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- Title
Semantic change of basic perception verbs in English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Hungarian.
- Authors
Galac, Ádám
- Abstract
This study reports on the findings of a contrastive analysis of the changes in the semantic prototypes of basic perception verbs in the history of six European languages: English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Hungarian. All verbs found to have functioned as basic perception verbs during a period in one of the languages were included in the research, not only those that are basic perception verbs today. My primary aim was to find historical linguistic data on the cultural role and conceptualization of the five sensory modalities in – the broadly understood – Western society. The patterns that can be observed in the instances of semantic change point to the same domains that Sweetser (1990: 23-48) has found to be associated with vision, audition, gustation, and tactition. Concerning olfaction, its linguistic coding shows three characteristics: olfactory verbs tend to get semantically generalized; the conceptualization of an olfactory event is closer to the “passive frame”, as coined by Kövecses (2019); olfactory vocabulary has a strong tendency to acquire negative connotations. Olfaction’s culturally assigned role seems to delineate a subordinate, rather unconscious and uncontrollable sensory modality that is often linked with negative emotions.
- Subjects
SEMANTICS; ENGLISH language -- Verb; ETYMOLOGY; HISTORICAL linguistics; LANGUAGE &; culture
- Publication
Argumentum (1787-3606), 2020, Issue 16, p125
- ISSN
1787-3606
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.34103/ARGUMENTUM/2020/9