engleski

Why “Modrić i Real” rather than “Real i Modrić”? On the order of proper nouns in coordination

The order of the constituents within a coordinated NP construction is in theory open, i.e. either constituent can occupy either the initial or the final position. When it comes to specific realizations of the coordinate constructional template, the choice of the initial constituent need not be random at all. It is well-known that in some phraseological units, i.e. in the so-called irreversible binomials, their order is as a rule quite fixed (e.g. duša i tijelo, kruh i sol, život i smrt, iće i piće, muž i žena) and seems to be dictated by a number of cognitive factors, among which iconic principles play an important role. Apart from such conventionalized phraseological pairs, the relative order of constituents seems to be guided by the speaker’s communicative intentions, and therefore in principle be quite flexible. However, it appears that in cases of coordination of proper nouns denoting parts and wholes there is a clear preference for the construction in which the part precedes the whole (Osijek i Slavonija rather than Slavonija i Osijek, Modrić i Real rather than Real i Modrić, etc.). The differences between their distributions and the distributions found with comparable inanimate nouns and animate common nouns in coordination is explained in terms of the reference point construction (Langacker, 1993).

coordination ; binomials ; proper noun ; iconicity ; reference point cvonstruction ; metonymy

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