Polysemy in Basque Locational Cases
نویسنده
چکیده
Basque, a language spoken on both sides of the western Pyrenees, has rich lexical and grammatical resources for expressing space. It has five different locational cases and over thirty locational postpositions, mostly spatial nouns which can take any of the locational casesuffixes. The five locational cases of Basque are locative –n, ablative –ti(k), allative –ra(t), terminative allative –raino, and directional allative –rantz. Most accounts of locational cases are good sources for descriptive as well as etymological information. However, when it comes to explaining and understanding conceptualizations of space and motion in Basque, these studies do not offer any insights. They usually provide a list of different grammatical and semantic usages, but no explanation for their motivation, their internal structure and organization, or their linguistic realization. These three issues will be the main focus of this paper. Taking Cognitive Linguistics as my theoretical framework, I will argue that the different polysemous senses, spatial and non-spatial, of Basque locational cases can be understood as complex lexical networks organized around central spatial prototypical meanings. These prototypical meanings are structured by means of image schemas and their role bindings. The other senses of locational cases are motivated semantic extensions deriving from the prototypical spatial senses and linked to them by means of compositional polysemy and cognitive mechanisms such as metaphor.
منابع مشابه
Allegory: Structure, Interpretation and Polysemy
In allegories polysemy relates not only to the context and the audience’s understanding but also to the structural characters of these texts. This paper investigates the function of structural and narrative properties in the creation of multiple interpretations of an allegory. Focusing on the events and following a unique story-line is the most important trait in helping to read the alleg...
متن کاملOn the Distinction between Metonymy and Vertical Polysemy in Encyclopaedic Semantics
In cognitive linguistics, metonymy is seen as a fundamental cognitive process where one conceptual entity affords access to another closely associated one. Cases of vertical polysemy have also often been treated as instances of metonymy (see e.g. Radden and Kövecses, 1999). In vertical polysemy a lexical form designates two or more senses that are in a relationship of categorial inclusion – e.g...
متن کاملA Layered Approach to the Polysemy Problems in a Chinese to Taiwanese TTS Systems
This paper proposes a novel approach to the polysemy problems in a Chinese to Taiwanese TTS (text-to-speech) system. Polysemy means there are words with more than one meaning or pronunciation, such as “不”(no), “上”(up), and “下”(down), and so on. The correct pronunciation of a word affects the comprehensibility (or intelligibility) and fluency of Taiwanese speech. We applied our approach to solve...
متن کاملPolysemy or generality? Mu
This chapter proposes a conception of lexical meaning as use-potential, in contrast to prevailing atomistic and reificational views. The issues are illustrated on the example of spatial expressions, pre-eminently prepositions. It is argued that the dichotomy between polysemy and semantic generality is a false one, with expressions occupying points on a continuum from full homonymy to full monos...
متن کامل