Abstract
<p>The aim of the present study is to investigate the role of conceptual metaphor in the polysemy of the visual verb of /baxmaq/ (look) in Azerbaijani Turkish within the framework of cognitive semantics. The research method is a descriptive—analytic and the study tries to present the various meanings of the verb. To achieve this goal, the linguistic data was gathered by using Azerbaijani Turkish dictionaries, books, magazines, newspapers, and one of the authors’ linguistic intuitions. The findings indicate that for visual verb /baxmaq/ there are 19 senses with regard to its classification and abstracting away of contextual variations. They also show that the polysemy is a systematic phenomenon and factor such as metaphor and metonymy are crucially involved in the formation and description of polysemy and this makes broad meaning and eventually leads to polysemy of verb. In this way, semantic extensive network of verb is formed and on the other hand, it is claimed that metaphor has stronger role than metonymy in the formation of polysemy and usage of verb in the different context. The findings also show that polysemy is not randomly and forms based on our experiences of different concepts and the meanings of verbs are different from each other because they are understood from different ways.</p>
Highlights
Cognitive linguistics has its roots in the linguistic discussions as well as the recent cognitive sciences which appeared in 1960’s and 1970’s, in investigating categorization and conceptualization in human’s mind and Gestalt psychology (Evans & Green, 2006, p. 6)
The findings show that polysemy is not randomly and forms based on our experiences of different concepts and the meanings of verbs are different from each other because they are understood from different ways
The present study is a descriptive investigation which aims at exploring different meanings of the visual verb /baxmaq/ in Azerbaijani Turkish according to the cognitive semantics approach and providing a description of the relationships that exist among these meanings as well as the causes of these relations
Summary
Cognitive linguistics has its roots in the linguistic discussions as well as the recent cognitive sciences which appeared in 1960’s and 1970’s, in investigating categorization and conceptualization in human’s mind and Gestalt psychology (Evans & Green, 2006, p. 6). One of the most basic parts of the study of cognitive semantics is the investigation of metaphor from a cognitive point of view which was first proposed by Lakoff & Johnson (1980) as the “Theory of Conceptual Metaphor” or the “Theory of Cognitive Metaphor” where in metaphor is a stylistic feature of language, but thought and mind have a metaphorical nature as well. They emphasize that metaphor is not necessarily a language tool to convey thought, but it is a way of thinking about different things. They have concluded that abstract concepts in human’s mind are organized via using concrete concepts which means that language clarifies the issues we express, or understand abstract concepts based on concrete concepts (Lakoff & Johnson, 2003, p. 28)
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