El cambio semántico del verbo pegar en catalán (siglos XIII–XXI)

Abstract

This article studies the polysemy of the verb pegar from a diachronic perspective. The study is based on research conducted on an extensive corpus of texts written between the 13th and 21st centuries, as well as on the information provided by different historical dictionaries. The author identifies the different meanings acquired by the verb pegar by documenting and dating them. The analysis shows that the meanings that are most directly related with the etymological sense of sticking gradually become obsolete. In contrast, new meanings connected with them are generated, one of the most important being the sense of ‘to touch with a certain amount of violence or intensity, to hit’. The interpretation of the semantic change was carried out within the theoretical model of cognitive linguistics. Following this theoretical perspective, a radial semantic network is proposed as a way to illustrate the relations among the different senses. Furthermore, the interconnections and overlapping of the meanings, largely produced by metonymic and metaphoric inferences, are also explained.