A Corpus-Based Contrastive Analysis of the Lexeme 'cat' in English and Croatian

This paper aims at analysing multi-word expressions containing the lexeme cat/mačka and exploring its metaphorical potential in two languages – English and Croatian – using the corpus-based method. The paper consists of a theoretical and a practical part, and its contents are organised into six major sections. After a brief introduction, an overview of some key concepts crucial for understanding the conducted analysis is given, which includes the explanation of lexemes, compounds, and phraseological units. This section is followed by methodology which explains how the collected expressions were obtained from the corpus and grouped. The practical part of the paper is the analysis where a variety of multi-word expressions were analysed in detail, focusing especially on how the lexeme cat/mačka behaves within those expressions and how it contributes to the overall metaphorical meaning. The following section includes the conclusions that were drawn after conducting the analysis and a comparison of the use of the lexeme in the English and Croatian language. At the end of the paper, a general conclusion is given.