecaj različitih tematskih uloga i korpusnih podataka na procesiranje sintetskih složenica u engleskom i hrvatskom jeziku. Analizom vremena reakcije i točnosti odgovora potvrđeno je da tematske uloge imaju statistički značajan i sustavan utjecaj na procesiranje sintetskih složenica u engleskom jeziku koji se ogleda u sporijem vremenu reakcije i nižoj razini točnosti kod manje prototipnih tematskih uloga. Takav efekt nije zabilježen kod sintetskih složenica u hrvatskom jeziku, što dovodi do zaključka da značenjski čimbenici ne utječu na njihovo procesiranje. Psiholingvistički podaci u značajnoj mjeri odražavaju rezultate korpusne analize, što predstavlja čvrst argument u korist uporabnih modela jezika. Rezultati provedenog istraživanja potvrđuju pretpostavku kako jezična sposobnost nastaje na temelju jezičnog iskustva kojemu su ljudi izloženi te da strukturiranost i pravilnost proizlaze iz učestale uporabe nekog jezičnog obrasca. This thesis examines the influence of thematic roles as semantic factors on the formation of synthetic compounds in English and Croatian (e.g. firefighter, vatrogasac ‘firefighter’). Synthetic compounds represent a particularly fruitful area of research, primarily because their formation has been previously described as the intersection of morphological, syntactic and semantic factors. The starting point of this dissertation is an overview of the most influential formal and functionalist models of synthetic compound formation (Lees 1963, Roeper and Siegel 1978, Botha 1980, Selkirk 1982, Lieber 1983, Grimshaw 1990, Oshita 1994, Ryder 1999, Ackema and Neeleman 2004, Booij 2010b, Gaeta 2010). These approaches are grouped into several main strands – approaches based on syntactic configuration, approaches based on argument structure, and approaches based on semantics factors, and the advantages and shortcomings of all approaches are discussed in turn. One of the most commonly assumed properties of synthetic compounds is that their formation is governed primarily by syntactic factors. This assumption is typically expressed in the form of a rule which states that synthetic compounds can only be formed through incorporation of an element which bears a thematic role which functions as an internal argument of the verb (in the sense of Williams 1981a and 1981b), such as Theme or Patient. According to Roeper and Siegel (1978), such a generalization explains why a compound like peace-maker is grammatically valid and a compound like *quick-maker is ungrammatical. Different formalizations of this rule were proposed in the literature, such as the First Sister Principle in Roeper and Siegel (1978), the Deep Structure Hypothesis in Botha (1980), the First Order Projection Condition in Selkirk (1982), and the Feature Percolation Conventions in Lieber (1983). Given the existence of synthetic compounds like winter warmer and axe murderer which clearly contradict this rule, the aim of this dissertation is to challenge the syntactocentric assumptions and analyse the formation of synthetic compounds through the scope of semantic factors. This dissertation approaches the formation of synthetic compounds from the perspective of Construction Morphology (Booij 2005 and 2010b, Gaeta 2006, Gaeta 2010, Gaeta and Zeldes 2017, Gaeta and Angster 2018, Tsujimura and Davis 2018). This theoretical framework constitutes a part of a wider network of Construction Grammar (CxG) approaches (Lakoff 1987, Fillmore et al. 1988, Goldberg 1995 and 2006, Kay and Fillmore 1999, Bergen and Chang 2005, Croft 2007, Boas and Sag 2012, Van Trijp et al. 2012) and usage-based approaches (Langacker 1988, Kemmer and Barlow 1999, Bybee 2006, Traugott 2008). Though various operationalizations of the term construction can be found in different CxG approaches, they are typically defined as form-meaning pairings which can contain both lexically filled (specified) and lexically open (schematic) parts. Constructions can be fully lexically specified, as is the case with morphologically simple words like cat, mouse, jump; partially lexically specified, which is the case in constructional idioms to jog X’s memory; and they can even be completely schematic, like the Ditransitive construction ‘Subj V OBJ1 OBJ2’ (cf. Goldberg 1995 and 2006). These constructions of varying size and complexity are mutually connected into a network called the constructicon, which represents our entire knowledge of language (Goldberg 2003). From the perspective of Construction Morphology (CxM), all words are constructions at the word level and synthetic compound in English are generally assumed to be licensed by constructions in which at least one part is schematic (Booij 2010b). By using corpus linguistic and psycholinguistic methods, we are able to test this and other assumptions about the creation of synthetic compounds in English and Croatian. The fact that Construction Morphology and Construction Grammar constitute a part of the usage-based paradigm represents an additional argument in favour of using these research methods. Corpus linguistics methods were used in this dissertation to analyse the productivity, schematicity and frequency of use of synthetic compounds in English and Croatian and the factors which might influence their formation. The corpus of English compounds was collected from the Daily Mail sub-corpus (comprising 23,192,074 tokens) of the English Broadsheet Newspapers 1993–2013 corpus available on Sketch Engine. The corpus of Croatian synthetic compounds was gathered from the Večernji list sub-corpus (49,237,340 tokens) of the HrWaC corpus (Ljubešić i Klubička 2014). Using language-specific CQL queries, a corpus of 18,720 English synthetic compounds and 16,520 Croatian synthetic compounds was collected. These compounds were further annotated for token and lexeme frequency, number of hapaxes (lexemes occurring only once in a corpus), individual nouns, verbs and affixes they consist of, general frequency of use of verbs, frequency of use of verbs in synthetic compounds, number of different left constituents in compounds, and the thematic roles which they contain. Statistical analysis of the corpus data showed that the formation of synthetic compounds in English is a highly productive and schematic process, as reflected in a relatively high hapaxto-token ratio (0.110), relatively high number of individual lexemes (3,825), a high number of different left constituents that a verb forms compounds with (4.98), and a relatively high number range of thematic roles assigned to left constituents of compounds. Analysis also revealed that the frequency of use of verbs in the formation of synthetic compounds and the number of different left constituents used to form synthetic compounds with a particular verb are in a statistically significant correlation with the formation of unprototypical thematic roles. These results indicate that verbs which are more frequently used to form synthetic compounds and which form synthetic compounds with a wider range of different left constituents (nouns) are more likely to form compounds in which the left constituent is not an internal argument of the verb, thus challenging the syntactocentric assumptions of formal models of formation. Statistical analysis of the Croatian corpus data indicates that synthetic compounds are only a semi-productive and a semi-schematic word-formation process, as reflected in a significantly lower hapax-to-token ratio (0.013), lower number of individual lexemes (494), a lower number of different left constituents with which a verb forms compounds (2.15), and a relatively short range of different thematic roles assigned to the left constituents of compounds. Contrary to the data for synthetic compounds in English, the results for Croatian compounds show that neither frequency of use of verbs in the formation of synthetic compounds nor the number of different left constituents used to form synthetic compounds with a particular verb are correlated with the formation of compounds with unprototypical thematic roles. This result is in line with the obtained values for productivity and schematicity as it indicates that synthetic compounds in Croatian are formed by partially lexically specified word-formation patterns which depend on individual verbs. As a generalization of the corpus data collected for both languages, two continua of nominal synthetic compounds were proposed in the thesis. The continuum for English synthetic compounds contains constructions at all levels of lexical specificity: lexically fully specified and idiomatic constructions (e.g. brainteaser), partially schematic constructions like [[X]N [[dodge]V er]N]N which denotes ‘a person who avoids something literally/metaphorically’ (e.g. draft dodger, soap dodger), and a completely schematic construction proposed as a generalization for creating all semantically compositional and non-idiomatic compounds [[X]N [[Y]V er]N]N ‘a person/thing performing an action Y which involves X’ (e.g. body warmer, winter warmer). Since the productivity and schematicity values showed that synthetic compounding in Croatian is only a partially schematic word-formation pattern, the continuum of constructions assumed for Croatian synthetic compounds contains only fully specified constructions (e.g. stihoklepac ‘versemonger’) and verb-specific partially specified constructions like [XNi- -o- gradiV- -telj]Nk denoting ‘a person/thingk which builds Xi’ (e.g. mostograditelj ‘bridge builder’ and cestograditelj ‘road builder’). The results of the corpus analysis were further tested using the psycholinguistic methodology, specifically, a lexical decision task experiment. The experiments for both languages (English and Croatian) were created and conducted using the IBEX Farm experimental platform (Drummond 2011). Both experiments were conducted with native speakers of English and Croatian and had the same 5 x 2 design, with thematic role types (5 levels – Patient, Theme, Goal, Instrument and Adjunct) and prime-target thematic role congruence (2 levels – congruent/incongruent) as factors. However, due to a low number of verbs which formed synthetic compounds with particular thematic roles, the Croatian version of the experiment also included corpus attestation of the verb as an additional third factor (2 levels – attested/unattested). Both experiments measured the reaction time and accuracy of participants when assessing novel synthetic compounds as possible words in English and Croatian. In the English version of the experiment, target compounds were primed by sentences containing an existing synthetic compound with different thematic roles between compound constituents. The experiment contained 40 synthetic compounds (8 per thematic role) and 60 filler tasks which contained nonsensical combinations of words (e.g. adolescent broom) and non-words (e.g. zilmer chan) as target words. The Croatian version of the experiment had the same methodology with minor modifications in terms of prime type and number of tasks. In this version of the experiment, the prime sentence did not contain a synthetic compound but the thematic relation was congruent or incongruent between the elements of the prime sentence (verbs and complements/modifiers) and the target compound. The Croatian version of the experiment also included 30 synthetic compounds as targets (6 per thematic role) due to a lower overall number of synthetic compounds found in the Croatian corpus. Analysis of data collected from the experiments revealed that thematic roles have a statistically significant and systematic effect on processing of synthetic compounds in English, which is reflected in slower reaction time and lower acceptability rating with less prototypical thematic roles (Instrument and Adjuncts). The same effect was not established for synthetic compounds in Croatian, which indicates that semantic factors do not affect processing of synthetic compounds in Croatian. These results were also confirmed by a mixed effects model (Bates et al. 2015) which used thematic roles, thematic congruence, frequency of use of verbs, and the number of different left constituents as fixed effects and individual participants and tasks as random effects. Although the psycholinguistic data yielded different results for synthetic compounds in the two languages, both groups of results largely reflect the conclusions of the corpus analysis which suggest two different word-formation patterns for creation of synthetic compounds in English and Croatian. These results represent a strong argument in favour of the usage-based models of language and confirm the assumption of these models that language capacity emerges as a result of linguistic experience and human exposure to language, whereas the structure and regularity within language stem from the frequency of use of a particular linguistic pattern.

The issues concerning first language acquisition are analyzed from a wide array of perspectives, such as neurolinguistics, applied linguistics, psychology and biology. Our paper investigates the mechanisms of language acquisition by observing the patterns of ditransitive construction usage in child language. The idiosyncratic nature of the ditransitive construction allows us to study linguistic disparity with the progression of age in terms of learnability, productivity and flexibility. In order to resolve some of the mysteries concerning language acquisition, the paper approaches the subject matter through the use of corpus linguistics methods, relying on intra-linguistic rather than inter- or extra- linguistic evidence. The research we present in our paper is based on collected and annotated data from previous studies on English-speaking children, incorporated into the CHILDES language learner corpora, available via the Sketch Engine family of corpora. From the available data-set we extract the data on the “double-object dative” ditransitive construction (VP → NP1 → NP2) used by children and adults (age groups 0-3, 4-6 and 18 and over). Our main focus are the lexical and structural aspects of the ditransitive constructions, i.e. the typological analysis of ditransitive constructions and the frequency evaluation of different verbs and substantives used in them. Namely, the aim is to determine which verbs and nouns appear frequently in the aforementioned groups, which of them frequently co-appear and how many such distinctive types there are in child and adult language. Such analysis allows us to draw conclusions on whether the nature of language acquisition is prototypical in its essence, the assumption being that the learning of ditransitive constructions, like others, develops around archetypal verbs and arguments. It is expected that the child language will mirror the adult input in terms of frequency of particular verbs and nouns, whilst the general frequency and lexical richness will remain condensed in contrast to adult language, thus validating our assumptions on the prototypical and yet cognitively constrained nature of language development. The ultimate goal of the paper is to challenge the existing interpretations of how language is acquired and to address the results appropriately, whilst unbiasedly taking into account the main arguments of both usage-based (Lakoff 1987 ; Lakoff & Thompson 1975 ; Langacker 1987 ; Goldberg 1995 ; Tomasello 2000 & 2003) and nativist approaches (Chomsky 1959 ; Hauser et al. 2002 ; Pinker 2002 & 2003) to language acquisition theory.

In this paper, we provide a typological overview of abbreviations found in the corpus of Erasmus+ mobility documents, presented as an overview of classification and taxonomic arrangement of abbreviations. The corpus was created from the texts available on the Erasmus+ website using the in-built tools of the Sketch Engine interface and it includes a representative sample of 4 million words. The abbreviations were collected using the concordance queries which enable us to retrieve lemmas written with only capital letters (e.g. OLS for ‘Online Linguistic Support’) and subsequent manual filtering. The typology is based on previous works in this field (Fabijanić: 2015 ; Fabijanić: 2014a, 2014b ; Malenica, Fabijanić: 2013 ; Fabijanić, Malenica: 2013), which provided a more consistent and more transparent approach to classification of abbreviations, based on different other works and approaches (Fandrych: 2008a ; Fandrych: 2008b ; Harley: 2006 ; López Rúa: 2006 ; Jackson, Ze Amvela: 2005 ; López Rúa: 2004 ; Plag: 2003 ; Plag: 2001 ; Stockwell, Minkova: 2001 ; Crystal: 1995 ; Algeo: 1991 ; Cannon: 1989). Abbreviations are classified according to two criteria: narrower and broader sense, and their differences in orthographic formation are described by the set of specific descriptors. The suggested description, classification and analysis were previously used in examining different terminologies and is used in this work to prove their applicability and sustainability.

Within the framework of Construction Morphology (CM) (Booij 2010a, 2010b, 2015, 2018 ; Gaeta 2010, Gaeta and Zeldes 2017) and Relational Morphology (Jackendoff and Audring 2016, 2018), creation of new lexemes is licensed by word-level constructions, i.e. morphological schemas, which perform a dual function in the mental lexicon – they connect related complex words and serve as a basis for formation of new words. One of the key properties of schemas is that they can be unified with one another, which may result in increased productivity of the resulting schema. The aim of this paper is to examine the formation of deverbal synthetic compounds (SCs) in English and Croatian using corpus data and native speaker intuitions. Specifically, I aim to look at the interaction of two issues related to the formation of deverbal SCs that have been raised in previous works dealing with SCs – the order of morphological operations in the creation of [NV-er]N compounds, and the range of possible thematic relations between the deverbal head and the nominal complement. Traditionally, two logical possibilities have been established for the order of operations: i) verbal NV compound is created first, followed by -er suffixation (Lieber 1983, Ackema and Neeleman 2004) ; and ii) agentive deverbal noun is formed first, followed by incorporation of the nominal complement (Selkirk 1982). A third option has recently been put forth by Booij (2010), who claims that formation of SCs in English involves unification of two independent word-formation schemas – the unproductive [NV]V schema for verbal compounds, and the highly productive [Ver]N schema for agentive nouns. This approach resolves the shortcomings of both approaches by placing the burden of formation on schemas, thus nullifying the need for accounting for the intermediate steps in the formation. With regards to this issue, my goal is to use corpus data to test the justifiability of this proposal. The second issue regarding the types of thematic relations has been present since the earliest works on SCs in the generative tradition (cf. Roeper and Siegel 1978). Whereas some authors adopt a restrictive approach and allow only internal arguments (in the sense of Williams 1981) as complements (Selkirk 1982, Grimshaw 1990, Oshita 1994, and more recently Gaeta & Zeldes 2017), others allow the so-called semantic arguments to take part in the formation of SCs (cf. Lieber 1983, Miller 2014). The goal of my paper here will be to examine the hypothesis that SCs can also take non-internal arguments as complements and show certain empirical inadequacies of the restrictive approaches that dismiss cases with these types of arguments as root compounds.

This paper presents an overview of co-speech gestures and sign languages as two means of communication realized through the visuo-spatial modality. We look at previous research to examine their correlation with spoken languages in terms of phonology of sign languages and the basic features of gesture production. By analysing these features, we are able to see how these means of communication utilize phases of production (in case of gestures) or parts of individual signs (in case of sign languages) to convey meaning. The studies of sign languages and studies of gestures have been somewhat neglected in the past, as the focus was put mainly on spoken languages. Recent insights into sign languages as bone fide linguistic systems and gestures as a system which has no linguistic features but accompanies language have shown that communication does not take place within just a single modality. By comparing gestures and sign languages to spoken languages, we are able to trace the transition from systems of communication involving simple form-meaning pairings to fully fledged morphological and syntactic complexities in spoken and sign languages, which gives us a new outlook on the emergence of linguistic phenomena.

The aim of my PhD topic is to investigate the formation of synthetic compounds in English and Croatian (e.g. truck driver, house builder in English and najmodavac, brodograditelj in Croatian) and the possible argument structure configurations within them in terms of thematic roles relations between the deverbal head and the nominal complement. The study of argument structure in synthetic compounds has a rich history in contemporary linguistic theory and one of the first major generalizations to be put forward was the so‐ called First Sister Principle in Roeper and Siegel (1978), later refined and restructured in various other works (inter alia, Lieber 1980 & 1983, Rappaport Hovav & Levin 1992, DiSciullo & Williams 1987, Selkirk 1982). This strand of research is contrasted by the model of “Competition between Syntax and Morphology” proposed in Ackema & Neelman (2004), and argued for by, among others, Melloni & Bisetto (2010). However, the common denominator in all of these studies is the assumption that the syntactic structure is the underlying factor responsible for the creation of these compounds and the possible argument structure configurations, which seems to lead to categorical exclusion of some thematic roles, especially among the first strand. My intention is to approach this issue from the perspective of Construction Morphology as put forward by Booij (inter alia, 2005 &2010) and Gaeta (2010). I aim to use data from Croatian and English corpora to create a tentative hierarchy of thematic roles attested as possible and use experimental data gathered via IBEX Farm to verify the results obtained by the corpus analysis. I intend to show that a constructional approach based on the conceptual structure of the base verbs offers more predictive and explanatory power in comparison to syntax‐oriented accounts and I hope to achieve this goal by answering the following research questions: 1. Which thematic roles can appear as arguments of the head in verbal synthetic compounds? 2. Which thematic roles are more acceptable and which are less acceptable, i.e. what does the hierarchy of acceptability of thematic roles look like? 3. Does the hierarchy of thematic roles apply to all verbs equally or is it verb‐dependent? 4. Do Croatian and English synthetic compounds differ in terms of possible thematic roles and to what extent?

This paper deals with the underlying relations between the constituents in endocentric noun-noun compounds. The head in an endocentric compound functions both as the semantic and the syntactic head and represents the more prominent part of the compound, which is more precisely defined by the modifier (Bauer et al. 2015). Even though the nature of the underlying relation between a head and a modifier is vague and differs from compound to compound (Jackendoff 2009, Booij 2010, inter alia), recognizing it can boost the retrieval of already familiar compounds and help resolve ambiguous compounds, or compounds whose head noun implies different meanings in different compounds (olive oil vs. baby oil) (Gagne 2010). These relations can be roughly seen as paraphrases of the compound (Lees 1960, Jackendoff 2009), i.e. sleeping pill can be roughly paraphrased as a pill used for sleeping, while water bottle can be paraphrased as a bottle used for storing water. In our research, we aim to analyze whether a common underlying relation has a more significant impact on retrieval of noun-noun compounds than lexical relatedness, i.e. whether the recognition of a compound like water bottle is faster when it is preceded by a compound with the same underlying relation (e.g. wine glass) or by a compound with a common lexeme but a different underlying relation (e.g. water vapour). We aim to investigate this issue using the experimental paradigm with native and non-native speakers of English as participants.

The results of an experimental picture matching study (Willer-Gold et al, in preparation) lead to the conclusion that closest conjunct agreement (CCA) in South Slavic languages is not a result of ellipsis of a biclausal structure as no major differences were noted in ratings for conjunct subjects and single NP subjects, in line with previous studies on CCA in South Slavic languages (Marušič et al. 2015 ; Willer-Gold et al. 2016). The original experiment (Willer-Gold et al, in preparation) was conducted among a group of undergraduate students, i.e. naïve participants (in the sense of Dąbrowska 2008, 2010). In the present study, the same experiment is conducted with a group of expert par-ticipants of comparable size and dialectal background, Croatian language teachers and linguists (persons involved at the primary, secondary and tertiary level of education). In this study, the same stimuli have been used as in the original experiment, thus contribut-ing to the discussion on the methodology of collecting empirical linguistic data (inter alia, Spencer 1973 ; Ferreira 2005 ; Culbertson, Gross 2009 ; Devitt 2010 ; Phillips 2010 ; Gross, Culbertson 2011 ; Gibson, Fedorenko 2013 ; Sprouse, Schütze, Almeida 2013).Studies conducted by Dąbrowska (2008 with non-linguists as participants and 2010 with linguists as participants) showed that judgements of the same sentences by lin- guists differ systematically from those provided by non-linguists. The study presented in our paper is in line with Dabrowska’s 2010 study, replicating the experimental study by Willer-Gold et al. (in preparation). One of the insights of Dąbrowska’s 2010 study was that the difference in acceptability ratings between naïve and expert participants could be explained by the amount of exposure to sentences with long distance depend- encies between the two groups of participants. This paper discusses whether a similar correlation between the level of expertise and the participants’ linguistic intuitions for both conjunct and single NP subjects can be found. While we do not assume that the dif-ference between the two experimental groups can be explained by satiation effects (cf. Snyder 2000), the data collected in the present study indicates a difference in speaker 120intuitions between the two groups, noticeable primarily in terms of lower average ac-ceptability ratings, both for critical conditions and fillers, and in terms of higher degree of variability in acceptability ratings for all items.

This paper discusses the possibilities of analysing formation of English acronyms within the framework of Optimality Theory (McCarthy 2008, Kager 1999). One of the main reasons why acronyms and other types of abbreviations are regarded as marginal modes of word-formation is the lack of systematic typology of abbreviation types, as witnessed in some earlier studies of abbreviations in the English language (Cannon 1989, López Rúa 2004). This absence of systematic distribution of abbreviations into their respective types with clear-cut delineation between the categories is best reflected in the fact that scholars often fail to distinguish between abbreviations that are pronounced as single words (acronyms) and those pronounced letter-by-letter (initialisms/alphabetisms). However, recent studies of prosodic features of abbreviations (Alber 2010, Bat-El & Cohen 2012, Lappe 2007, Luo 2013) underline the necessity for reinvestigating the earlier assumptions about their structural and semantic unpredictability by focusing on the regularity in patterns of their formation. The aim of this paper is to show how the creation of acronyms, despite their apparent unpredictable features, is nevertheless a result of interaction of specific morphological and prosodic constraints and that the system of constraints provided by the Optimality Theory can help shed some light on their creation.

Collocations represent a particularly important linguistic phenomenon for all language learners, which is reflected in numerous studies which approach them from both the phraseological and statistically-based perspective. To gain a better insight into various levels of collocational proficiency and to comprehend what factors may represent an obstacle for the foreign language learners, it is necessary to analyse the mistakes they make. This study represents a continuation of a research conducted among the students of Karlovac University of Applied Sciences (N= 52) in terms of analysing the mistakes made in the productive tasks of collocational proficiency in a questionnaire that tested both their general language proficiency and collocational proficiency. The aim is to see whether general English proficiency and congruence of collocations in L1 and L2 has an effect on the types of mistakes that the participants make and the most common types of errors for each level of general proficiency. The study included 20 collocation tasks (10 congruent and 10 non-congruent) which tested the productive knowledge of collocations.

The importance of collocational proficiency and its various aspects has been attested in numerous recent studies. Not only does the proper usage of collocations enhance fluency and accuracy of the speaker, but the lack of awareness of collocational patterns leads to over-reliance of L1 transfer, and consequently, to awkward and unnatural-sounding word combinations. Because of this, the importance of collocational proficiency for teaching English, both in general and as a language for specific purposes, remains unquestionable. This research will be conducted among the students of the Professional Studies of Hospitality at the Karlovac University of Applied Sciences. The fluency of intercultural communication is one of the fundamental prerequisites in the field of tourism and hospitality, which underlines the importance of teaching collocational patterns to these students. The results of this research should provide useful insights for developing language skills and teaching materials in an LSP course.

Recent studies in English non-morphological/non-morphemic word-formation processes (e.g. López Rúa 2006 ; Fandrych 2004, 2008, 2008a ; Cannon 1989 ; Plag 2003 ; Muhvić-Dimanovski 2001 ; Brdar-Szabó, Brdar 2008 ; Marković 2009) have shown a great deal of heterogenous aspects in their formation, inconsistancies in classification, definitions and analyses. Non-morphological word-formation processes in English can be seen in the formation of abbreviations, clippings, initialisms, acronyms, blends. In our research the analysis of non-morphological word-formation types in English medical terminology will be carried out together with the description and explanation of their adaptation to Croatian language, which will be accompanied with all types and patterns of their adaptation. The analysis will be conducted on the basis of some recent non-morphological word-formation classifications and on the basis of certain characteristics observed in abbreviations, clippings, initialisms and other types of these words, i. e. transferonyms (borrowings) transferred from the English medical terminology into the Croatian medical terminology. Similarly, on a representative material of these formations, the research will present the degrees of orthographic adaptation of models in the Croatian medical terminology.

Among the obstacles the learners of English language are faced with, collocations appear to be among the most difficult. Their troublesome nature is attested in numerous recent studies, among other: Granger 1998, Van der Meer 1998 & 2006, Leśniewska 2006, Nesselhauf 2003, Gilquin 2007, and Sadeghi 2009. One of the most prominent reasons for this is their somewhat elusive nature, as collocations are neither completely fixed nor completely free forms. Because of this, collocational restrictions are more liable to cross-linguistic influence (Arabski 2006). The way we perceive words in L1 language affects the way we perceive and learn new words in L2 (Jarvis & Pavlenko 2008: 74). However, despite numerous claims supporting this, the extent of L1 influence on collocational proficiency remains unclear (Arabski 2006: 66-67). The border between collocations and fixed phrases, such as idioms, is relatively hazy, which poses an additional difficulty for L2 learners. However, not only does the very concept of collocations pose the problem to English learners, but the process of their translation into and from a certain language represents a considerable handicap. Although collocations have various forms, seven basic types of collocations are listed as crucial for English language learners: adjective + noun, noun + noun, verb + adjective + noun, verb + adverb, adverb+ verb, adverb+ adjective, verb + preposition + noun (Lewis 2000: 51). The aim of this research is to examine the collocational proficiency among 100 native Croatian learners of English language in several learning institutions in the Zadar area, namely Vladimir Nazor Gymnasium and University of Zadar. The learners will be given a questionnaire containing 70 multiple- choice collocation tasks for translating Croatian expressions into English. This study intends to provide answers for the following research questions: 1. Does collocational proficiency improve with the time spent learning the English language and at what rate? 2. For which types of collocations do English language learners achieve better results and a better rate of improvement? 3. Do English language learners achieve better results with collocations which can be transferred from Croatian, or with those the meaning of which cannot be directly translated, and which may represent “false cognates”? The hypothesis is that the number of years spent learning the language has a positive effect on collocational proficiency, but also that the collocational proficiency and its improvement will be more noticeable for collocations containing nouns and adjectives, than among those involving verbs and adverbs, as English noun and adjective collocations appear to have form and meaning more similar to their Croatian counterparts which allows them to be more easily translatable into Croatian. It is also expected that better understanding will be shown for those collocations which can be transferred from Croatian into English, such as pay cash, than for those which cannot, such as pay attention.

Blending is not any more seen as an unimportant or peripheral word-formation process in English. It has become more common and is encountered in media every day. Blends are mainly witty and involve word play. They occur in advertisements, newspaper and magazine articles. In advertisments they are intended to be memorable while in speech they fall quickly in disuse. This research deals with orthographic, morphological, formational and semantic characteristics of English blends with geographic components (splinters). Analyses will be carried out on the corpus of approximately 120 blends and among different questions to be answered, the following are the most important ones: Which splinter contributes more to a blend and why?, How important is a geographic splinter in understanding the meaning of a blend?, Is the study of blends with a geographic splinter comparable and compatible with the findings of previous studies which dealt with blends in general?. Along with the analyses of blends on different linguistic levels, we will also try to present a possible solution of their (blends) lexicographic presentation based on Ingrid Fandrych's theoretical framework (2004), i.e. the interdisciplinary or a multi-level approach for the analysis of non-morphemic word-formation processes. It involves semantic, sociolinguistic, and pragmatic criteria, i.e. their structural, cognitive and functional aspects.

In this work, the corpus of military abbreaviations taken from Bowyer's Dictionary of Military Terms (3rd edition) is examined. The analysis of the corpus is done in two steps ; first the relevant definitions and classifications of abbreviations are identified and then the abbreviations are analysed according to their linguistic features. The first part examines several works of authors who dealt with the classifications of abbreviations. The work provides a short history of abbreviations in general-purpose and specific dictionaries with the topic of military and naval terminology. The analysis of abbreviations on three levels is also provided, namely, orthographic, morphological and semantic level. The orthographic one gives the distribution of abbreviations into their respective categories, the morphological level deals with the ways of their formation, and the semantic level deals with the relation between the meaning of abbreaviation's constituents and the meaning of the abbreviation as a whole.

Ovaj rad proučava vezu između geološke podloge i vodoopskrbnih značajki Dalmacije (Južne Hrvatske). Definirani su osnovni hidrološki i pojmovi te hidrološki procesi koji se odvijaju u kršu te su pregledane glavne geološke, hidrološke i klimatološke značajke pojedinih porječja i vodoopskrbne značajke pojedinih županija. Vodoopskrbne značajke otoka su zbog svojih posebnosti obrađene zasebno od kopnenih dijelova županija. U radu su istaknuti glavni problemi koji se javljaju u vodoopskrbi područja Dalmacije, poput neizgrađenosti infrastrukture u dijelovima pojedinih županija te zaslanjivanja izvora i zemljišta koje je izraženo u porječju Neretve. Unatoč zadovoljavajućem stanju vodoopskrbe u velikom dijelu Dalmacije, postoje brojni aspekti vodoopskrbe koje bi trebalo unaprijediti.

This final paper deals with nominal Latinate suffixes in English and how their features are analyzed. The features analyzed are those related to phonology, morphology, semantics and productivity. All of the suffixes in question offer varying new word-formation rules and semantics fields to the English langauge. The paper begins with an overview of how the Latin influence began in English, followed by a comparison of it and the native Germanic components in the language. Afterwards, a theoretical basis is given for the analysis, those being phonology, productivity and semantics. Finally, the research is showcased for each suffix chosen for the paper. This section begins with an analysis of the formal features of each suffix, and ends with an analysis of the productivity scores for each of the suffixes and compares all of them. Ovaj završni rad se bavi nominalim latinskim sufiksima u engleskom i analizom njihovih značajki. Značajke koje su analizirane su povezano s fonologijom, morfologijom, semantikom i produktivnošću. Svi sufiksi u pitanju nude razna nova pravila za tvorbu riječi i semantička polja u engleskom jeziku. Ovaj rad počinje s pregledom kako je latinski utjecaj započeo u engleskom, zatim s usporedbom njega i germanski komponenata u jeziku. Nakon toga, postavlja se teorijska baza za analizu, a to su fonologija, produktivnost i semantika. Konačno, istraživanje je prikazano za svaki sufiks koji je izabran u radu. Ovaj dio počinje s analizom formalnih značajki svakog sufiksa i završava s analizom bodova produktivnosti za svaki sufiks i uspoređuje ih sve.

Oxford Advanced Learners’ Dictionary (OALD) stands out, on the EFL market, as the only EFL dictionary which has been continuously republished for over 70 years. With each new edition upgraded, OALD conforms to the contemporary language teaching and learning processes worldwide. This article presents its structural development – an evolution from its very first, Japanese edition in 1942 towards the latest one in 2015. The analysis deals with the development and changes within the macrostructural (front matter, the body, appendices) and microstructural (headword, spelling, pronunciation, part of speech, senses, definitions, illustrations, usage) frames of the dictionary.

The first part of the paper is a review of historical development of approaches towards migrants, such as assimilation, acculturation, accommodation, inclusion, integration etc. Further, legal and policy framework that regulates procedures for asylum seekers in the Republic of Croatia in the context of the acquis and the Council of Europe instruments is presented. Several subsequent Croatian national migration policies and integration measures are analyzed both in conceptual and practical terms with a view to critically appraise their nature and level of implementation. It is commonly known that these policies, in addition to being uncompleted and lacking some important aspects, have also not been systematically implemented. Institutional bodies in charge of asylum seekers are examined. In the context of a growing possibility that Croatia may no longer be just a transit country, but it might become the country of final destination of migrants, we argue for the need to build a long-term, receptive and well-coordinated system of asylum-seekers’ treatment. In the second part of the paper we present results of our quantitative research on relations between the level of English language competences and the success in acquiring competences of Croatian language and culture among asylum seekers in Croatia. Specific objectives of the research have been to assess an average level of English competences among part of asylum seekers in Croatia, as well as to examine their perception of importance of English in the process of asylum procedures in Croatia, and in the subsequent integration of successful applicants into Croatian society.

The book of abstracts contains the basic information about the conference of HDAS (Croatian Association for the Study of English) held in Zadar (Croatia) 18 -19 November, 2016, the list of organizing board members, conference programme, abstracts and the list of participants with their e-mail addresses.

Our study tests the resilience of conceptual metaphors in the public discourse on refugees as a reflection of the situation when Croatia became a part of the refugee and other migrant routes in the summer of 2015 and when there was an obvious increase in reports on the treatment of refugees during their passage through the Croatian national territory. A comparison is made with the RASIM project (Refugees, Asylum Seekers, Immigrants and Migrants) conducted at the University of Lancaster from 1996 to 2006 which explored the discourses surrounding refugees and asylum seekers at the territory of the UK, examining both how that discourse has evolved and how it has constructed both groups. The qualitative text analyses of the study suggested aggregation, collectivisation and functionalisation as the most widespread strategies in negative representations of RASIM throughout the 10-year period, by using some stock metaphorical expressions to talk about (and consequently conceptualize) migrants as bodies of water (‘flood of refugees’, ‘wave of refugees’) aimed to trigger a number of topoi Wodak's (2009), background knowledge structures with potential discoursive effects. Charteris Black (2006) noticed that in the period of high growth of economic immigration in the UK the topic served as a major political issue for the British political right while in Croatia in late 2015 the treatment of refugees became a prime- time topic in preelectional arguments in both right- and left-wing parties with almost the same arguments and linguistic tools used in the media discourse. The circularity of the idea of refugees as a threat, burden or challenge to the state or to domicile population obviously holds the appeal of an emotionally charged discourse topic with the conceptual metaphors for migrant people used as a pool of prototypical referential expressions with a high potential for numerous connotative meanings (or topoi, as mentioned above). Opposed to this automatic reaction by the media centres there is a plea by experts on migrations which urged the public to employ a more neutral set of expressions, like 'migration/migrant flow' (Glas Slavonije, 24.10. 2015), which, despite relying on the same metaphorical domain of water, foreground its less biased set of properties. This initiative prompted the initial corpus study on the Google search machine which showed that in 2015 the expression izbjeglički/migrantski tok 'refugee/migration flow' was being steadily introduced in the Croatian public discourse and the typical sources for this expression were either the academic papers in the sociology of migrations or some official documents and translations of EU directives in English. This example may be a case study on how politically correct, top-down approach is used to promote linguistic shaping of the public opinion where experts have tried to impose an objective and scientifically grounded view on the otherwise simplified and severely reduced image that refugees and migrants were attributed in the Croatian media. It may also be an example of linguistic import, where it is obvious that the English expression, together with the universally established conceptual metaphor, created a nest for developing a set of novel concepts and phrases in the Croatian language.

The paper deals with the adaptation of Turkisms on the semantic level in the Vrgorac dialect. In order to analyse semantic changes in the process of linguistic borrowing of Turkisms, Rudolf Filipović's approach and methodological framework will be used. Turkisms will be classified within respective semantic fields of habitats, household, clothes, everyday activites, food, plants, and tools. A short historical overview of the town of Vrgorac will be given so as to provide a testimonial from the relation of its turbulent migratory history with the resultant linguistic aspects of its dialect. Together with some main features of the Vrgorac dialect, some characteristics of the Turkish influence on the Standard Croatian will also be described. The semantic analysis of the Turkisms will be done through the degrees of the semantic adaptation: zero semantic extension, restriction of meaning in number and in the field, and extension of meaning in number and in the field.

In the semi-autobiographical sequence of poems The Adoption Papers (1991), Jackie Kay, a contemporary black Scottish writer, re-visits imaginatively what her own adoption process might have been like and addresses the formation of the highly complex identity of a black adoptee in a predominantly white community in the course of the sixties and seventies. Born to mixed race parents (Nigerian father and white Scottish mother), and adopted by a white Scottish couple, Kay here draws heavily on her own personal experiences. She employs three different perspectives blending together three distinctive voices, those of the birth mother, the adoptive mother, and the daughter who has been given up for adoption. The black biological father who is only briefly mentioned by the birth mother seems to be (just like Kay’s father in real life) a short-term immigrant in Britain, and is completely absent both from his daughter’s life and the story. Although this paper does not directly focus on the issue of migration, it is nevertheless argued that the identity/identities that in any way result from the ‘zone of contact’ raise a plethora of questions concerning race, class, gender, ethnicity, and sexuality. Kay’s sequence clearly demonstrates that the three women, especially the daughter, who as black and Scottish represents a contradiction by traditional definitions (Novy, 185), are each in their own way affected by these pressing concerns. This paper will therefore attempt to explore ways in which this multi-voice representation tackles identity formation which has been directly influenced by migration.

Shaun Tan’s The Arrival (2006), a wordless graphic novel, or a wordless picturebook, is a piece about migration, about coming to a strange and remote culture and about finding a place there. This narrative presents the story of an immigrant’s experience and, at the same time, the essence of any migrant situation. The inability to communicate is closely connected with feelings of fear and loneliness. On the other hand, the book reflects the power of human understanding and friendliness. In the discourse of this narrative, language is given a special place. The paper analyses the way in which language is visually presented in The Arrival to reflect the main themes. It is shown that the author employs the narrative potential of intraiconic text and modifies this convention of the visual discourse in picturebooks to convey specific narrative meanings. These include the role of language in developing the emotion of belonging and self-confidence which, in turn, empowers people to help others reach the same feeling. For Tan, the notion of belonging is a basic existential issue, which is visually presented through the metaphor of language and by showing words and utterances in an original way, so that these meanings are easily understood.