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A NOTE ON SYNONYMIC PARALLELISM AND BILINGUALISM *
Author(s) -
Boeder Winfried
Publication year - 1991
Publication title -
studia linguistica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.187
H-Index - 28
eISSN - 1467-9582
pISSN - 0039-3193
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9582.1991.tb00818.x
Subject(s) - georgian , linguistics , synonym (taxonomy) , arabic numerals , arabic , neuroscience of multilingualism , reinterpretation , definiteness , psychology , computer science , philosophy , artificial intelligence , biology , botany , genus , aesthetics
Synonym pairs like Caxton's cherité pat is luve, Georgian tatbiri da gamorĉeva ‘counsel (Arabic) and advice (Georgian)’ and bed‐ivbali ‘fate (Georgian)‐fate (Arabic)’ are found both in the bilingual speech of children and adults and in the monolingual usage of many cultures. Starting their life as the metalinguistic device of translation and nativization in bilingual contact, they soon can be identified with independently motivated forms of reinforcement, e. g. in medieval Georgian poetry. This functional reinterpretation leads to the dominance of other language functions in the Jakobsonian sense. Formally, the transition from a metalinguistic to a predominantly referential function via other functions is accompanied by a preference for neutral expressions (like counsel and advice), and the last stage is reached when synonym pairs are lexicalized as compounds or binomials.