Lexical typology through similarity semantics: Toward a semantic map of motion verbs
-
Bernhard Wälchli,
and
Michael Cysouw,
Abstract
This paper discusses a multidimensional probabilistic semantic map of lexical motion verb stems based on data collected from parallel texts (viz. translations of the Gospel according to Mark) for 100 languages from all continents. The crosslinguistic diversity of lexical semantics in motion verbs is illustrated in detail for the domain of ‘go’, ‘come’, and ‘arrive’ type contexts. It is argued that the theoretical bases underlying probabilistic semantic maps from exemplar data are the isomorphism hypothesis (given any two meanings and their corresponding forms in any particular language, more similar meanings are more likely to be expressed by the same form in any language), similarity semantics (similarity is more basic than identity), and exemplar semantics (exemplar meaning is more fundamental than abstract concepts).
©[2012] by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston
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- Towards a typology of pain predicates
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- The catalogue of semantic shifts as a database for lexical semantic typology
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Articles in the same Issue
- Masthead
- Erratum
- New directions in lexical typology
- The importance of TASTE verbs in some Khoe languages
- Towards a typology of pain predicates
- Converse categorization strategies
- Toward a typology of verbal lexical systems: A case study in Northern Athabaskan
- Location, existence, and possession: A constructional-typological exploration
- Semantic neutrality in complex predicates: Evidence from East and South Asia
- The catalogue of semantic shifts as a database for lexical semantic typology
- Lexical typology through similarity semantics: Toward a semantic map of motion verbs
- Semantic primes, semantic molecules, semantic templates: Key concepts in the NSM approach to lexical typology
