187 ARTICLES
2021, Vol. 18 (1), 187-209(222)
revije.ff.uni-lj.si/elope
https://doi.org/10.4312/elope.18.1.187-209
UDC: 81'25:81'371
Primož Jurko
University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
Semantic Prosody in Translation: Slovene 
and English ADV-V Combinations
ABSTRACT
Semantic prosody is perhaps the most elusive meaning component established to date, and the 
present paper is a corpus-driven attempt to elucidate the meaning-forming process in some of 
the most frequent lexical items in Slovene and English. The underlying methodology is based 
on the novel top-down approach, which provides a semantically unmotivated point of view 
and is based on raw data, i.e., frequency of occurrence. The paper features a comparison of 
the pervasiveness of evident semantic prosody in high-frequency lexical items in Slovene and 
English, respectively. In closing it also deals with the problems involved in L1-L2 translation 
of the observed extended units of meaning, where possible translation equivalents exhibit 
varying levels of (mis)match in their semantic prosodies.
Keywords: semantic prosody, translation, extended unit of meaning, top-down approach
Semantična prozodija in prevajanje slovenskih in angleških 
parov prislov-glagol
IZVLEČEK
Semantična prozodija predstavlja najtežje določljivo pomensko sestavino, zato je članek 
osnovan na korpusni raziskavi pomenotvornih procesov pri nekaterih zelo pogostih 
leksikalnih enotah slovenščine in angleščine. Metodološko se članek naslanja na nov 
pristop z vrha navzdol, ki temelji na pogostosti sopojavljanja in tako predstavlja semantično 
nemotivirano alternativo ter dopolnitev dosedanjih raziskav semantične prozodije. Članek 
prinaša primerjavo razširjenosti izkazane semantične prozodije zelo pogostih leksikalnih enot 
v slovenščini in angleščini, predstavi pa tudi težave pri prevajanju obravnavanih razširjenih 
pomenskih enot iz slovenščine v angleščino, kjer ugotavlja različne stopnje (ne)ujemanja 
semantične prozodije.
Ključne besede: semantična prozodija, prevajanje, razširjena pomenska enota, pristop z vrha 
navzdol

188 P . Jurko Semantic Prosody in Translation: Slovene and English ADV-V Combinations
1 Introduction
The present paper is in many ways a logical continuation of my recent work (Jurko 2017; 
forthcoming) in the realm of semantic prosody. The paper features a brief survey of the 
development of the field and its proponents, followed by a comparison of the results of 
two corpus-driven studies based on the novel top-down approach to Slovene and English 
ADV-V pairs. One of the studies (the most frequent ADV-V pairs in Slovene) has been 
published before (Jurko forthcoming) and provides the empirical basis for this contrastively 
conceived comparison of Slovene and English extended units of meaning (presented in more 
detail below) with an ADV-V pair at their core. The original goal of the present study was 
twofold: to test the applicability of the top-down approach in a cross-linguistic setting, and 
to look into the translation process of extended units of meaning.
1.1 The Rise of Semantic Prosody
One of the main insights provided by corpus linguistics over the last 40 years is that words in 
isolation can no longer be regarded as the sole bearers of meaning, and this time-honoured 
and somewhat romantic view has been superseded by the idea that most of the time meaning 
is constructed through context (Rundell 2018, 1). This revelation has proved to be a game-
changer, with the paramount importance of context in the meaning-forming process in 
communication first been observed in the form of collocation (Sinclair 1991, 109). The new 
focus on exploration of recurring patterns of context and the unprecedented rise to relevance 
of collocation has brought about far-reaching consequences in numerous fields, notably in L2 
lexicography – most prominently in EFL lexicography (Sinclair 1987) and language learning. 
According to his own account
1
 Sinclair was studying just that – a collocation – when he 
began to realize that there exist regularly recurring patterns beyond these, which gave rise to 
the extended unit of meaning. This brings us to the main topic of this paper, as an integral 
part of every extended unit of meaning, so Sinclair (1998, 15) maintains, is semantic prosody. 
The notion of semantic prosody has been around for a little less than three decades. The 
authorship is ascribed to Louw (1993, 157), although it is clear that he was greatly indebted 
to and remains influenced by the ground-breaking ideas of Sinclair. In order to clarify what 
semantic prosody is, let us use Louw’s wording, which remains one of the most widely used 
definitions of the term: “the consistent aura of meaning with which a form is imbued by its 
collocates”. However, this rather vague description led to a number of interpretations that 
continue to persist today, and so semantic prosody still means many things to many linguists. 
In general terms it refers to favourable or (more often) unfavourable nuance of meaning 
that is not contained in a single item, but rather in the association of that item with others. 
Sinclair used the verb to set in as a case in point, and claimed that it is contaminated with 
nouns that are not “desirable or attractive” like rot, decay and decadence (Sinclair 1987, 155). 
Whitsitt (2005) points out in his critique of the notion itself that the study of semantic 
prosody lacks a firm terminology. Sinclair also attempts to clear the ground and defines 
it as an “attitudinal or pragmatic meaning” that exists next to “the familiar classificatory 
1
 Plenary speech at the Alps-Adriatic Conference on English Language Teaching , 3 June 1994. 
P . Jurko

189 ARTICLES
meaning of the regular dictionary”, i.e., denotation (Sinclair 2004, 23). Stubbs is in favour 
of the term discourse prosody, which he feels is better because “discourse prosodies express 
speaker’s attitude”, and are as such evaluative and reflect the speaker’s reason for making 
the utterance (Stubbs 2001, 65). Hunston (2007, 249) therefore sees semantic prosody as a 
“contentious” term. She refers to the wedge driven between two groups of corpus linguists: 
one sees semantic prosody as a property of a word (i.e., as an instance of connotation), while 
the other looks at it as a distinguishing feature of a complex unit of meaning consisting 
of several co-occurring items. The former group, comprising authors such as Partington 
(2004), Hunston (2002) and Stewart (2010), thus believe that semantic prosody is a 
consequence of the spreading of the connotative colouring of a word to its collocates, which 
is undoubtedly a frequent phenomenon in language and makes a persuasive argument. It is 
not surprising then that this line of thinking has been successfully transplanted into other 
non-linguistic fields dealing with communication, such as social psychology (Hauser and 
Schwarz 2018). 
The latter group do not see semantic prosody as property of a single word, its denotation or 
connotation, but rather as a functional or pragmatic meaning relationship, which is evidenced 
in all human communication (Sinclair 2004; Siepmann 2006; Hunston 2007; Philip 2011). 
Instead of conceiving of semantic prosody as a spin-off of the connotation of a single word, 
they study recurring patterns (with this word at its core, of course) and the way they function 
in concrete communication. Moreover, there are frequent examples where no connotation 
is in play, yet semantic prosody abounds, e.g., in the famous naked eye in Sinclair (2004, 
30), which can under no circumstances be accounted for in terms of connotation. Sinclair 
was convinced that semantic prosody is that crucial element of real-life communication in 
claiming that “without it, the string of words just ‘means’ – it is not put to use in viable 
communication”. In this paper Sinclair’s line of thinking, with the extended unit of meaning 
in its focus, is adhered to and continued. 
1.2 The Extended Unit of Meaning
An extended unit of meaning (Sinclair 2004, 30–35) consists of a core and four additional 
elements: collocation, colligation, semantic preference and semantic prosody. Note that 
collocation in terms of an extended unit of meaning differs from the usual meaning of a 
frequently recurring binomial. Here collocation is defined more loosely and stands for the co-
occurrence of the core with another word or a string of words. Colligation is to be understood 
as the association of the core with a grammatical feature, such as a clause type or word class. 
Semantic preference refers to a range of collocators that all belong to a certain lexical field. 
And semantic prosody is defined as the pragmatic or functional meaning associated with the 
whole unit of meaning and is phrasal in nature. Philip (2009) adds a fifth element, semantic 
association, defined as the psychological sum of secondary meanings surrounding the entire 
extended unit of meaning (Philip 2009, 4). In order to keep apart the functional and affective 
nuances of meaning, Philip introduces the notion of semantic association, which is different 
from both semantic preference (as it deals with secondary meanings, i.e., psychological 
notions) and semantic prosody (which expresses the function of the phrase or why and how 
it means what it does).

190 P . Jurko Semantic Prosody in Translation: Slovene and English ADV-V Combinations
An extended unit of meaning often has some overlap in semantic association and semantic 
prosody. The main reason for such overlap may be the fact that semantic prosody sometimes 
also expresses some affective meaning, “such as reluctance or frustration or difficulty”, as 
pointed out by Hunston (2010, 56). 
1.3 Previous Work on Semantic Prosody from a Bilingual Point of View
As far as cross-linguistic comparisons are concerned, they are much fewer in number and 
typically involve English. Semantic prosody is an integral part of the text and should not 
be left out of the bilingual scope: however subtle the semantic prosody component may be, 
in translation the evaluative part of the source text meaning is of crucial importance. The 
list of contributions to the field contains comparisons of English with Chinese (Xiao and 
McEnery 2006; Wei and Li 2014), Portuguese (Berber Sardinha 2000; Lopes 2011), Italian 
(Partington 1998; T ognini-Bonelli 2001), Danish (Dam-Jensen and Zethsen 2008), Spanish 
(Munday 2011), French (Kübler and Volanschi 2012) and Slovene (Gabrovšek 2007; Šorli 
2012, 2014; Jurko 2017).
2 Methodology
The fundamental trigger for the present work stems from my previous study of Slovene 
extended units of meaning formed around ADV-V pairs (Jurko forthcoming). That study of 
semantic prosody in Slovene was conceived with the ambitious goal of being as corpus-driven 
as possible. With this parameter set as a top priority, it was based on the novel top-down 
approach to semantic prosody. The next section presents a brief description of the key benefits 
and characteristics of this new way of tackling semantic prosody. 
2.1 The Top-down Approach: Semantic Prosody Featured in a New Light
Semantic prosody as a concept owes its very existence to corpus linguistics. Numerous 
linguists have observed that semantic prosody can only be studied in large corpora, and is 
virtually inaccessible to intuition (e.g., Louw 1993; Hunston 2002). In recent years corpora 
have grown in size, reliability and representativeness, so we like to believe that contemporary 
corpora have avoided the limitations and traps that Biber and Finegan described thirty 
years ago, and that intuition and introspection have become “balanced by more empirically 
grounded theorizing based on the facts of usage” (1991, 220). However, there seem to be 
two important questions about semantic prosody that were never asked: how ubiquitous 
is it in the first place, and what is the correlation between frequency and semantic prosody 
– if there is any? The proposed top-down approach to semantic prosody is an attempt to 
provide at least partial answers to these queries. The term top-down refers to the order of 
descending frequency and suggests that semantic prosody should be examined systematically 
in the most frequent lexical items of a language. While semantic prosody has previously been 
studied in several lexical items that are relatively frequent (e.g., in English: happen, cause; 
in Slovene situacija), this is not the case with most of them (e.g., in English: budge, naked 
eye, set in, utterly, undergo; in Slovene: enačiti, ni videti konca, lahko primeriti). Apparently, 
corpus linguists are likely to notice instances or tendencies of semantic prosody while they 
are working on another property of a lexical item, which is unrelated to semantic prosody 

191 ARTICLES
(Sinclair 2004, 30), which accounts for the relatively low overall frequency of lexical items 
that have been examined for semantic prosody to date. This is of course not the first time that 
the significance of frequency has been put into the foreground. Louw (2000, 4) suggests that 
frequency would be a good starting point for approaching semantic prosody. The proposed 
top-down approach also follows Kjellmer’s (2005) call for a semantically unmotivated 
treatment of semantic prosody, which would lead to more global results. 
With the objective of achieving global results the following decisions were taken: 
i. The word class of verbs was selected as the general target because they have been 
underrepresented in comparison to other lexical word classes in studies of semantic 
prosody so far. This choice was based on a survey of examples in Stewart (2010), 
which is considered a representative and systematic presentation of work on semantic 
prosody up to that time: just over a fifth of all items involve a verb (18 out of 86). A 
quick check of the more recent body of research into the semantic prosody of verbs 
has shown only a handful of publications: three monolingual (Lindley 2015; Palma 
Gutiérrez 2019; Wang and Zou 2018), and a cross-linguistic one (Wu and Li 2016).
ii. Instead of looking for particular or ‘interesting’ lexical items, the list of top ten most 
frequent verbs in the Slovene reference corpus Gigafida 2.0
2
 has been made. After 
excluding auxiliary, linking and modal verbs the 7th most frequent verb in Slovene 
has been selected for scrutiny: povedati (‘tell’).
iii. The selected verb has then been expanded into a lexical paradigm consisting of 
verbs which all share the meaning component ‘to express orally’. Thus we have arrived 
at the list of most frequent Slovene verbs of saying, which are all ranked among the 
top 30 Slovene verbs in the chosen corpus; these verbs were also subjected to close 
observation in order to broaden the scope of this study. 
iv. At that early stage in our investigation we decided to exploit the SketchEngine® 
word-sketches of selected verbs as the more reliable option compared to intuition-
based selection of word combinations. 
As noted above, this paper is based on a previous monolingual study. Therefore the 
methodologies applied in both studies are in general terms analogous and adhere to the same 
rigorous principles of selection based on frequency of occurrence. Slovene was selected as the 
source language, and we were interested in finding possible English translation equivalents 
for the Slovene units. The main reason for this is the fact that translation into non-mother 
tongues (also known as encoding or L1-into-L2 translation) is a necessity for all small 
language communities due to the lack of translators who master the source language and 
are native speakers of the target language (Pokorn 2009; Hirci 2012). However, L1-into-L2 
translation is a difficult task, even for many skilled translators who are most of the time 
expected or advised (UNESCO 1976) to translate only into their mother tongue (i.e., to 
decode) on the basis of the so-called mother tongue principle, as advocated by, e.g., Newmark 
2
 Gigafida 2.0 reference corpus of written Slovene, available at https://www.sketchengine.eu and https://viri.cjvt.si/
gigafida. 

192 P . Jurko Semantic Prosody in Translation: Slovene and English ADV-V Combinations
(1988). Needless to say, it is expected that considering the element of semantic prosody in 
encoding will greatly contribute to the complexity of this endeavour.
2.2 Selection of Slovene Verbs
The initial step of the survey was to select a broad but manageable category of lexical units 
that would define our search perimeter. To this end a wordlist of the most frequent verbs in 
Slovene was produced. Our corpus of choice was the Gigafida 2.0 reference corpus of written 
Slovene, accessed through the SketchEngine® portal
3
, which allowed us to make use of their 
various tools (first and foremost Word Sketch). Gigafida 2.0 contains 1.13 billion words.
The 7th most frequent verb povedati (‘tell’) was chosen after excluding linking, auxiliary and 
modal verbs. It was established beforehand that once the best possible (in our case, the most 
frequent) example of Slovene verbs was selected, this would be analysed and expanded into 
a set of items covering the given lexical paradigm. The verb povedati has thus given us a 
paradigm of four additional verbs sharing the meaning component of ‘express orally’, which 
are typically used to introduce indirect or direct speech. In descending frequency order with 
their English rough equivalents in parentheses, these are: 
 – povedati (‘tell’): 7th most frequent verb in the corpus with a frequency of 728 per 
million, 
 – praviti (‘say, tell’, informal): 13th most frequent verb, frequency: 540 per million,
 – reči (‘say’): 15th most frequent verb, frequency: 467 per million,
 – dejati (‘say’, literary): 16th
 
most frequent verb, frequency: 441 per million,
 – govoriti (‘speak, talk’): 26th most frequent verb, frequency: 337 per million. 
2.3 Selection of English Verbs
As there is currently no reference corpus of English available on the SketchEngine portal, the 
EnTenTen15
4
 web corpus of English was chosen to study English lexical units. It contains 
13 billion words. The tenfold disparity in size between the Slovene and English corpora was 
not considered a hindrance, since the selected verbs belong to the most frequent lexical items 
in both corpora, and they also have comparable relative frequencies. The selection process 
was similar to that on the Slovene side: the wordlist of most frequent verbs was created and 
subsequently checked for verbs of saying. The verb ‘say’ is ranked the 6th most frequent 
English verb in the corpus, which is comparable to the Slovene ‘ povedati’, which is ranked 7th. 
Next, the extended paradigm of English verbs with the meaning ‘to express orally’ was created:
 – say: 6th most frequent verb, frequency: 1,434 per million,
 – call: 30th most frequent verb, frequency: 446 per million,
 – tell: 46th most frequent verb, frequency: 351 per million,
 – speak: 86th most frequent verb, frequency: 208 per million,
 – talk: 120th most frequent verb, frequency: 164 per million.
3
 SketchEngine available at www.sketchengine.eu.
4
 EnTenTen15 English web corpus, available at www.sketchengine.eu.

193 ARTICLES
Overall, the rankings of English verbs are lower than those of the Slovene ones, which are 
all ranked in the top 30. The high ranking of the Slovene of verbs of ‘saying’ is probably 
attributable to the structure of Gigafida 2.0, 64% of which is texts from newspapers and 
magazines. However, as noted above their respective frequencies are apparently a closer match 
(with the exception of say, which is about twice as frequent as its Slovene counterpart) and 
fall in the approximate range of 200–500 per million. As an additional security the rankings 
and frequencies of the selected five English verbs were also checked in the older LECMCI
5
 
corpus, which revealed negligible differences between the corpora:
 – say: 4th most frequent verb, frequency: 1,865 per million,
 – call: 28th most frequent verb, frequency: 428 per million,
 – tell: 34th most frequent verb, frequency: 389 per million,
 – speak: 107th most frequent verb, frequency: 175 per million,
 – talk: 125th most frequent verb, frequency: 151 per million.
2.4 Selection of Adverbs
The next stage of the study meant we had to decide to what side of the Slovene verbs we 
wanted to look for phrase elements. Unlike with English verbs, which can take a modifying 
adverb in either preceding or following positions, in Slovene looking to the right would mean 
we are looking for objects of the verbs, i.e., what is being said, told or stated, and is typically 
expressed by nominal phrases (e.g., ‘story, opinion, truth’) or that-clauses. It would also mean 
that the role of the verb in the V+N collocation would be that of a collocator, and the noun 
would be the base. 
Looking to the left of the verb, on the other hand, would have these two consequences:
i. we would be looking for premodifiers of the verbs, i.e., adverbs;
ii. in the ADV-V collocation the role of the verb is that of the base and the adverb acts 
as the collocator. 
The second option was chosen because it appears that there are currently no studies dealing 
with extended units of meaning with the ADV-V structure at its core. A brief examination of 
the more recent body of research of semantic prosody of adverbial constructions has shown 
only a handful of publications: three monolingual (Lindley 2015, Palma Gutiérrez 2019, 
Wang and Zou 2018), a cross-linguistic (Wu and Li 2016) and a diachronic one (Mendez-
Naya 2014). However, they all significantly differ in their take on semantic prosody to the 
one applied in this work.
2.5 Determination of ADV-V Pairs
The next stage of our survey consisted of selecting the ADV-V pairs for scrutiny. The first 
step involved making a word sketch of each selected verb. The resulting word sketch provided 
us with a list of adverbs that premodify the verb in question. This step called for another 
5
 LEXMCI Corpus of English, available at https:// www.sketchengine.eu.

194 P . Jurko Semantic Prosody in Translation: Slovene and English ADV-V Combinations
decision, as in most cases we were looking at a mixed bag of adverbs of time, frequency and 
manner that needed to be narrowed down. Adverbs of manner were chosen because time and 
place can be regarded as constants: whatever people ‘express orally’, they cannot avoid doing 
so at a given place at a given time, so in terms of semantic prosody the adverbs of time and 
place would seem to be of less interest. Whether somebody said something yesterday, today or 
repeatedly will undoubtedly be of less relevance compared to how they said it if we are looking 
for evaluative nuances of meaning in the context.
This is how we have arrived at the final list of ADV-V pairs. A random sample of 100 
concordances of each pair was subsequently closely examined for semantic prosody. For each 
of the five chosen verbs in Slovene and English, their five most frequent adverbs of manner 
were studied, so a total of 5,000 concordances was manually checked. 
The initial step involved determining the overall contextual semantic prosody of each 
concordance with the ADV-V pair as positive, negative or neutral. The following stage of 
research consisted of judging whether the ADV-V pair is part of an extended unit of meaning 
and identifying its elements as set out in section 1.3. This means that we were looking for the 
following five elements:
 – collocation, 
 – colligation, 
 – semantic preference, 
 – semantic association,
 – semantic prosody.
It should be noted that in the English part of the survey the element of semantic association 
has been omitted, as I am not a native speaker of English. Hopefully this component will 
be amended in a future study involving native speakers, who will be able to provide the 
psychological associations of the observed English extended units of meaning.
3 Results
The respective ADV-V pairs in Slovene and English below are presented in descending order 
of frequency of verbs. The Slovene empirical data be presented only in abbreviated form: 
numeric data tables followed by the semantic prosody of the lexical unit. 
3.1 Slovene: Adverb + povedati (‘say, tell’)
The results of five most frequent adverbs of manner acting as a premodifier to povedati and 
their respective frequencies are presented in Table 1.
Table 1. Semantic prosody of adverbs of manner + povedati (‘say, tell’).
Adverb
Frequency per 
million words
Positive % Neutral % Negative %
jasno (‘clear/-ly’) 5.37 2 37 61
javno (‘publicly’) 1.79 6 38 56

195 ARTICLES
odkrito (‘frankly’) 1.54 3 12 85
glasno (‘loud/-ly’) 1.26 8 40 52
naravnost (‘straight’) 0.79 3 33 64
a. Jasno povedati (‘tell clear/-ly’): the semantic prosody refers to an ‘unpleasant opinion or 
fact shared from a position of authority’.
b. Javno povedati (‘tell publicly’): the semantic prosody of ‘sharing damaging or unpleasant 
information, often in retrospect as an excuse’.
c. Odkrito povedati (‘tell frankly’): the semantic prosody of ‘unpleasant information often 
shared out of a sense of duty or responsibility’.
d. Glasno povedati (‘tell loud/-ly’): the semantic prosody refers to ‘expression of suppressed 
opinions’ or ‘showing courage to express feelings’.
e. Naravnost povedati (‘tell straight’): the semantic prosody is identical to that of case 
3.1.1.c above (odkrito povedati), and refers to ‘unpleasant information often shared 
out of a sense of duty or responsibility’. 
3.2 English: Adverb + say
The results for the five most frequent adverbs of manner acting as a premodifier to say (the 
6th most frequent English verb in the corpus) and their respective frequencies are presented 
in T able 2.
Table 2. Semantic prosody of adverbs of manner + ‘say’.
Adverb
Frequency per 
million words
Positive % Neutral % Negative %
simply 1.35 1 98 1
actually 0.86 4 95 1
really 0.85 5 90 5
honestly 0.77 56 28 16
clearly 0.46 4 90 6
The overall tendency of the studied ADV+ say pairs is that they are used in neutrally nuanced 
contexts. The exception here is honestly, which is used to express a positive disposition of the 
speaker towards the topic. A random selection of five concordances with the adverb clearly is 
presented in Figure 1. Let us now briefly examine individual ADV-V pairs.
 
FIGURE 1. Random concordances of ‘clearly+say’.  
 
a. Simply say: the colligation of this pair is predominantly that of a 3rd person singular subject in mid-clausal position, 
frequently in religious texts. Collocation is expressed by subjects as Jesus, Paul, text, sign, Harry and by objects as word, 
something, hello, name, prayer. A rather vague semantic preference of religious figures and writings has been established. 
No semantic prosody could be determined, as the overall meaning appears to follow the denotation, i.e., say something 
in a simple way and avoid (over-)complicating it. 
b. Actually say: in terms of colligation this pair is predominantly found in constructions with a 3rd person singular 
subject of a religious or political nature, often in question form (e.g., Did God actually say…?), and a pronominal 
object. The main collocators can be grouped as religious figures and scriptures (Bible, Jesus, God, Paul, Qur’an), a 
text (text, law, report, constitution) or a political figure (Obama, Bush, minister, president). The resulting semantic 
preference has been posited as a religious or political figure or text. Semantic prosody has been determined as ‘making 
a counterclaim by citing a source in a position of authority’. 
c. Really say: colligation and collocation in this case are almost identical to those in actually say above, which is hardly 
surprising due to similar denotation. The only difference is the relatively frequent use of a 1st person singular subject 
in negative statements, e.g., (I) can’t really say… The semantic preference for a religious or political figure or text is 
also the same as with actually say, and the same goes for the semantic prosody of ‘making a counterclaim by citing a 
source in a position of authority’. 
d. Honestly say: this pair is the only example exhibiting a clearly positive contextual tendency with 56 positive 
concordances (in contrast to 28 neutral and 16 negative ones). Colligation patterns show a strong predominance of 
1st person statements preceded by the modal can and followed by a that-clause. The main collocator is the 1st personal 
pronoun I, which is also the semantic preference of the pair. The semantic prosody has been posited as the ‘expression 
of sincere feelings about a pleasurable experience’.  
e. Clearly say: dominant colligation patterns in this case include 3rd person singular subjects that introduce quotations 
in the role of objects. Collocators again include religious or political figures (Jesus, God, Paul, Lord, Allah, Obama, 
Court) and texts (Bible, scripture, report, law, constitution). The semantic preference for a religious or political figure 
or text has been posited. Semantic prosody in this case has been determined as ‘quoting an undisputable source of 
authority, often to thus win an argument’. 
3.2.1. Slovene: Adverb + praviti (‘say, be named, be called’ + informal style) 
The results for the five most frequent adverbs of manner acting as a premodifier to praviti (ranked the 13th most 
frequent Slovene verb) and their respective frequencies are presented in Table 3. 
 
TABLE 3. Semantic prosody of adverbs of manner + praviti (‘be called/named’). 
Adverb Frequency per 
million words 
Positive % Neutral % Negative % 
ljubkovalno (‘affectionately’) 0.22 100 0 0 
Figure 1. Random concordances of ‘clearly+say’. 

196 P . Jurko Semantic Prosody in Translation: Slovene and English ADV-V Combinations
a. Simply say: the colligation of this pair is predominantly that of a 3rd person singular 
subject in mid-clausal position, frequently in religious texts. Collocation is expressed 
by subjects as Jesus, Paul, text, sign, Harry and by objects as word, something, hello, 
name, prayer. A rather vague semantic preference of religious figures and writings has 
been established. No semantic prosody could be determined, as the overall meaning 
appears to follow the denotation, i.e., say something in a simple way and avoid (over-)
complicating it.
b. Actually say: in terms of colligation this pair is predominantly found in constructions 
with a 3rd person singular subject of a religious or political nature, often in question 
form (e.g., Did God actually say…?), and a pronominal object. The main collocators 
can be grouped as religious figures and scriptures (Bible, Jesus, God, Paul, Qur’an), 
a text (text, law, report, constitution) or a political figure (Obama, Bush, minister, 
president). The resulting semantic preference has been posited as a religious or political 
figure or text. Semantic prosody has been determined as ‘making a counterclaim by 
citing a source in a position of authority’.
c. Really say: colligation and collocation in this case are almost identical to those in actually 
say above, which is hardly surprising due to similar denotation. The only difference is 
the relatively frequent use of a 1st person singular subject in negative statements, e.g., 
(I) can’t really say… The semantic preference for a religious or political figure or text 
is also the same as with actually say, and the same goes for the semantic prosody of 
‘making a counterclaim by citing a source in a position of authority’.
d. Honestly say: this pair is the only example exhibiting a clearly positive contextual 
tendency with 56 positive concordances (in contrast to 28 neutral and 16 negative 
ones). Colligation patterns show a strong predominance of 1st person statements 
preceded by the modal can and followed by a that-clause. The main collocator is the 
1st personal pronoun I, which is also the semantic preference of the pair. The semantic 
prosody has been posited as the ‘expression of sincere feelings about a pleasurable 
experience’. 
e. Clearly say: dominant colligation patterns in this case include 3rd person singular 
subjects that introduce quotations in the role of objects. Collocators again include 
religious or political figures (Jesus, God, Paul, Lord, Allah, Obama, Court) and texts 
(Bible, scripture, report, law, constitution). The semantic preference for a religious 
or political figure or text has been posited. Semantic prosody in this case has been 
determined as ‘quoting an undisputable source of authority, often to thus win an 
argument’.
3.3 Slovene: Adverb + praviti (‘say, be named, be called’ + informal style)
The results for the five most frequent adverbs of manner acting as a premodifier to praviti 
(ranked the 13th most frequent Slovene verb) and their respective frequencies are presented 
in T able 3.

197 ARTICLES
Table 3. Semantic prosody of adverbs of manner + praviti (‘be called/named’).
Adverb
Frequency per 
million words
Positive % Neutral % Negative %
ljubkovalno 
(‘affectionately’)
0.22 100 0 0
podobno (‘similarly’) 0.19 0 96 4
domače (‘locally’) 0.16 0 100 0
strokovno (‘technically’) 0.13 0 100 0
jasno (‘clearly’) 0.13 0 22 78
a. Ljubkovalno praviti (‘be affectionately called’): the semantic prosody could not be 
determined. 
b. Podobno praviti (‘say similarly’): no semantic prosody could be established.
c. Domače (‘be locally called/known’), and strokovno (‘be technically called’): the semantic 
prosody could not be determined.
d. Jasno praviti (‘clearly state’): the semantic prosody of ‘speaking with the knowledge of 
existing laws or in reference to binding rules’.
3.4 English: Adverb + call
The results for the five most frequent adverbs of manner acting as a premodifier to call (ranked 
30th most frequent English verb) and their respective frequencies are presented in Table 4. 
Table 4. Semantic prosody of adverbs of manner + ‘call’.
Adverb
Frequency per 
million words
Positive % Neutral % Negative %
commonly 0.87 0 100 0
simply 0.73 0 100 0
usually 0.43 0 100 0
actually 0.31 4 92 4
affectionately 0.28 100
The overall tendency of the studied ADV+ call pairs is that they are used in neutral contexts, 
with the exception of affectionately, which is used in positive contexts, as expected. A random 
selection of five concordances with the adverb affectionately is presented in Figure 2. Let us 
now briefly examine individual ADV-V pairs.
podobno (‘similarly’) 0.19 0 96 4 
domače (‘locally’) 0.16 0 100 0 
strokovno (‘technically’) 0.13 0 100 0 
jasno (‘clearly’) 0.13 0 22 78 
 
a. Ljubkovalno praviti (‘be affectionately called’): the semantic prosody could not be determined.  
b. Podobno praviti (‘say similarly’): no semantic prosody could be established. 
c. Domače (‘be locally called/known’), and strokovno (‘be technically called’): the semantic prosody could not be 
determined. 
d. Jasno praviti (‘clearly state’): the semantic prosody of ‘speaking with the knowledge of existing laws or in reference 
to binding rules’. 
3.2.2 English: Adverb + call 
The results for the five most frequent adverbs of manner acting as a premodifier to call (ranked 30th most frequent 
English verb) and their respective frequencies are presented in Table 4.  
 
TABLE 4. Semantic prosody of adverbs of manner + ‘call’. 
Adverb Frequency per 
million words 
Positive % Neutral % Negative % 
commonly 0.87 0 100 0 
simply 0.73 0 100 0 
usually 0.43 0 100 0 
actually 0.31 4 92 4 
affectionately 0.28 100   
 
The overall tendency of the studied ADV+call pairs is that they are used in neutral contexts, with the exception of 
affectionately, which is used in positive contexts, as expected. A random selection of five concordances with the adverb 
affectionately is presented in Figure 2. Let us now briefly examine individual ADV-V pairs. 
 
 
FIGURE 2. Random concordances of ‘affectionately + call’. 
 
a. Commonly call: in terms of colligation this pair predominantly appears in passive voice in dependent clauses with 
singular subjects. In terms of collocation the nouns family, species, plant appear. A semantic preference for scientific 
terms is found, as the obvious role of this unit is to provide common alternative names of such terms. No semantic 
prosody has been found. 
 
Figure 2. Random concordances of ‘affectionately + call’.

198 P . Jurko Semantic Prosody in Translation: Slovene and English ADV-V Combinations
a. Commonly call: in terms of colligation this pair predominantly appears in passive voice 
in dependent clause s with singular subjects. In terms of collocation the nouns family, 
species, plant appear. A semantic preference for scientific terms is found, as the obvious 
role of this unit is to provide common alternative names of such terms. No semantic 
prosody has been found.
b. Simply call: this unit has two denotative meanings arising from the polysemy of the 
verb, which calls for a separate treatment of both of them (Hoey 2005, 13).
i. The first meaning that accounts for an estimated 25% of concordances can be 
paraphrased as ‘simply make a telephone call’ and is rendered by the colligation of 
the vocative followed by a noun or number. Collocations are formed with the nouns 
office, number, department, police, center. Semantic preference for a telephone number 
and an institutional entity has been determined, but no semantic prosody was found.
ii. The second meaning is found in roughly 75% of concordances and can be 
rendered as ‘simply give something another name’ and its colligation patterns 
include frequent passive constructions preceded by adverbs often and sometimes. 
No semantic preference or prosody could be established.
c. Usually call: in terms of colligation this pair is predominantly used in passive 
constructions. No collocations were found and consequently neither semantic 
preference nor prosody could be established, as this ADV-V pair appears exclusively 
in neutral contexts.
d. Actually call: in terms of colligation this pair is predominantly used in passive 
constructions. No collocations were found and consequently neither semantic 
preference nor prosody could be established, as this ADV-V pair predominantly 
appears in neutral contexts.
e. Affectionately call: in terms of colligation this pair is predominantly used in passive 
constructions, frequently with 3rd person pronominal objects. Collocations with the 
pair were formed with the nouns friend, local, fan expressing an alternative endearing 
name of a person or inanimate entity . Neither semantic preference nor prosody could 
be posited.
3.5 Slovene: Adverb + reči (‘say’)
The results for the five most frequent adverbs of manner acting as a premodifier to reči 
(ranked the 15th most frequent Slovene verb) and their respective frequencies are presented 
in T able 5. 
Table 5. Semantic prosody of adverbs of manner + reči (‘say’).
Adverb
Frequency per 
million words
Positive % Neutral % Negative %
težko (‘hard’) 4.59 0 91 9
mirno (‘calmly/safely’) 0.82 14 79 7
tiho (‘softly’) 0.72 0 95 5
preprosto (‘simply’) 0.54 2 88 10
odločno (‘firmly’) 0.46 2 97 1

199 ARTICLES
a. T ežko reči (‘hard to say’): 
i. meaning ‘to say with difficulty’: too low in frequency (0.1 % of observed 
concordances) and therefore negligible.
ii. meaning ‘having trouble deciding on what to say’: semantic prosody of ‘hesitation 
and weighing of options’ or ‘temporary indecision at the moment of speaking’.
b. Mirno reči (‘calmly/safely say’): 
i. meaning ‘say something in a calm voice’: no semantic prosody could be determined.
ii. meaning ‘say something with little danger of being wrong’: semantic prosody refers 
to ‘showing confidence in what I am about to say’ or ‘I have evidence that shows 
I am right’.
c. Tiho reči (‘say softly’): the semantic prosody could not be determined.
d. Preprosto reči (‘simply/just say’): no collocators and hence no semantic preference 
could be found. Semantic association and semantic prosody could not be determined.
e. Odločno reči (‘say firmly’): the semantic prosody could not be determined.
3.6 English: Adverb + tell
The results for the five most frequent adverbs of manner acting as a premodifier to tell (ranked 
46th most frequent English verb) and their respective frequencies are presented in Table 6. 
Table 6. Semantic prosody of adverbs of manner + ‘tell’.
Adverb
Frequency per 
million words
Positive % Neutral % Negative %
really 0.43 0 100 0
simply 0.37 3 90 7
repeatedly 0.25 1 98 1
probably 0.24 0 100 0
actually 0.21 6 71 23
The overall tendency of the studied ADV-V pairs is that they are used in neutral contexts, 
with the exception of actually, of which a quarter are used in negative contexts. A random 
selection of five concordances with the adverb repeatedly is presented in Figure 3. Let us now 
briefly examine individual ADV-V pairs.
d. Preprosto reči (‘simply/just say’): no collocators and hence no semantic preference could be found. Semantic 
association and semantic prosody could not be determined. 
e. Odločno reči (‘say firmly’): the semantic prosody could not be determined. 
3.3.2 English: Adverb + tell 
The results for the five most frequent adverbs of manner acting as a premodifier to tell (ranked 46th most frequent 
English verb) and their respective frequencies are presented in Table 6.  
 
TABLE 6. Semantic prosody of adverbs of manner + ‘tell’. 
Adverb Frequency per 
million words 
Positive % Neutral % Negative % 
really 0.43 0 100 0 
simply 0.37 3 90 7 
repeatedly 0.25 1 98 1 
probably 0.24 0 100 0 
actually 0.21 6 71 23 
 
The overall tendency of the studied ADV-V pairs is that they are used in neutral contexts, with the exception of 
actually, of which a quarter are used in negative contexts. A random selection of five concordances with the adverb 
repeatedly is presented in Figure 3. Let us now briefly examine individual ADV-V pairs. 
 
 
FIGURE 3. Random concordances of ‘repeatedly tell’. 
 
a. Really tell: in terms of colligation this pair is frequently preceded by the negative modal cannot. Collocators of the 
pair include numbers, nobody, science in the role of the subject, and as the object we found the nouns story, difference, 
truth. No semantic preference or prosody could be established. 
b. Simply tell: the pair exhibits no clear colligation patterns. In terms of collocation the nouns story, people, truth 
frequently appear in the role of the object, while story and Jesus are found as subjects. No semantic preference or 
prosody could be established. 
c. Repeatedly tell: colligation patterns reveal a predominance of past tense constructions, with approximately half of all 
concordances in the passive voice. Collocators in the role of the subject include the nouns official, officer, doctor, while 
the nouns public, reporter, officer, police, media are found as objects. The semantic preference for an official body or its 
representative has been posited, while semantic prosody has been defined as ‘revelation of a wrong-doing, often 
expressing annoyance’. 
d. Actually tell: no dominant colligation patterns have been found. Collocators include the nouns story, truth used as 
grammatical objects. No semantic preference or prosody was posited.  
 
Figure 3. Random concordances of ‘repeatedly tell’.
a.  Really tell: in terms of colligation this pair is frequently preceded by the negative 
modal cannot. Collocators of the pair include numbers, nobody, science in the role of 

200 P . Jurko Semantic Prosody in Translation: Slovene and English ADV-V Combinations
the subject, and as the object we found the nouns story, difference, truth. No semantic 
preference or prosody could be established.
b. Simply tell: the pair exhibits no clear colligation patterns. In terms of collocation the 
nouns story, people, truth frequently appear in the role of the object, while story and 
Jesus are found as subjects. No semantic preference or prosody could be established.
c. Repeatedly tell: colligation patterns reveal a predominance of past tense constructions, 
with approximately half of all concordances in the passive voice. Collocators in the 
role of the subject include the nouns official, officer, doctor, while the nouns public, 
reporter, officer, police, media are found as objects. The semantic preference for an 
official body or its representative has been posited, while semantic prosody has been 
defined as ‘revelation of a wrong-doing, often expressing annoyance’.
d. Actually tell: no dominant colligation patterns have been found. Collocators include 
the nouns story, truth used as grammatical objects. No semantic preference or prosody 
was posited. 
e. Probably tell: in terms of colligation the item is frequently preceded by the modals 
can, could, would, should and followed by the 2nd person pronoun you. As collocators 
in the role of the object the nouns story, truth are found. Semantic preference and 
semantic prosody could not be determined.
3.7 Slovene: Adverb + dejati (‘say’)
The results for the five most frequent adverbs of manner acting as a premodifier to dejati 
(ranked 16th most frequent Slovene verb) and their respective frequencies are presented in 
Table 7. 
Table 7. Semantic prosody of adverbs of manner + dejati (‘say’ + literary style).
Adverb
Frequency per 
million words
Positive % Neutral % Negative %
odločno (‘firmly’) 0.3 11 81 8
tiho (‘softly’) 0.2 17 61 22
zadovoljno (‘gladly’) 0.16 100 0 0
javno (‘publicly’) 0.15 8 50 42
mirno (‘calmly’) 0.14 5 85 10
a. Odločno dejati (‘say firmly’): no semantic prosody was determined. 
b. Tiho dejati (‘say softly’): no semantic prosody was determined. 
c. Zadovoljno dejati (‘say gladly’): no semantic prosody was determined.
d. Javno dejati (‘say publicly’): no semantic prosody was determined.
e. Mirno dejati (‘say calmly’): no semantic prosody was determined.
3.8 English: Adverb + speak
ADV + speak (the 86th most frequent English verb) predominantly appears in neutral 
contexts, as shown in Table 8. Let us now briefly examine individual ADV-V pairs.

201 ARTICLES
Table 8. Semantic prosodies of adverb of manner + ‘speak’.
Adverb
Frequency per 
million words
Positive % Neutral % Negative %
generally 1.58 0 100 0
directly 0.91 0 100 0
strictly 0.56 0 100 0
broadly 0.45 0 100 0
clearly 0.41 19 72 9
A random selection of five concordances with the adverb generally is presented in Figure 4.
FIGURE 4. Random concordances of ‘generally speak’. 
 
Below is a brief presentation of individual ADV-V pairs. 
a. Generally speak and broadly speak: the two pairs are so close in their denotative meanings that it is not surprising that 
they have matching semantic profiles. In terms of colligation there is a clear preference for a sentence-initial position 
of the present participle form as a discourse organizer. No collocation candidates were found. As expected, no clear 
semantic preference or prosody have been determined. 
b. Speak directly: a strong colligation pattern is found with the prepositions to, with followed by a pronoun or personal 
name. In terms of collocation the pair is relatively frequently used with the nouns God, Jesus, Lord, voice, word, Obama, 
Allah. Despite this, no semantic preference or prosody could be established. 
c. Strictly speak: inverse in its discourse function to generally speaking above, in terms of colligation there is a strong 
prevalence of the present participle form (often in sentence-initial position), followed by the prepositional phrase in 
terms of. No collocation patterns were found, and thus no semantic preference or prosody either.  
d. Clearly speak: in terms of colligation there are, as expected, strong patterns with the prepositions to, of, about. 
Collocators include the nouns God, Lord, Bible, Jesus, word in the role of the subject, but not in large enough instances 
to enable identification of  the semantic preference or prosody of the unit.  
3.5.1 Slovene: Adverb + govoriti (‘speak/talk’) 
The results for the five most frequent adverbs of manner acting as a premodifier to govoriti (ranked 26th most frequent 
Slovene verb) and their respective frequencies are presented in Table 9.  
 
TABLE 9. Semantic prosody of adverbs of manner + govoriti (‘speak’). 
Adverb Frequency per 
million words 
Positive % Neutral % Negative % 
težko (‘difficult, hard’) 3.17 16 66 18 
javno (‘publicly’) 1.01 1 73 26 
dobro (‘well’) 0.77 3 97 0 
tekoče (‘fluently’) 0.7 0 100 0 
odkrito (‘frankly’) 0.54 3 47 50 
 
a. Težko govoriti (‘difficult to speak/talk of’): two meanings: 
i. meaning ‘to speak with difficulty’: no semantic prosody was determined. 
ii. meaning ‘to find it hard to express something due to lack of information’: semantic prosody of ‘indecision 
due to lack of information; inability to predict future; opposition to an opinion expressed before’. 
b. Javno govoriti (‘speak publicly’): the semantic prosody refers to ‘disclosure of sensitive topics’.  
c. Dobro govoriti (‘speak well’): no semantic prosody was determined. 
Figure 4. Random concordances of ‘generally speak’.
Below is a brief presentation of individual ADV-V pairs.
a. Generally speak and broadly speak: the two pairs are so close in their denotative 
meanings that it is not surprising that they have matching semantic profiles. In terms 
of colligation there is a clear preference for a sentence-initial position of the present 
participle form as a discourse organizer. No collocation candidates were found. As 
expected, no clear semantic preference or prosody have been determined.
b. Speak directly: a strong colligation pattern is found with the prepositions to, with 
followed by a pronoun or personal name. In terms of collocation the pair is relatively 
frequently used with the nouns God, Jesus, Lord, voice, word, Obama, Allah. Despite 
this, no semantic preference or prosody could be established.
c. Strictly speak: inverse in its discourse function to generally speaking above, in terms 
of colligation there is a strong prevalence of the present participle form (often in 
sentence-initial position), followed by the prepositional phrase in terms of. No 
collocation patterns were found, and thus no semantic preference or prosody either. 
d. Clearly speak: in terms of colligation there are, as expected, strong patterns with the 
prepositions to, of, about. Collocators include the nouns God, Lord, Bible, Jesus, word 
in the role of the subject, but not in large enough instances to enable identification of  
the semantic preference or prosody of the unit. 
3.9 Slovene: Adverb + govoriti (‘speak/talk’)
The results for the five most frequent adverbs of manner acting as a premodifier to govoriti 
(ranked 26th most frequent Slovene verb) and their respective frequencies are presented in 
Table 9. 

202 P . Jurko Semantic Prosody in Translation: Slovene and English ADV-V Combinations
Table 9. Semantic prosody of adverbs of manner + govoriti (‘speak’).
Adverb
Frequency per 
million words
Positive % Neutral % Negative %
težko (‘difficult, hard’) 3.17 16 66 18
javno (‘publicly’) 1.01 1 73 26
dobro (‘well’) 0.77 3 97 0
tekoče (‘fluently’) 0.7 0 100 0
odkrito (‘frankly’) 0.54 3 47 50
a. T ežko govoriti (‘difficult to speak/talk of’): two meanings:
i. meaning ‘to speak with difficulty’: no semantic prosody was determined.
ii. meaning ‘to find it hard to express something due to lack of information’: semantic 
prosody of ‘indecision due to lack of information; inability to predict future; 
opposition to an opinion expressed before’.
b. Javno govoriti (‘speak publicly’): the semantic prosody refers to ‘disclosure of sensitive 
topics’. 
c. Dobro govoriti (‘speak well’): no semantic prosody was determined.
d. T ekoče govoriti (‘speak fluently’): no semantic prosody was established.
e. Odkrito govoriti (‘speak frankly’): the semantic prosody refers to ‘showing courage to 
discuss serious problems or innermost topics’.
3.10 English: Adverb + talk
The results for the five most frequent adverbs of manner acting as a premodifier to talk 
(ranked 120
th
 most frequent English verb) and their respective frequencies are presented in 
Table 10. A random selection of five concordances with the adverb openly is presented in 
Figure 5.
Table 10. Semantic prosodies of adverbs of manner + ‘talk’.
Adverb
Frequency per 
million words
Positive % Neutral % Negative %
really 0.39 8 81 11
actually 0.28 13 82 5
openly 0.08 2 22 76
briefly 0.06 2 98 0
directly 0.02 0 98 2
d. Tekoče govoriti (‘speak fluently’): no semantic prosody was established. 
e. Odkrito govoriti (‘speak frankly’): the semantic prosody refers to ‘showing courage to discuss serious problems or 
innermost topics’. 
3.5.2 English: Adverb + talk 
The results for the five most frequent adverbs of manner acting as a premodifier to talk (ranked 120
th
 most frequent 
English verb) and their respective frequencies are presented in Table 10. A random selection of five concordances with 
the adverb openly is presented in Figure 5. 
 
TABLE 10. Semantic prosodies of adverbs of manner + ‘talk’. 
Adverb Frequency per 
million words 
Positive % Neutral % Negative % 
really 0.39 8 81 11 
actually 0.28 13 82 5 
openly 0.08 2 22 76 
briefly 0.06 2 98 0 
directly 0.02 0 98 2 
 
 
FIGURE 5. Random concordances of ‘openly talk’. 
 
a. Really talk: in terms of colligation the pair exhibits an expected prevalence of constructions where it is followed by 
the prepositions about, to. As for collocation, the subject of the pair is frequently expressed by the pronoun nobody, 
but no semantic preference or prosody could be determined. 
b. Openly talk: colligation patterns show a predominance of prepositional phrases introduced by about, of. Collocation 
patterning shows that as grammatical subjects the nouns leader, politician, celebrity are frequent, while the nouns issue, 
experience, sex, problem, feeling are found in the role of the object. The semantic preference for an intimate or burdening 
matter has been found, while the semantic prosody of ‘sincere sharing of one’s innermost topics with the aim of relief 
or help’ has been established. 
c. Talk directly: in terms of colligation the pair is followed by a prepositional phrase introduced by to, with. No firm 
collocations were found for the pair, so there is no semantic preference or prosody in this case. 
d. Actually talk: there are no dominant colligation patterns beside the expected prepositions about, to, with following 
the pair. No collocation patterns, hence no semantic preference or prosody have been found.  
e. Briefly talk: there are no dominant colligation patterns beside the expected prepositions about, to, with following the 
pair. There are no collocation patterns, so neither semantic preference nor prosody have been found.  
 
4 Discussion 
Figure 5. Random concordances of ‘openly talk’.

203 ARTICLES
a. Really talk: in terms of colligation the pair exhibits an expected prevalence of 
constructions where it is followed by the prepositions about, to. As for collocation, 
the subject of the pair is frequently expressed by the pronoun nobody, but no semantic 
preference or prosody could be determined.
b. Openly talk: colligation patterns show a predominance of prepositional phrases 
introduced by about, of. Collocation patterning shows that as grammatical subjects 
the nouns leader, politician, celebrity are frequent, while the nouns issue, experience, 
sex, problem, feeling are found in the role of the object. The semantic preference for an 
intimate or burdening matter has been found, while the semantic prosody of ‘sincere 
sharing of one’s innermost topics with the aim of relief or help’ has been established.
c. Talk directly: in terms of colligation the pair is followed by a prepositional phrase 
introduced by to, with. No firm collocations were found for the pair, so there is no 
semantic preference or prosody in this case.
d. Actually talk: there are no dominant colligation patterns beside the expected 
prepositions about, to, with following the pair. No collocation patterns, hence no 
semantic preference or prosody have been found. 
e. Briefly talk: there are no dominant colligation patterns beside the expected prepositions 
about, to, with following the pair. There are no collocation patterns, so neither semantic 
preference nor prosody have been found. 
4 Discussion
4.1 Comparison of Proneness to Form Semantic Prosody 
The empirical part of the study involved the 25 most frequent Slovene and English ADV-V 
pairs, with the verb belonging to the lexical paradigm with the meaning ‘to express orally’. 
There were three Slovene and one English ADV-V pairs with two meanings, although two 
of the Slovene items were too low in frequency to allow any observation. This means there 
was one polysemous pair with two meanings found in each language, so we are looking at a 
total of 52 ADV-V pairs with distinct meanings. In the Slovene items semantic prosody is 
expressed in 11 ADV-V pairs (seven negative and four neutral), while no semantic prosody is 
expressed in 15 ADV-V pairs, as shown in Figure 6.
4.1 Comparison of Proneness to Form Semantic Prosody  
The empirical part of the study involved the 25 most frequent Slovene and English ADV-V pairs, with the verb 
belonging to the lexical paradigm with the meaning ‘to express orally’. There were three Slovene and one English 
ADV-V pairs with two meanings, although two of the Slovene items were too low in frequency to allow any 
observation. This means there was one polysemous pair with two meanings found in each language, so we are looking 
at a total of 52 ADV-V pairs with distinct meanings. In the Slovene items semantic prosody is expressed in 11 ADV-
V pairs (seven negative and four neutral), while no semantic prosody is expressed in 15 ADV-V pairs, as shown in 
Figure 6. 
 
 
FIGURE 6. Slovene ADV-V pairs. 
 
In English there are six instances (four neutral, one negative, one positive) of expressed semantic prosody in ADV-V 
pairs, while no semantic prosody is expressed in 20 ADV-V pairs (19 neutral, one positive), as shown in Figure 7. 
 
 
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
Positive Neutral Negative
Slovene ADV‐V pairs
Prosody Without prosody
Figure 6. Slovene ADV-V pairs.

204 P . Jurko Semantic Prosody in Translation: Slovene and English ADV-V Combinations
In English there are six instances (four neutral, one negative, one positive) of expressed 
semantic prosody in ADV-V pairs, while no semantic prosody is expressed in 20 ADV-V 
pairs (19 neutral, one positive), as shown in Figure 7.
 
FIGURE 7. English ADV-V pairs. 
 
On the whole it appears that Slovene ADV-V pairs are nearly twice as likely than their English counterparts to form 
extended units of meaning and develop semantic prosodies, as shown in Figure 8.  
 
 
FIGURE 8. Slovene vs. English ADV-V pairs with semantic prosody. 
 
If we look at the polarity of the discovered semantic prosodies, we can see that Slovene ADV-V pairs support the 
tendency of semantic prosody to express a rather negative discourse attitude of the speaker/writer (seven out of 11 are 
negative). However, on the English side the situation is very different, and appears to be nicely balanced when it comes 
to the parameter of polarity: four out of six ADV-V pairs with expressed semantic prosody were found in neutral 
contexts, with one in negative and one in positive ones. Although a global uniformity across languages is not likely, 
future studies on a larger scale than this work will be needed to provide more evidence on this matter. 
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
20
Positive Neutral Negative
English ADV‐V pairs
Prosody Without prosody
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
Slovene English
ADV‐V pairs with SP
ADV‐V pairs with SP
Figure 7. English ADV-V pairs.
On the whole it appears that Slovene ADV-V pairs are nearly twice as likely than their English 
counterparts to form extended units of meaning and develop semantic prosodies, as shown 
in Figure 8. 
 
FIGURE 7. English ADV-V pairs. 
 
On the whole it appears that Slovene ADV-V pairs are nearly twice as likely than their English counterparts to form 
extended units of meaning and develop semantic prosodies, as shown in Figure 8.  
 
 
FIGURE 8. Slovene vs. English ADV-V pairs with semantic prosody. 
 
If we look at the polarity of the discovered semantic prosodies, we can see that Slovene ADV-V pairs support the 
tendency of semantic prosody to express a rather negative discourse attitude of the speaker/writer (seven out of 11 are 
negative). However, on the English side the situation is very different, and appears to be nicely balanced when it comes 
to the parameter of polarity: four out of six ADV-V pairs with expressed semantic prosody were found in neutral 
contexts, with one in negative and one in positive ones. Although a global uniformity across languages is not likely, 
future studies on a larger scale than this work will be needed to provide more evidence on this matter. 
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
20
Positive Neutral Negative
English ADV‐V pairs
Prosody Without prosody
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
Slovene English
ADV‐V pairs with SP
ADV‐V pairs with SP
Figure 8. Slovene vs. English ADV-V pairs with semantic prosody.
If we look at the polarity of the discovered semantic prosodies, we can see that Slovene 
ADV-V pairs support the tendency of semantic prosody to express a rather negative discourse 
attitude of the speaker/writer (seven out of 11 are negative). However, on the English side the 
situation is very different, and appears to be nicely balanced when it comes to the parameter 
of polarity: four out of six ADV-V pairs with expressed semantic prosody were found in 
neutral contexts, with one in negative and one in positive ones. Although a global uniformity 
across languages is not likely, future studies on a larger scale than this work will be needed to 
provide more evidence on this matter.
4.2 Possible Correlation with Frequency of Occurrence? 
We next attempted to look for any properties that ADV-V pairs laden with semantic prosody 
had in common. In terms of their frequency of occurrence, the Slovene units with prosody 

205 ARTICLES
had a notably higher relative frequency compared to the units where no semantic prosody 
was expressed. We have calculated the average relative frequencies of both groups, one with 
semantic prosody (1.91 per million words) and one without it (0.35 per million words), as 
shown in Figure 9.
4.2 Possible Correlation with Frequency of Occurrence?  
We next attempted to look for any properties that ADV-V pairs laden with semantic prosody had in common. In 
terms of their frequency of occurrence, the Slovene units with prosody had a notably higher relative frequency 
compared to the units where no semantic prosody was expressed. We have calculated the average relative frequencies 
of both groups, one with semantic prosody (1.91 per million words) and one without it (0.35 per million words), as 
shown in Figure 9. 
 
 
FIGURE 9. Average frequency per million words of Slovene SP units vs. units with no SP. 
 
The same calculation was done on the English side and again the results are quite dissimilar. Here the average frequency 
of units with expressed semantic prosody is only marginally higher to that of units without semantic prosody, as seen 
in Figure 10. 
 
 
FIGURE 10. Average frequency of English ADV-V pairs. 
 
The results for the Slovene units encouraged us to hypothesize a correlation between frequency of occurrence and the 
likelihood for the emergence of semantic prosody. The ratio of average frequencies Slovene units with and without 
semantic prosody is as high as 5 to 1, while with the English units the ratio is much lower, at 1.27 to 1. One of possible 
causes for this discrepancy might be the structure of the Gigafida 2.0 reference corpus of Slovene, which contains a 
very large proportion of newspaper and magazine texts. This particular feature may have pushed the frequency of 
Slovene verbs a notch or two higher. On the other hand, the English EnTenTen15 corpus was compiled using a variety 
of web-based texts covering a broad spectrum of topics from a multitude of regional varieties of English (mostly British, 
but also Indian, American, New Zealand, Canadian and from the .EU web domain). Future work will therefore show 
1.91
0.35
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5
ADV‐V pairs with SP
ADV‐V pairs without SP
Average frequency of Slovene ADV‐V pairs
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7
ADV‐V pairs with SP
ADV‐V pairs without SP
Average frequency of English ADV‐V pairs
Figure 9. Average frequency per million words of Slovene SP units vs. units with no SP .
The same calculation was done on the English side and again the results are quite dissimilar. 
Here the average frequency of units with expressed semantic prosody is only marginally 
higher to that of units without semantic prosody, as seen in Figure 10.
4.2 Possible Correlation with Frequency of Occurrence?  
We next attempted to look for any properties that ADV-V pairs laden with semantic prosody had in common. In 
terms of their frequency of occurrence, the Slovene units with prosody had a notably higher relative frequency 
compared to the units where no semantic prosody was expressed. We have calculated the average relative frequencies 
of both groups, one with semantic prosody (1.91 per million words) and one without it (0.35 per million words), as 
shown in Figure 9. 
 
 
FIGURE 9. Average frequency per million words of Slovene SP units vs. units with no SP. 
 
The same calculation was done on the English side and again the results are quite dissimilar. Here the average frequency 
of units with expressed semantic prosody is only marginally higher to that of units without semantic prosody, as seen 
in Figure 10. 
 
 
FIGURE 10. Average frequency of English ADV-V pairs. 
 
The results for the Slovene units encouraged us to hypothesize a correlation between frequency of occurrence and the 
likelihood for the emergence of semantic prosody. The ratio of average frequencies Slovene units with and without 
semantic prosody is as high as 5 to 1, while with the English units the ratio is much lower, at 1.27 to 1. One of possible 
causes for this discrepancy might be the structure of the Gigafida 2.0 reference corpus of Slovene, which contains a 
very large proportion of newspaper and magazine texts. This particular feature may have pushed the frequency of 
Slovene verbs a notch or two higher. On the other hand, the English EnTenTen15 corpus was compiled using a variety 
of web-based texts covering a broad spectrum of topics from a multitude of regional varieties of English (mostly British, 
but also Indian, American, New Zealand, Canadian and from the .EU web domain). Future work will therefore show 
1.91
0.35
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5
ADV‐V pairs with SP
ADV‐V pairs without SP
Average frequency of Slovene ADV‐V pairs
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7
ADV‐V pairs with SP
ADV‐V pairs without SP
Average frequency of English ADV‐V pairs
Figure 10. Average frequency of English ADV-V pairs.
The results for the Slovene units encouraged us to hypothesize a correlation between frequency 
of occurrence and the likelihood for the emergence of semantic prosody. The ratio of average 
frequencies Slovene units with and without semantic prosody is as high as 5 to 1, while 
with the English units the ratio is much lower, at 1.27 to 1. One of possible causes for this 
discrepancy might be the structure of the Gigafida 2.0 reference corpus of Slovene, which 
contains a very large proportion of newspaper and magazine texts. This particular feature may 
have pushed the frequency of Slovene verbs a notch or two higher. On the other hand, the 
English EnT enT en15 corpus was compiled using a variety of web-based texts covering a broad 
spectrum of topics from a multitude of regional varieties of English (mostly British, but also 
Indian, American, New Zealand, Canadian and from the .EU web domain). Future work will 
therefore show whether there is indeed a connection between the frequency of occurrence and 
semantic prosody, and also whether the structure of the corpus is a relevant variable.
4.3 The Search for T ranslation Equivalents
As stated above, one of the aims of this work is also to look at possible translation equivalents 
among the analysed ADV-V pairs. We will be particularly interested to find any matches (or 
mismatches) in terms of semantic prosody, with Slovene as the source and English the target 

206 P . Jurko Semantic Prosody in Translation: Slovene and English ADV-V Combinations
language. Here is the list of rough candidates for translation equivalence taken from our 
tables above:
jasno povedati – say clearly
odkrito povedati – say honestly
ljubkovalno praviti – be affectionately called
preprosto reči – simply tell/say 
a.  Jasno povedati – clearly say: at first sight this seems to be a good match, but when we 
look at the numbers, it starts to look off: the Slovene unit is more than 10-times more 
frequent than the English one. However, the main discrepancy between them is due 
to their different semantic prosodies: jasno povedati has in most cases the semantic 
prosody of an ‘unpleasant opinion or fact shared from a position of authority’, while 
in clearly say this is not expressed. There are, to be sure, many contexts where clearly 
say is an acceptable translation, however if we take a look at the concordance below, it 
simply will not do. 
whether there is indeed a connection between the frequency of occurrence and semantic prosody, and also whether 
the structure of the corpus is a relevant variable. 
4.3 The Search for Translation Equivalents 
As stated above, one of the aims of this work is also to look at possible translation equivalents among the analysed 
ADV-V pairs. We will be particularly interested to find any matches (or mismatches) in terms of semantic prosody, 
with Slovene as the source and English the target language. Here is the list of rough candidates for translation 
equivalence taken from our tables above: 
- jasno povedati – say clearly 
- odkrito povedati – say honestly 
- ljubkovalno praviti – be affectionately called 
- preprosto reči – simply tell/say  
a. Jasno povedati – clearly say: at first sight this seems to be a good match, but when we look at the numbers, it starts 
to look off: the Slovene unit is more than 10-times more frequent than the English one. However, the main 
discrepancy between them is due to their different semantic prosodies: jasno povedati has in most cases the semantic 
prosody of an ‘unpleasant opinion or fact shared from a position of authority’, while in clearly say this is not expressed. 
There are, to be sure, many contexts where clearly say is an acceptable translation, however if we take a look at the 
concordance below, it simply will not do.  
 
 
FIGURE 11. Concordance of jasno povedati with clearly expressed semantic prosody. 
 
A possible alternative translation with the appropriate semantic prosody might be to make something perfectly clear, and 
the next expanded concordance is a good example. 
 
 
FIGURE 12. Concordance of ‘make something perfectly clear’ with a matching semantic prosody. 
 
b. Odkrito povedati – honestly say: although the adverbs are not a clear denotative match, this is certainly a viable 
candidate. While the frequencies are not so far apart, either, the problem lies again in their respective semantic 
prosodies: negative for the Slovene unit (‘unpleasant information often shared out of a sense of duty or responsibility’), 
positive for the English (‘expression of sincere feelings about a pleasurable experience’). I do not believe there exists a 
passable translation of the next concordance with honestly say.  
 
FIGURE 13. Concordance of ‘odkrito povedati’. 
 
In this case a paraphrase with the adjective/adverb blunt(-ly) is probably a better solution. 
c. Ljubkovalno praviti – be affectionately called: life can also be good sometimes, and here we have a full match. The 
frequencies of both items are practically identical, and so is the semantic prosody. Although this is not exactly a 
 
Figure 11. Concordance of jasno povedati with clearly expressed semantic prosody.
A possible alternative translation with the appropriate semantic prosody might be to make 
something perfectly clear, and the next expanded concordance is a good example.
whether there is indeed a connection between the frequency of occurrence and semantic prosody, and also whether 
the structure of the corpus is a relevant variable. 
4.3 The Search for Translation Equivalents 
As stated above, one of the aims of this work is also to look at possible translation equivalents among the analysed 
ADV-V pairs. We will be particularly interested to find any matches (or mismatches) in terms of semantic prosody, 
with Slovene as the source and English the target language. Here is the list of rough candidates for translation 
equivalence taken from our tables above: 
- jasno povedati – say clearly 
- odkrito povedati – say honestly 
- ljubkovalno praviti – be affectionately called 
- preprosto reči – simply tell/say  
a. Jasno povedati – clearly say: at first sight this seems to be a good match, but when we look at the numbers, it starts 
to look off: the Slovene unit is more than 10-times more frequent than the English one. However, the main 
discrepancy between them is due to their different semantic prosodies: jasno povedati has in most cases the semantic 
prosody of an ‘unpleasant opinion or fact shared from a position of authority’, while in clearly say this is not expressed. 
There are, to be sure, many contexts where clearly say is an acceptable translation, however if we take a look at the 
concordance below, it simply will not do.  
 
 
FIGURE 11. Concordance of jasno povedati with clearly expressed semantic prosody. 
 
A possible alternative translation with the appropriate semantic prosody might be to make something perfectly clear, and 
the next expanded concordance is a good example. 
 
 
FIGURE 12. Concordance of ‘make something perfectly clear’ with a matching semantic prosody. 
 
b. Odkrito povedati – honestly say: although the adverbs are not a clear denotative match, this is certainly a viable 
candidate. While the frequencies are not so far apart, either, the problem lies again in their respective semantic 
prosodies: negative for the Slovene unit (‘unpleasant information often shared out of a sense of duty or responsibility’), 
positive for the English (‘expression of sincere feelings about a pleasurable experience’). I do not believe there exists a 
passable translation of the next concordance with honestly say.  
 
FIGURE 13. Concordance of ‘odkrito povedati’. 
 
In this case a paraphrase with the adjective/adverb blunt(-ly) is probably a better solution. 
c. Ljubkovalno praviti – be affectionately called: life can also be good sometimes, and here we have a full match. The 
frequencies of both items are practically identical, and so is the semantic prosody. Although this is not exactly a 
 
Figure 12. Concordance of ‘make something perfectly clear’ with a matching semantic prosody.
b. Odkrito povedati – honestly say: although the adverbs are not a clear denotative match, 
this is certainly a viable candidate. While the frequencies are not so far apart, either, the 
problem lies again in their respective semantic prosodies: negative for the Slovene unit 
(‘unpleasant information often shared out of a sense of duty or responsibility’), positive 
for the English (‘expression of sincere feelings about a pleasurable experience’). I do 
not believe there exists a passable translation of the next concordance with honestly say. 
whether there is indeed a connection between the frequency of occurrence and semantic prosody, and also whether 
the structure of the corpus is a relevant variable. 
4.3 The Search for Translation Equivalents 
As stated above, one of the aims of this work is also to look at possible translation equivalents among the analysed 
ADV-V pairs. We will be particularly interested to find any matches (or mismatches) in terms of semantic prosody, 
with Slovene as the source and English the target language. Here is the list of rough candidates for translation 
equivalence taken from our tables above: 
- jasno povedati – say clearly 
- odkrito povedati – say honestly 
- ljubkovalno praviti – be affectionately called 
- preprosto reči – simply tell/say  
a. Jasno povedati – clearly say: at first sight this seems to be a good match, but when we look at the numbers, it starts 
to look off: the Slovene unit is more than 10-times more frequent than the English one. However, the main 
discrepancy between them is due to their different semantic prosodies: jasno povedati has in most cases the semantic 
prosody of an ‘unpleasant opinion or fact shared from a position of authority’, while in clearly say this is not expressed. 
There are, to be sure, many contexts where clearly say is an acceptable translation, however if we take a look at the 
concordance below, it simply will not do.  
 
 
FIGURE 11. Concordance of jasno povedati with clearly expressed semantic prosody. 
 
A possible alternative translation with the appropriate semantic prosody might be to make something perfectly clear, and 
the next expanded concordance is a good example. 
 
 
FIGURE 12. Concordance of ‘make something perfectly clear’ with a matching semantic prosody. 
 
b. Odkrito povedati – honestly say: although the adverbs are not a clear denotative match, this is certainly a viable 
candidate. While the frequencies are not so far apart, either, the problem lies again in their respective semantic 
prosodies: negative for the Slovene unit (‘unpleasant information often shared out of a sense of duty or responsibility’), 
positive for the English (‘expression of sincere feelings about a pleasurable experience’). I do not believe there exists a 
passable translation of the next concordance with honestly say.  
 
FIGURE 13. Concordance of ‘odkrito povedati’. 
 
In this case a paraphrase with the adjective/adverb blunt(-ly) is probably a better solution. 
c. Ljubkovalno praviti – be affectionately called: life can also be good sometimes, and here we have a full match. The 
frequencies of both items are practically identical, and so is the semantic prosody. Although this is not exactly a 
Figure 13. Concordance of ‘odkrito povedati’.
In this case a paraphrase with the adjective/adverb blunt(-ly) is probably a better solution.
c.  Ljubkovalno praviti – be affectionately called: life can also be good sometimes, and 
here we have a full match. The frequencies of both items are practically identical, 
and so is the semantic prosody. Although this is not exactly a formidable challenge 

207 ARTICLES
for a well-versed translator, not all university students of translation would find this a 
straightforward equivalent. 
d. Preprosto reči – simply say/tell: in this case the choice of the verb in the English 
translation equivalent will depend on the context (as always, one might add). What 
is more, semantic prosody will not stand in the way as it is not expressed in either the 
source or the target unit. 
5 Conclusion
The original goal of the present study was twofold: to test the applicability of the top-down 
approach in a cross-linguistic study, and to look into the translation process of extended units 
of meaning. The top-down approach has proved to be a practical alternative to semantically 
based methodological concepts, although it is probably best seen as a valuable complementary 
tool that can hopefully contribute to the rapidly developing sphere of corpus linguistics. 
In terms of translation of extended units of meaning there are several layers of interconnected 
problems and this study has barely scratched the surface. Clearly, there are limitations in 
terms of scope and corpora structure, which should be addressed in future work. It is my firm 
belief that students of translation should be made aware of the existence of semantic prosody. 
In particular they are sure to benefit from coming to grips with the meaning-forming process 
involved in the translation of highly complex lexical items that are so often taken at face value. 
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