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- Title
A conceptual perspective of the evolution of Spanish frente from body part to locative/spatial concept and beyond.
- Authors
Waltermire, Mark
- Abstract
The Spanish word frente (O.Sp. fruente < Lat. frōns), meaning 'forehead', has changed gradually over time to be incorporated into a wide variety of modern forms that convey locative meanings and spatial relations as well as personal qualities. The purpose of the current study is to determine approximately when these new forms incorporating frente developed, the mechanisms for these various changes, and the cognitive ramifications of such developments. A total of 725 tokens of frente from works of fiction spanning three time periods (1200-1450; 1451-1750; 1751-2000) are analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively according to collocation, meaning, and syntactic phrase. Each of these analyses, when viewed holistically, shows that the original source lexeme has largely decategorialized as a noun and has been abstracted of its locative/spatial characteristics to be gradually incorporated into prepositional and adverbial forms. It is shown that, conceptually, prepositions profile spatial relations between a trajector and a landmark whereas adverbs profile the location of a trajector alone. These grammatical uses of frente as well as other even more abstract uses denoting personal qualities have developed over time due to cognitive processes such as abstraction, synecdoche, metaphor, and inference. Cases such as the evolution of frente from concrete noun to uses in locative/ spatial forms as well as forms with even more abstract meanings give further justification for the need of a linguistic model that is cognitive-based.
- Subjects
HISTORICAL linguistics; SPANISH language; SPANISH language -- Grammar, Historical; SPANISH language -- To 1500; SPANISH language -- Classical Period, 1500-1700; HISTORY; SEMANTICS
- Publication
Folia Linguistica, 2017, Vol 51, p325
- ISSN
0165-4004
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1515/flih-2017-0011