Lexical Semantics

A unique, corpus-based methodology was created to determine reflexive construction metaphoricity. The method was able to retrieve metaphorically-expressed verbs, which were input into the verb slot of the reflexive construction in two online corpora. Results of the analysis show that some verbs have the ability to metaphorically construe different aspect of the self, one of them being perceptual self-awareness. The precise onset of perceptual self-awareness is usually sudden, reflected in the semantics of each of the verbs. This unexpected suddenness is a prime conceptual environment to cradle the construal of Self-Awareness as it emerges in cognition. Even though polysemy seems inherent within the data, corpus analysis shows that each has a unique collocational environment that helps delineate and differentiate collocational distinctions that can be supported by context in the form of the Focus of Awareness (FoA), i.e., the focus of the perceptual experience. Corpus data show that ...

The work presented below is part of a PhD project that deals with the acquisition of the English
Resultative Construction (ERC hereafter) by Spanish native speakers who learn English as a foreign language
(EFL). Our main interest is to explore whether there is a sequence in the acquisition of different ERC types
correlated with the proficiency level of Spanish speakers. 
There is a substantial amount of research carried out on the English-Spanish acquisition of the
lexicalization of manner of motion and path in boundary crossing events, as stated by Cadierno (2004),
Cadierno & Ruiz (2006), Robinson, et al. (2009), Larrañaga, et al. (2012), Alonso (2015), among other.
Interestingly, these papers analyze the differences in foreign language acquisition in terms of Talmy’s
typological classification into Satellite-framed and Verb-framed languages (2000) and suggest that L1 has a
significant effect on L2, especially if typologically different languages are at stake. 
There is also a variety of research conducted on the acquisition of ERC by different languages as L1 such
as Chinese (Cao & Zhou, 2014), Portuguese (Oliveira, 2016) and Korean (Kim, et al, 2019). Again, these
works support the claim that L1 affects the acquisition of a specific structure in English as L2. Yet, to our
knowledge, no work has been published on the acquisition of ERC by native speakers of Spanish who learn
EFL. Therefore, we elaborated an Acceptability Judgement Task that enabled us to explore to what degree
Spanish subjects accept the different types of ERC and how they identify non-acceptable combinatory of
unlicensed ERC. 
This paper is organized as follows. The next section describes the general differences between the
Spanish-English contrast in event representations, followed by the detailed description of the different
subtypes of ERC considered in this work. In addition, the English Depictive Construction (DC, now onwards)
are described and exemplified, and the objectives and predictions are stated. Next, we present the
Methodological Design of the AJT, followed by the results obtained and the general conclusions drawn from
this data.

The collective work deals with the linguistic conceptualization of the semiotic worldview. Based on the Romance, Germanic and Slavic languages (French, English, German, Polish, and Ukrainian), the paper focuses on the topical issues related to the theoretical problems and applied aspects of linguistic semiotics? the analysis of linguosemiotic models in lexical semantics, the study of linguosemiotic concepts in contrastive and typological perspectives.

The Sumerologist  George Smith, at the same time the archaeologist who translated the Epic of Gilgamesh into English, died in a quite mysterious manner, at a very young age. Smith was Born on 26 March 1840 in Chelsea and died on 19 August 1876. This British scholar with extraordinary skills in deciphering ancient scripts is considered today as the pioneer in the field of research and translation of the “Gilgamesh Epic Saga”, and he enabled the decipherment of one of the oldest literary works of humanity. In order to accomplish the transcription, it was not by chance that he visited the Albanians in Aleppo, Syria, who speak a version of Gheg, and he translated the Epic of Gilgamesh. He had promised to write a personal essay to show which living language he relied on for the transcription. Smith died mysteriously, in all probability poisoned by agents of the Ottoman Secret Services! Then, during the 20th and 21st centuries, various translations of the Epic of Gilgamesh into English were made by linguists and other scholars. Some of them include N.K. Sandars, Andrew George, Stephanie Dalley, and Maureen Gallery Kovacs, to name just a few.

We present in this paper an on-going research: the construction and annotation of a Romanian Generative Lexicon (RoGL), following the generative lexicon theory. Our system follows the specifications of CLIPS project for Italian language. It contains a corpus, an ontology of semantic types, a graphical interface and a database from which we generate data in XML format. We describe here the graphical interface structure as well as functionality and the annotation procedure.

Several pre-legislative quality-control measures exist to ensure the
drafting process delivers necessary and well-written laws. Despite
these measures, some bills and acts still contain mistakes that
could hinder subsequent statutory interpretation and construction.
A few of these mistakes are language based. A case in point is
South Africa’s Cannabis for Private Purposes Bill and the way
it describes the offence of smoking/consuming cannabis in a
vehicle on a public road (sec. 5(5)), in relation to the definitions
of the words "place" and "vehicle" (sec. 1). The word "vehicle" can be
interpreted as both a place and a transportation device, which
obscures the offence in sec. 5(5). A means to try and prevent
such semantic anomalies before a bill is published for comment
is to apply a linguistic audit as part of the pre-legislative scrutiny
stage in the drafting process. A linguistic audit entails the use of
various linguistic tools and theories informed by the language
challenges in the draft. As an illustration, this article employs the
cognitive linguistic “container schema” to better understand the
polysemous interpretation of the word "vehicle" as both a place
and a transportation device. In addition, the article proposes
four potential linguistic instruments as tools for a linguistic audit,
namely componential analysis, functional hyponymy, prototype
theory, and limited syntactic analysis. The article starts by
reviewing the drafting process, followed by an explanation of
the purpose of definitions in legislation. The focus then shifts to
a discussion about the potential meaning of "vehicle" in the Bill,
followed by a description of the lexicological approach to drafting.
The article concludes that a language audit could assist courts
in their continuation of the drafting process through interpretation
and construction.

The appendix aims to identify the literary and epigraphic evidence for the extant vocabulary used for lottery practices in archaic and classical Greece in political, legal, religious, military, and civil contexts, using corpus-based textual analysis. The appendix presents the results of a quantitative study of the corpus of evidence, pointing to the diachronic and synchronic semantic varieties of the key terms. Full references and a database of texts and inscriptions associated with drawing lots in archaic and classical Greek may be consulted with kleros.org.il.

Le recit est ce qui permet a l'enfant de donner un sens a ses experiences. On dit souvent que les competences narratives se mettent en place chez l'enfant entre l'âge de 3 et 5 ans mais la litterature s'est surtout penchee sur la mise en place de ces competences au moment de l'entree dans l'ecrit. Or, vers l'âge de deux ans, les enfants commencent a parler non seulement de ce qui les entoure, des actions en cours, mais a se deplacer mentalement dans le temps et dans l'espace et a raconter des evenements survenus ailleurs et dans le passe. L'activite de recit est cognitivement compliquee puisque l'enfant ne peut plus s'appuyer sur " l'ici-maintenant " et donc sur une perception partagee. Il doit utiliser le langage comme source unique de representation, tout en etant capable de prendre la perspective de son interlocuteur. Afin de maitriser ce mode discursif, un cheminement progressif est necessaire. En nous appuyant sur l'...

This study aims to examine the innovations of the ancient Egyptian language in the reign of Akhenaten, focusing on an analysis of the verbal system including the sequential constructions— the irr.f sDm/ ir.f sDm and mtw.f sDm. These grammatical innovations contributed to the development of the analytic (or periphrastic) system, dominant in Late Egyptian, and they also characterize the transitional stage from Middle (or Classical) Egyptian to Late Egyptian. Moreover, this chapter examines whether the linguistic innovations are only attested at Amarna or spread to any other city outside Amarna during this period. The study also explores if these innovations occurred as a result of the existence of a dominant local dialect in Akhenaten’s new city.

On the basis of an initial analysis of the syntactic and semantic status of the constituents of the plautine expression 'lepidus uiuis', this paper aims to confirm the hypothesis that there is a correlation between the semantic content of the elements of a message in which a Secondary predication appears, and the degree to which these elements are necessary for the message to fulfil its communicative function. To this end, the Predicate Frames of the verb 'uiuo' are first established on the basis of lexical data and cross-linguistic comparison. The analysis itself, using a corpus comprising Latin comedy and Augustan poetry, identifies and describes the main types of contexts that can be found – more and less assimilable to those of a copulative nature –, and shows the conditions under which the Secondary predicate can denote state and/or permanent quality as well as adequately fulfilling its communicative purpose. Among the conclusions is that the loss of semantic weight in the predicate in fact drives a more necessary lexical presence of the specification provided by the Secondary predicate, whereas this need is significantly less when the verb is more fully realised from a predicative point of view.

Sound symbolism emerged as a prevalent component in the origin and development of language. However, as previous studies have either been lacking in scope or in phonetic granularity, the present study investigates the phonetic and semantic features involved from a bottom-up perspective. By analyzing the phonemes of 344 near-universal concepts in 245 language families, we establish 125 sound-meaning associations. The results also show that between 19 and 40 of the items of the Swadesh-100 list are sound symbolic, which calls into question the list’s ability to determine genetic relationships. In addition, by combining co-occurring semantic and phonetic features between the sound symbolic concepts, 20 macro-concepts can be identified, e. g. basic descriptors, deictic distinctions and kinship attributes. Furthermore, all identified macroconcepts can be grounded in four types of sound symbolism: (a) unimodal imitation (onomatopoeia); (b) cross-modal imitation (vocal gestures); (c) diagr...

Sound symbolism emerged as a prevalent component in the origin and development of language. However, as previous studies have either been lacking in scope or in phonetic granularity, the present study investigates the phonetic and semantic features involved from a bottom-up perspective. By analyzing the phonemes of 344 near-universal concepts in 245 language families, we establish 125 sound-meaning associations. The results also show that between 19 and 40 of the items of the Swadesh-100 list are sound symbolic, which calls into question the list’s ability to determine genetic relationships. In addition, by combining co-occurring semantic and phonetic features between the sound symbolic concepts, 20macro-conceptscan be identified, e. g. basic descriptors, deictic distinctions and kinship attributes. Furthermore, all identified macro-concepts can be grounded in four types of sound symbolism: (a) unimodal imitation (onomatopoeia); (b) cross-modal imitation (vocal gestures); (c) diagra...

Al giorno d’oggi i “muri virtuali” del web non sono ancora riusciti a scalzare del tutto i muri reali. La questione è così rilevante che se ne occupa un articolo piuttosto sconsolato di Tecnicadellascuola.it, magazine per docenti. Mentre uno studio pubblicato nel 2020 sulla rivista «Quaderns d'Italià» dalla linguista Giovanna Marina Alfonzetti (Università di Catania) è dedicato alle scritte scovate su muri e suppellettili di due dipartimenti accademici. Il titolo è "Fuck Prof Ke lezione di merda. Insultare sui muri dell’università". Si legge nel riassunto. «Viene analizzato un corpus di graffiti [...] fotografati nei locali del Dipartimento di Scienze Umanistiche (Catania) e della Sapienza (Roma) in due fasi: 2007-2010 e 2019». L'indagine fa emergere che, nell’arco del decennio intercorso tra le due fasi citate, «la diffusione alluvionale dei social media ha ridotto drasticamente la produzione di graffiti di ogni genere. Gli insulti, indizi importanti per ricostruire il sistema di valori di una comunità socioculturale, [...] si collocano nell’ambito della violenza verbale, in parziale sovrapposizione con altri atti violenti. [...] In relazione alla (s)cortesia verbale, gli insulti prototipici potrebbero considerarsi atti inerentemente scortesi, la cui formulazione mostra una chiara tendenza alla intensificazione a vari livelli. Viene quindi proposta una classificazione degli insulti convenzionalizzati del corpus, molti dei quali risultano da processi di metaforizzazione».

Crop diseases constitute a big threat to plant existence, but their rapid identification remains difficult in many parts of the planet because of the shortage of the required infrastructure. In computer vision, plant leaf detection made possible by deep learning has paved the way for smartphone-assisted disease diagnosis. employing a public dataset of 4,306 images of diseased and healthy plant leaves collected under controlled conditions, we train a deep convolutional neural network to spot one crop species and 4 diseases (or absence thereof). The trained model achieves an accuracy of 97.35% on a held-out test set, demonstrating the feasibility of this approach. Overall, the approach of coaching deep learning models on increasingly large and publicly available image datasets presents a transparent path toward smartphoneassisted crop disease diagnosis on a large global scale. After the disease is successfully predicted with a decent confidence level, the corresponding remedy for the ...

This thesis lays the foundations for a new pedagogical approach to some and any, an area of language that poses substantial difficulties for learners. It describes research with the Oxford English Corpus and the Cambridge Learner Corpus which provides the basis for a provisional new pedagogical description of this complex language area.

The aim of this article is to highlight the importance of the manuscript lexical collection of the 19 th century scholar Vincenzo Padula. This ‘hidden’ collection is a manuscript recording many terms and idiomatic expressions that has received deserved attention only in the last twenty years thanks to the first two volumes publication of the Vocabolario Etimologico Calabrese. First, we focus on some of the most interesting aspects of Padulian notes and on the fact that they contain words never attested before. Second, we show how the same notes can be useful to better understand the history of Calabrian dialects, in particular with
reference to the use of past tenses and of subordination strategy by means of the complementizer mo.

RÉSUMÉDans cette contribution, nous nous intéressons à l'origine et au développement de la construction [adverbe de degré + nom]:C'est très théâtre, c'est-à-dire très faux. De nos jours, cette construction se présente comme un puissant outil de recatégorisation contextuelle pour exprimer un rapport de ressemblance basé sur une analogie avec un concept nominal. Sur la base d'une recherche de corpus outillée, nous montrons que la construction-hôte [ADVdegré+ ADJ] a pu s'ouvrir à la catégorie nominale à partir d'un petit noyau dur de noms humains, en partie qualitatifs, tirant profit de certaines propriétés structurelles du français de l’époque. Par la suite, la construction s'est diversifiée vers d'autres classes sémantiques (noms inanimés, noms propres, etc.) et a progressivement attiré une gamme plus diversifiée de types lexicaux dans son orbite. Elle n'a cessé de gagner en productivité, tout en réduisant son fonds lexical d'origine à la porti...

Монография посвящена лексической полисемии и методам ее обучения студентов при чтении текстов на английском языке. Рассматриваются проблемы перцепции, узнавания и осмысления многозначной лексики в ходе восприятия графического материала. Производится сопоставительный анализ полисемии английского, русского и узбекского языков.
Предоставлена для широкого круга специалистов, занимающиеся проблемами полисемии, а также для преподавателей иностранных языков, магистрантов и научных сотрудников.

Many authors writing on slurs think that they are lexically rich, in the sense that their lexical meaning comprises both a descriptive dimension and an expressive/evaluative one, the latter accounting for their derogatory character. However, more fine-grained theories of slurs have recently been proposed, drawing on frameworks from lexical semantics. My main aim in this paper is to compare three such fine-grained rich-lexicon theories-the one put forward by myself in previous work with two similar ones, Croom's (2011, 2013) and Neufeld's (2019, 2022). While my primary aim is to underlie the commonalities and differences between the three views, I also aim at showing that the latter views have some issues that are easily avoided in the framework I propose.

The aim of this chapter is to analyze meaning and function of the expression jediný (sole). Older Czech monolingual dictionaries regard this expression as an adjective. Due to the fact that the basic component of its semantics amounts to the meaning of number 1, we suggest classifying it as a numeral. In its primary meaning (jen jeden / only one), the expression jediný states that the entity denoted by the syntactically governing noun phrase has a solitary character. In negative sentences, the expression jediný usually acts as a negative pronoun (žádný/none): it denies the existence of an element that would be held as true in a given statement. In the third meaning that is usually neglected in Czech dictionaries and grammars, the expression jediný acts as an actualizer, i.e. as a specific type of a particle unit (jen, pouze / only). In this case, it refers to the solitary character of an entity having the property denoted by the predicate of the sentence. The expression jediný used as a particle unit stands next to the expression which it emphasizes. In distant position, as a part of the predicate, the expression jediný acts as a verbal attribute, although it differs semantically from typical verbal attributes.

Bu calismanin amaci, en az iki kelimeden meydana gelen ve birlikte bulunma egilimi noktasinda baska sozcuklere gore aralarinda daha siki bir iliski olan ve “esdizim” olarak tarif edilen sozcuk bilesimlerinin Turkcemize aktarim surecinde farkli anlamlarla karsilanmasinin onemini vurgulamaktir. Hedef dil diye adlandirdigimiz ve ogrenmeye calistigimiz bir dili dogal, akici, etkileyici ve her seyden ote o dilin asli kullanicisi olan dogal dil konusucusu/native speaker gibi kullanabilmek icin o dilin dilbilgisi kurallarina ve cumle kurulumu sirasindaki soz dizim ozelliklerine vakif olmak tek basina yeterli degildir. Sozcukler arasindaki birlikte bulunma egilimlerine ve sozcuk bilgisinin kullanim cesitliligine dair de yeterli bir bilgiye sahip olmak ogrendigimiz yabanci dili daha dogru ve daha isabetli kullanma noktasinda en az dilbilgisi kadar onemli ve gerekli bir unsurdur. Bu calismada iki ve daha fazla sozcugun bir araya gelmesiyle olusan ve “esdizim” olarak tanimlanan sozcuk bilesiml...

This study explores the Turkish verbs kuşkulan- and şüphelen-, both of which mean "to suspect" according to the Turkish Language Association Dictionary. While they are considered synonyms, the rarity of absolute synonymy in languages suggests that they will probably differ in some respects. The research investigates whether these verbs are fully interchangeable and seeks to identify differences in their contextual, collocational, and stylistic preferences. It also assesses the extent of their synonymy on a scale of synonymy and determines their interchangeability based on corpus data and native speaker intuition. The methodology involves triangulation, using data from the Turkish Web 2020 corpus (trTenTen2020) and a Native Speaker Intuition Test conducted with 48 university students. A total of 327 concordance lines for şüphelen- and 285 for kuşkulan- extracted from the corpus were analyzed for contextual and colligational differences, and the top 40 collocates of each verb were identified and compared using the LogDice tool. Additionally, 39 sentences were presented to participants on a native speaker intuition test, where they were asked to choose between kuşkulan- and şüphelen-. The findings indicate that şüphelen-is used much more frequently than kuşkulan- in Turkish and is preferred in more informal language. Kuşkulan- tends to be associated with noun phrases referring to the source of suspicion, while şüphelen- is more common with noun clauses compared to kuşkulan-. Additionally, şüphelen- is more likely to be used when someone suspects something concrete like as a person or a situation with stronger implications of doubt. Both kuşkulan- and şüphelen- were found to mean ‘having a newly emerging feeling of the presence of something (usually something bad like a disease) in someone or place’. Despite some differences, the verbs are highly interchangeable, with speaker preference and context being key factors in their differentiation. The findings suggest that kuşkulan- and şüphelen- are a good example of cognitive (propositional) synonyms with mutual entailment that share conceptual meaning but differ in frequency, stylistic, and collocational tendencies. On a putative scale of synonymy, this pair could be placed very close to absolute synonymy

Садова, Т. С. Слова с пометой «канц.» в «Толковом словаре русского языка» под редакцией Д. Н. Ушакова / Т. С. Садова, Д. В. Руднев // Филологический класс. – 2023. – Т. 28, № 4. – С. 155–164. – DOI:  10.26170/2071-2405-2023-28-4-155-164.

Sadova, T. S., Rudnev, D. V. (2023). Words Marked “kants.” in the “Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language” Edited by D. N. Ushakov. In Philological Class. Vol. 28. No. 4, pp. 155–164. DOI: 10.26170/2071-2405-2023-28-4-155-164

Аннотация
В статье рассматриваются лексемы, зафиксированные в словаре Д. Н. Ушакова с пометой «канц.», которая сопровождает не первое (прямое) значение многозначного слова. Такое ограничение в материале исследования, прежде всего, позволяет проследить историко-стилистические «перемещения» выделенных лексем - преимущественно из естественного языка в клишированную деловую речь, имеющую в рамках русского литературного языка свою самобытную судьбу. Вычленение из общего словника лексики, сопровождаемой пометой «канц.», дает возможность представить отдельную лексико-стилистическую подсистему как целое (корпус), исследовать ее внутреннюю организацию, рассмотреть наиболее значимые свидетельства влияния на неё внеязыковых факторов. Лексика с пометой «канц.» в словаре Ушакова демонстрирует активность метонимических механизмов, действие принципа экономии речевых усилий при ее образовании. В ходе исследования канцелярской лексики, имеющей «деловую прописку» не в основном значении, отчетливо проявилась, с одной стороны, её тесная связь с книжной письменной культурой, что впоследствии отразилось на заметной архаизации канцелярской речи в целом, с другой стороны, - с разговорной речью, особенно в способах морфологического образования новых слов. В статье описывается частеречный состав выделенного корпуса лексем, его тематические и функциональные особенности. Подчеркивается, что наиболее представительной в количественном и содержательном плане оказывается именная лексика с общей темой «делопроизводство», включающая как слова, уходящие из канцелярского обихода (мемория, переснять), так и такие, что только формируют свои «деловые» значения (деловод, дирижер, зав). Рассматривается примечательная история канцеляризма бумага, выступавшего в качестве родового термина для любого документа в начале советской эпохи. Последовательно проводится мысль о том, что в словаре, ориентированном, прежде всего, на фиксацию нормы современного русского языка советской эпохи, отчетливо фиксируется формирующаяся отдельность делового стиля, в котором все более заметно «отчуждение» человека от текста, от его личностного, авторского начала.

Abstract
The article discusses lexemes marked in the explanatory dictionary edited by D. N. Ushakov with the note “kants.” (officialese), which accompanies other than the main entry (direct) meaning of a polysemantic word. This limitation in the research material, first of all, allows tracing the historico-stylistic “shifts” of the selected lexemes - mainly from natural language to clichéd business speech, which has its own unique history of development within the Russian literary language. Singling out the vocabulary accompanied by the mark “kants.” in the general vocabulary makes it possible to present a separate lexico-stylistic subsystem as one whole (a corpus), explore its internal organization, and consider the most significant evidence of the influence of extra-linguistic factors on it. The vocabulary marked “kants.” in Ushakov’s dictionary demonstrates the activity of metonymic mechanisms and the work of the principle of economy of speech effort at the moment of its formation. In the course of the study of official vocabulary, belonging to the group “officialese” in its secondary meaning(s), it has been clearly revealed that, on the one hand, it is closely associated with bookish written culture, which subse-quently results in the noticeable archaization of the officialese in general, and on the other hand, with colloquial speech, especially in the ways of morphological formation of new words. The article describes the part-of-speech composition of the selected corpus of lexemes and its thematic and functional features. It is emphasized that the most representative in terms of quantity and content is the nominal vocabulary with the general theme of “office work”, including both words that are leaving office usage (memoriya ‘memorial’, peresnyat’ ‘copy’), and those that are just forming their “official” meanings (delovod ‘clerk’, dirizhor ‘conductor’, zav ‘manager’). The article considers a remarkable history of the officialese bumaga ‘paper’, which used to be a generic term for any document in the early Soviet era. The study gradually and carefully develops the idea that the dictionary, focused primarily on fixing the norms of the contemporary Russian language of the Soviet era, clearly records the emerging separation of the official style, in which the “alienation” of a person from the text and from its personal, authorial essence becomes more and more salient.

In the wave of Umberto Eco's oppositional binomial Dictionary-Encyclopedia, the paper aims to apply the rhizomatic system to the practical case of the (ethno)racial lexicon as a broad semantic area of the word race, which previously involved both physical predisposition and cultural habits. Given its critical issues, the dictionarial approach is distinguished into two different stages, intradictionarial (properly dictionarial) and inter-dictionarial (resulting from the metaphorical chain of meanings). Originally, race referred to horses (stud and herds) and property (as ownership and essential attribute), which extended metonymically to other sensesgeneral zoological-botanic, human (lineage, offspring) and typological qualitative ones. Comparing its correspondents in Romance and Germanic languages, reference to many different contexts and a continuous misalignment between lexeme and concept emerge. The liquidity within the semantic sphere of race (embracing the three semantic cores racial, ethnic, and typological) can be explained by taking a phenomenological and semiotic perspective. If the ethnic sense (people, nation, etc.) is connected to a socio-cultural Lifeworld in an interplay of identities and differences, the aporia of synonymy emerging from the inter-dictionarial analysis finds its balance in the local encyclopedic approach, which proves to be the real deterrent to Porphyry's tree through the rhizome, conceived not in its entirety, but in the partiality and contingency of its branches.