domains. However, since the two in different contexts. languages are typologically different and Meanings and contextual realizations of all immersed in different cultures, some analyzed lexical units in Croatian and in differences in conceptual mappings are also Turkish have been checked in the Croatian expected. Thus, one of the main goals of the National Corpus, Croatian Web Corpus and present research is to provide a more fine METU Turkish Corpus. grained analysis of semantic extensions of the As pointed out by Viberg (1984), concept taste vocabulary in the two languages. Besides of 'taste' is in general extended towards examining similarities and differences in domains 'like'/'dislike'. Moreover, some crossconceptual mappings, the aim of the paper is linguistic evidence (cf. Viberg, 1984; Evans also to see to what extent the two languages and Wilkins 2000) shows a regular and differ with respect to lexicalization patterns frequent extension of taste verbs towards the that influence formation of the 'taste' meanings “to try”, “to experience”, “to enjoy“. vocabulary. Although some cross-linguistic regularities of Croatian and Turkish taste vocabularies are conceptual extensions of the concept 'taste' described with respect to the morphosemantic have already been established, the Copyright © by the paper's authors. Copying permitted for private and academic purposes. In Vito Pirrelli, Claudia Marzi, Marcello Ferro (eds.): Word Structure and Word Usage. Proceedings of the NetWordS Final Conference, Pisa, March 30-April 1, 2015, published at http://ceur-ws.org
comparative study of Croatian and Turkish taste vocabulary shows that there are some other abstract domains conceptualized by the domain of taste. Such domains are for example ‘ambience’, ‘mood’, ‘atmosphere’, ‘charm’, ‘enchantment’, that are all conceptualized by the domain of taste in Turkish, but not in Croatian, as showed in some examples below.
In Croatian the root kus/kuš is a basis of the verb kušati “to taste” that, by the process of prefixation, enabled formation of various verbs and constructions such as pokušati “to try; to attempt”, iskušati/iskušavati/iskusiti “to try; to experience”, prokušati se “to try; to try out”, okušati se (u/kao) “to try (out) (as)” that differ with respect to prefixes (and prepositions) and thus with respect to their usage and meanings. The perfective verb okusiti “to taste” differs from the verb kušati primarily in aspect, however all the others verbs cannot be used in relation with tasting food. They exclusively have abstract meanings like nouns kušnja and iskušenje “temptation”. Croatian is somehow specific with respect to the existence of two morphologically closely related nouns: okus “taste” and ukus “system of aesthetic judgement”, differing significantly according to their semantic structures. A distinction in usage and meanings of the two nouns will be analyzed and some specificities will be pointed out.
Morphosemantic field of the Turkish root tat exhibits some similarities and some differences in comparison to the morphosemantic field of the Croatian root kuš/kus. Tat “taste” is a noun used as a basis in the formation of the verb tatmak “to taste” and of the phrasal verbs tadını görmek “to taste” (lit. “to see the taste of”) and tadına bakmak “to taste” (lit. “to look at the taste of”). This means that, unlike in Croatian, verbs for visual perception are used for lexicalization of taste experience and taste activity. Similarly to Croatian, all three verbs relate to the domain of food as well as to the abstract domain of experience (e.g. hayat tadını görmek “to taste/experience life”, (lit. “to see the taste of life”). Turkish verbs do not extend their meanings to all abstract domains Croatian prefixed verbs do: they do not share meanings with Croatian verbs pokušati “to try; to attempt”, okušati se, okušati se u, okušati se kao “to try (out) (as)”, nor can they be related to the abstract domain of temptation (as with Croatian iskušavati ”to tempt; to test”, iskušenje ‘temptation’, kušnja ‘temptation; crucible”). Similarly, Turkish root tat cannot relate to the domain of aesthetic judgement (Croatian ukus), but when morphologically extended by suffixes –li “with” or –siz “without”, it extends to some domains Croatian root does not: tatlı (lit. „with taste“) does not mean “tasty”, but “sweet”. Accordingly, tatlı relates to a variety of pleasant experiences (feelings, climate, activities), while tatsız means “untasty”, but also “unpleasant”, “irritating”, “disturbing”, “annoying” etc. In addition, Croatian root kus/kuš cannot be used to express “enjoying” as Turkish root tat can (e.g. tatilin tadını çıkarmak “to enjoy holidays”, lit. “to extract the taste of holidays”). As far as contextual realizations are concerned, one of the most prominent differences between Croatian and Turkish is that Turkish root tat, besides verbs for visual perception, combines with verbs expressing motion (Paris’in tadına varmak “to experience the spirit/charm of Paris“, lit. “to come to the taste of Paris”), taking (tadını almak “to taste”, “to experience”, “to enjoy”, lit. “to take the taste of”; tadını çıkarmak “to enjoy”, lit. “to extract the taste of”), and cognitive activity (tadını bilmek “to experience”, lit. “to learn/to know the taste of”; tadını tanımak “to experience”, lit. “to get to know the taste of”), which is not the case in Croatian. Combining nouns and verbs derived from the same root is also characteristic for Turkish but not for Croatian (tadını tatmak “to taste the taste of”).
Thus, it could be claimed that Croatian verbs with extended abstract meanings are mostly realized in constructions such as [pref – Vkus/kuš – prep] as okušati se u “to try out”, whereas Turkish verbs with extended meanings mostly appear in construction such as [Ntat – V] in which verbs within a construction often refer to concrete domains based in human experience, like for example motion.
The aim of this paper is: a) to provide an exhaustive description of the structure of the taste vocabulary related to the roots kuš/kus in Croatian and tat in Turkish, b) to point to some similarities and differences in the conceptual extensions of the concept ‘taste’ in the two languages and thus in the organization of their vocabularies, c) to implement the MP model in the description of lexical structures of non IE languages, and thus demonstrate its applicability in the lexical analysis of typologically different languages, pointing to regular and specific lexicalization patterns in the two languages.