A two-dimensional semantic analysis of falling in Modern Greek: A typological and corpus-based approach
DOI:10.30842/alp2306573716105
Georgakopoulos T. A two-dimensional
semantic analysis of falling in Modern Greek: A typological and
corpus-based approach. Acta Linguistica Petropolitana.
2020. XVI(1): 188–224.
This paper investigates the semantic domain of falling in Modern Greek as it is reflected in its system of falling terms. Drawing from the frame-based methodology for lexical typology and based on a corpus-based analysis, it offers a description that covers two dimensions: an onomasiological and a semasiological. This two-dimensional analysis shows that the Modern Greek system should be classified as dominant, since the same lexeme, i.e. the Modern Greek equivalent of fall, is used to encode all four frames within this domain. It further reveals that the Modern Greek falling system, albeit dominant, gives space to other encoding strategies to emerge. As a matter of fact, 13 additional motion verbs can be used to describe the various situation types. However, these verbs are confined within the boundaries of each frame. The very fact that each verb belongs to only one frame supports indirectly the existence of the four different frames. The analysis also indicates that the use of the basic lexeme is ruled out only in a few cases that involve the motion of a substance out of a container under the effect of gravity (parameter of fluidity) as well as the collapse of a floor or of an ice layer. Additionally, the study establishes the prototypical sense of the basic lexeme and allows the identification of certain collocation patterns associated with it. Finally, it offers the opportunity to cluster the senses of this basic verb into groups on the basis of their distributional (dis)similarity. To provide visual representations of the results, the current paper uses semantic maps, whereby nodes stand for both frames and micro-frames, as well as cluster hierarchies displayed as a dendrogram. Overall, the paper contributes to the typological analysis of the expression of falling. It offers insights on how the whole domain is carved up by the falling terms in a particular language and its results add to the body of typological literature investigating this domain.
Keywords
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