eBook - PDF

The Semantics of Polysemy

Name: The Semantics of Polysemy
Author: Nick Riemer

Reading Meaning in English and Warlpiri

Nick Riemer,

503 pages
English
PDF
Available on iOS & Android

eBook - PDF

The Semantics of Polysemy

Reading Meaning in English and Warlpiri

Nick Riemer,

About this book

This book, addressed primarily to students and researchers in semantics, cognitive linguistics, English, and Australian languages, is a comparative study of the polysemy patterns displayed by percussion/impact ('hitting') verbs in English and Warlpiri (Pama-Nyungan, Central Australia).

The opening chapters develop a novel theoretical orientation for the study of polysemy via a close examination of two theoretical traditions under the broader cognitivist umbrella: Langackerian and Lakovian Cognitive Semantics and Wierzbickian Natural Semantic Metalanguage. Arguments are offered which problematize attempts in these traditions to ground the analysis of meaning either in cognitive or neurological reality, or in the existence of universal synonymy relations within the lexicon. Instead, an interpretative rather than a scientific construal of linguistic theorizing is sketched, in the context of a close examination of certain key issues in the contemporary study of polysemy such as sense individuation, the role of reference in linguistic categorization, and the demarcation between metaphor and metonymy.

The later chapters present a detailed typology of the polysemous senses of English and Warlpiri percussion/impact (or P/I) verbs based on a diachronically deep corpus of dictionary citations from Middle to contemporary English, and on a large corpus of Warlpiri citations. Limited to the operations of metaphor and of three categories of metonymy, this typology posits just four types of basic relation between extended and core meanings. As a result, the phenomenon of polysemy and semantic extension emerges as amenable to strikingly concise description.

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Yes, you can access The Semantics of Polysemy by Nick Riemer in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Languages & Linguistics & Linguistic Semantics. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.