WHAT DOES (KO)BAJAGI ACTUALLY ENCODE? A CONTRASTIVE COGNITIVE PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS

Abstract

The subject of the research conducted in this paper are examples that contain the lexeme (ko)bajagi. In dictionaries the lexeme (ko)bajagi is mainly defined in terms of the synonyms – kao (da) and tobož(e). My analysis has shown that the examined lexeme has two separate functions – a pragmatic marker (which encodes a procedure) and an adverb (which encodes a concept). The first part presents a contrastive analysis; it discusses (ko)bajagi in relation to kao and tobože. The second part is an analysis of the corpus; namely, the pragmatic marker (ko)bajagi and the adverb (ko)bajagi are analyzed separately. The results of the analysis indicate that the pragmatic marker encodes the procedure of negating (to a lesser or greater extent) of the material under its scope. On the other hand, the adverb (ko)bajagi (also in its attributive and substantive functions) encodes a conceptual meaning synonymous with false/spurious.