O nekim višeznačnim univerbima u bosanskom jeziku / About Some Ambiguous Univerbs in the Bosnian Language

Abstract

The paper deals with univerbs – monolexemic units that originated from a two-membered congruent attribute syntagm. They are characterized by stylistic marking, expressiveness, economy, but also ambiguity and contextuality. Unlike univerbs, the two-part syntagm is always precise, unambiguous, and semantically clearly defined. Particular attention will be paid to the univerbs with multiple meanings – they are polysemous, hence contextually conditioned. The context is tremendously important in the analysis of the meaning of individual univerbs, although in some univerbs (zabavnjak) the context could not help in determining the precise meaning (zabavna muzika : zabavni pjevač). In that case, the linguistic sense of the speaker will be crucial in determining the meaning.