Variation of Adjectival Slots in kao ('as') Similes in Croatian: A Cognitive Linguistic Account

This paper deals with variation of Croatian similes which follow the pattern adjective + kao ('as') + noun (e.g. crven kao rak lit. red as a crab 'having red skin or cheeks'). Previous studies have mostly focused on noun variations and their semantic relations with adjectives (e.g. crven kao rak/paprika lit. red as a crab/pepper), while variation in the adjective slot has not been explored. Corpus data suggest that adjectival slots also vary and that variant realizations are not restricted solely to adjectives. The aim of this paper is to show that variations of adjectival slots reflect different construals of the conceptual content of similes and to give a cognitive linguistic account of the mechanisms underlying this process. We performed a study of 98 adjectival similes in the Croatian web corpus hrWaC. The results show that adjectival slots can be filled by adjectives, adverbs and verbs (e.g. pocrvenjeti kao rak lit. turn red as a crab 'be sunburnt or embarrassed'). Furthermore, adjectival slots may not be filled altogether or their lexical components vary widely, both of which suggest that similes undergo subjectification (in the Langackerian sense). This indicates that variation is dependent on the interplay of semantic and grammatical factors.