THE SEMANTIC POTENTIAL OF THE VERBS REĆI AND KAZATI AND THEIR DERIVATIVES

Abstract

The subject of this paper is the semantic potential of two verbs — reći and kazati — which in Serbian are considered typical examples of verbs of speaking and true synonyms at once. The primary aim of this paper is the analysis of polysemantic structures of the two verbs as well as exploring the lexical relationships between them. The material was excerpted from the Dictionary of the Serbo-Croatian Literary Language (Речник српскохрватскога књижевног језика), and the primary definitions of source meanings with examples, while the control dictionary was that of SASA (Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts). The lexicographic definition is enough for determining the meaning of the verbs, but in order to highlight the complex semantic potential of the verbs, it is necessary to refer to the context; thus, in one portion of the paper, we concern ourselves with searching the corpora — more specifically SrpKor2013 and SrWaC — for attested occurrences of the examples excerpted from the dictionary. As a consequence, the same archiseme will have a larger number of prefixed verbs, while at the same time developing an antonymy among the lexemes, considering the fact that antonyms as well as synonyms have a large number of common semes in their semantic configurations. Despite the fact that the verbs reći and kazati are considered true synonyms, we can still talk about the differences in their meanings, especially if we compare the meanings of their prefixed verbs. The verb kazati has a richer polysemantic structure and more prefixed verbs, although some of them are semantically deviant from the base verb.