As Hungry as a Wolf, as Silent as a Lamb: Corpus Analysis of Adjectival Similes With an Animal Component

Abstract

This study focuses on analysis of the Slovak adjectival similes with an animal noun component. Its aim is not only to verify the incidence of individual similes, but also to investigate the qualitative aspects of phrases that follow the structure: adjective + ako/sťa (like/as) + noun, e.g. otravný ako komár ‘as annoying as a mosquito’ and pomalý ako rak ‘as slow as a crayfish’. The analysis is based on data from the Slovak National Corpus and is aimed at describing the semantic properties of the selected phrases.