Pragmatic meaning in contrast: semantic prosodies of Slovene and English

The paper discusses semantic prosody in a cross-linguistics setting. Although the term semantic prosody itself has only been around for over two decades, it has managed to create quite a stir in the lexicological community. After a brief presentation of the central tenets of the field and their authors, the practical part of this paper features a Sinclairian analysis of several Slovene extended units of meaning and their English translation equivalents. The role of semantic prosody in the meaning-forming process will be evaluated, as well as its impact on translation equivalence. In the end the paper also addresses the influence of mistranslated semantic prosody on communication.