Lexical Typology Research Articles

Editorial: The evolution of meaning: challenges in quantitative lexical typology

Editorial: The evolution of meaning: challenges in quantitative lexical typology

Semantic field SEARCH in Amguema Chukchi: From morphosyntax to semantics and back

The study describes the semantic field of search in Amguema Chukchi within the frame-based approach to lexical typology. I discuss lexical items of the macroframe of seeking an object (‘search for something’): the verb qərirək and the lexical affixes ‑rerək and ‑ɣiɬik; verbs of the macroframe of searching space (‘search some place’): ojpətkok и rəritɬʔewək; and the verb enarerək, which covers both macroframes and can also describe objectless search. In addition to unveiling semantic oppositions within each macroframe, the study examines in detail the interaction of morphosyntax, etymology, and semantics of the items of the field. First, a historical explanation is provided for the properties of the verb enarerək, unique with respect to valency expression, which yields its broad semantics. The explanation is based on the historical presence of the antipassive prefix in this verb and, at the same time, on the fact that this voice alternation has been lost in the Amguema dialect. Secondly, differences in the behavior of independent lexemes and lexical affixes that compete in the macroframe of searching for an object are considered. I conclude that there is a correlation between the referentiality of the searched object and the degree of boundedness of the morpheme with the meaning ‘to search’. Noticeably, the correlation within the semantic field of search manifests itself in the form of combinability restrictions that are not obligatory for independent verbs or lexical affixes outside the field. Thirdly, for the macroframe of searching space, I trace the transmission of semantic restrictions on combinability from the source field.

A semantic study of "heavy" and its corresponding Chinese word "zhong"

This paper aims to analyze the English adjective "heavy" and its corresponding word in Chinese, "zhong", using the framework of lexical typology as suggested by François (2008). Through this article, we gain a comprehensive understanding of the various semantic meanings associated with "heavy" in English. These semantic meanings are derived from empirical observations and functional properties. Moreover, we compare these meanings with their corresponding counterparts in Chinese, revealing both similarities and differences with the word "zhong". In the English language, "heavy" is connected to several senses, as defined by the Oxford Dictionary. It can refer to something weighing a lot, being worse than usual, not delicate when modifying, being thick as a material, being full of something, being large and powerful when modifying machines, being busy, or being involved in physically demanding work (heavy digging/lifting). Additionally, "heavy" can modify actions like "fall" or "hit", describe a substantial amount of food, indicate excessive use, modify sounds, imply seriousness or difficulty, describe large bodies of water (e.g., sea/ocean), and pertain to weather conditions, air, and soil. Furthermore, it can connote strictness in certain contexts. Several of these meanings find parallels in the Chinese word "zhong", such as referring to something that weighs a lot, modifying machines to signify size and power, relating to physically demanding work (e.g., heavy digging/lifting), describing the fall or impact of objects, indicating a substantial amount of food, or denoting seriousness or difficulty. Moreover, both "heavy" and "zhong" share the function of modifying actions related to drinking, smoking, or sleeping. However, it is important to note that in Chinese, alternative words like "chen" or "si" can also be used to express similar ideas.

Lexical systems with systematic gaps: verbs of falling

Abstract The paper contributes to the typology of encoding motion events by highlighting the role of the verbal root meaning in lexicalization of motion. We focus on lexical semantics of the verbs of falling, which we study on a sample of 42 languages using the frame-based approach to lexical typology. We show that, along with downward motion, the verbs of falling regularly denote adjacent situations; and vice versa, the idea of downward motion is systematically conveyed by verbs from adjacent semantic fields. These findings challenge the application of the classical parameters of motion events (e.g. Path) to any given motion event description and offer new insights into the understanding of lexicalization patterns in general.

Causal inference of diachronic semantic maps from cross-linguistic synchronic polysemy data

Semantic maps are used in lexical typology to summarize cross-linguistic implicational universals of co-expression between meanings in a domain. They are defined as networks which, using as few links as possible, connect the meanings so that every isolectic set (i.e., set of meanings that can be expressed by the same word in some language) forms a connected component. Due to the close connection between synchronic polysemies and semantic change, semantic maps are often interpreted diachronically as encoding potential pathways of semantic extension. While semantic maps are traditionally generated by hand, there have been attempts to automate this complex and non-deterministic process. I explore the problem from a new algorithmic angle by casting it in the framework of causal discovery, a field which explores the possibility of automatically inferring causal structures from observational data. I show that a standard causal inference algorithm can be used to reduce cross-linguistic polysemy data into minimal network structures which explain the observed polysemies. If the algorithm makes its link deletion decisions on the basis of the connected component criterion, the skeleton of the resulting causal structure is a synchronic semantic map. The arrows which are added to some links in the second stage can be interpreted as expressing the main tendencies of semantic extension. Much of the existing literature on semantic maps implicitly assumes that the data from the languages under analysis is correct and complete, whereas in reality, semantic map research is riddled by data quality and sparseness problems. To quantify the uncertainty inherent in the inferred diachronic semantic maps, I rely on bootstrapping on the language level to model the uncertainty caused by the given language sample, as well as on random link processing orders to explore the space of possible semantic maps for a given input. The maps inferred from the samples are then summarized into a consensus network where every link and arrow receives a confidence value. In experiments on cross-linguistic polysemy data of varying shapes, the resulting confidence values are found to mostly agree with previously published results, though challenges in directionality inference remain.

한중 ‘sharp-blunt’ 의미장 대조 분석 ― 모스크바 어휘유형론(MLexT)의 관점에서

본고는 어휘유형론 연구방법론을 한국어와 중국어의 어휘 의미의 대조 연구에 응용한 것으로, 유형론적 관점에서 한국어와 중국어의 ‘sharp-blunt’류 의미장의 개념화와 파생 의미를 대조 분석한 후 다음과 같은 결론을 도출하였다.BR 개념화 양상을 살펴보면, 한국어 ‘sharp’의미장은 ‘기능’프레임과 ‘점’프레임의 대립이 뚜렷한 반면에 중국어 ‘sharp’의미장은 ‘기능’프레임이 뚜렷하지만, 내부적으로는 ‘선’과 ‘점’의 대립이 뚜렷한데, ‘선’류는 ‘快’, ‘尖’로 점류는 ‘尖利, 锐利’로 나타낸다. 한국어 ‘blunt’의미장은 ‘뭉뚝하다’가 ‘기능’프레임과 ‘형상’프레임을 포괄적으로 묘사하며, ‘무디다’가 기능 프레임 전부를 묘사한다. 반면, 중국어 ‘blunt’의미장은 ‘형상’프레임이 존재하지 않으며, [기능+선], [기능+점]프레임을 하나의 단어 ‘钝’이 나타낸다.BR 파생의미를 살펴보면, 한국어와 중국어의 ‘sharp’의미장은 도구 사용자 측면에서의 긍정의미와 도구에 다친 수동자 측면에서의 부정의미를 모두 가진다. 한국어 ‘sharp’의미장은 부정의미에서 청각, 후각상 불쾌한 감각을, 중국어의 ‘sharp’의미장은 청각상 불쾌한 감각만을 나타낸다. 영상도식 관련 의미는 중국어에만 있는데, ‘锐’가 ‘급속’의 의미를 나타낸다. 중국어와 한국어의 ‘blunt’의미장은 모두 ‘동작, 반응, 인지가 느리다’는 파생의미를 가진다.

A Semantic Study of the Chinese Word “qing” and Its Corresponding Word “light” in English

This article is aimed to analyze a semantic study of the Chinese word “qing” and its corresponding word “light” in English according to the framework of Lexical Typology suggested in françois (2008). From this article, we can clearly see the different semantic meanings of “light” in English. It will be shown by empirical observation sand functional properties. And they will be compared with the corresponding Chinese word “qing”to show similarities and differences of these two totally different language meanings.

Semantic field SEEK: Shughni data in the light of lexical typology

The paper deals with verbs and verbal constructions with the meaning ‘to seek, to search, to look for’ (the semantic field SEEK) in the Shughni language against a typological background. On the basis of dictionary data and the results of elicitation sessions with native speakers, the peculiarities of the lexicalization of the SEEK field in modern Shughni are revealed, and assumptions are made regarding the dynamics of the development of this system from the middle of the twentieth century to the present day. We show that, in this semantic field, there is a clear lexical dominant — the verb x̌ikīdow — with a very wide scope of use, including search for objects of different types (specific and non-specific) by different subjects (humans or animals) and in different ways (visually, tactually, with the help of speech activity, etc.). In some semantic domains within the field of seeking, it competes with other verbs and constructions: in the domain of searching a space, the construction tīr či bīr čīdow ‘to turn upside down’ is used, as well as the verbs čīx̌tow ‘to look’ and qilāptow ‘to rummage’, denoting visual and tactual search, respectively; the construction siroq čīdow (lit. ‘search to do’) can describe a search carried out by asking others around. Several verbs denoting, according to the dictionary data, a search in the dark (warθāptow, zi(r)ɣāptow, and warwarθtow), went out of use, two more — tilāptow ‘to ask’ and x̌iqāptow ‘to chat, invent’ — lost the meaning of seeking. The description of the system of the Shughni verbs of seeking is supplemented by an analysis of their polysemy: cases of using these verbs outside the SEEK field are highlighted and the nature of such colexifications is discussed.

Semantic maps and temperature: Capturing the lexicon-grammar interface across languages

AbstractTraditionally, lexical typology has to a large extent been interested inlexical categorizationof various cognitive domains (e. g.,colour,perception,body), i. e., in how these are cut up by the most important words in a language, and inlexical motivation, or formal relatedness, i. e., in whether words for certain concepts are completely unrelated or related to others via polysemy or derivation (e. g., intransitive vs. transitive verbs, words for ‘day’ and ‘sun’, etc.).Grammatical behaviorof words andmorphosyntactic patternsas encoding meanings traditionally belong to grammatical typology. In this paper, I consider the domain oftemperatureand show how the close interaction between lexicon and grammar in the encoding of the temperature domain across languages calls for an integrated lexico-grammatical approach to these phenomena. As a useful tool for such an enterprise I suggest an elaborated semantic map comprising three layers – the layer specifying the words with the information on their mutual formal relations (i. e., whether they are identical, completely unrelated or related via derivation or inflection), their morphosyntactic properties (e. g., their part-of-speech affiliation, inflectional potential, etc.), and the constructions they occur in.

Lexical typology and semantic maps: Perspectives and challenges

AbstractThe paper outlines the basics of data collection, analysis and visualization under the frame-based approach to lexical typology and illustrates its methodology using the data of cross-linguistic research on verbs of falling. The framework reveals several challenges to semantic map modelling that usually escape researchers’ attention. These are: (1) principles of establishing lexical comparative concepts; (2) the effective ways of visualization for the opposition between direct and figurative meanings of lexical items; (3) the problem of the borderlines between semantic fields, which seem to be very subtle. These problems are discussed in detail in the paper, as well as possible theoretical decisions and semantic modelling techniques that could overcome these bottlenecks.

한중 ‘falling(떨어지다)’류 동사 어휘유형론 연구

This study compared the falling verbs in Korean and Chinese based on the theoretical system of Moscow lexical typology. The falling semantic domain consists of three frames: ‘falling’, ‘collapsing’, and ‘separating’. ‘falling’ frame and ‘separating’ frame in Korean are co-lexicalized by the verb ‘tteol-eo-ji-’ and ‘collapsing’ frame is expressed using other words ‘neom-eo-ji’ and ‘sseu-leo-ji’. On the other hand, In Chinese ‘falling’ frame and ‘separating’ frame are co-lexicalized by the verb ‘diao(掉)’, ‘separating’ frame and ‘collapsing’ frame are co-lexicalized by ‘dao(倒)’, ‘shuang(摔)’, ‘zai(栽)’ partially co-lexicalized ‘falling’ frame and ‘separating’ frame. The extended meaning of the falling verb in Korean and Chinese is generally consistent with the cross-linguistic extended meaning. In Korean, ‘tteol-eo-ji-’ refers to the extended meaning of ‘decline’, ‘reduction’, ‘fall behind’, while ‘neom-eo-ji’ and ‘sseu-leo-ji’ refer to ‘unexpected situations and events’. Another word ‘ppa-ci-’ represents an ‘uncontrollable state’ such as emotion, addiction, etc. The Korean falling verb has no extended meaning related to ‘change of direction’. On the other hand, ‘diao(掉)’ and ‘luo(落)’ in Chinese represent the extended meaning of ‘reduction and decline’, ‘change of direction’, ‘transformation’, ‘exchange’, ‘separating’ frame in Chinese represents ‘a change of direction’.

空间维度形容词“THICK/THIN”的词汇类型学研究

Drawing on the theoretical framework and methodology of the Moscow Lexical Typology Group (MLexT), this paper examines the usage of the basic meanings of the spatial dimensional adjectives “THICK/THIN” in thirteen languages. Our conclusions are as follows: Among the thirteen languages investigated, the basic meanings of “THICK/THIN” in all Asian and European languages can indicate the distance between the upper and lower surfaces of a flat object, including “the upper and lower surfaces of a flat, solid object”, “the upper and lower surfaces of liquid”, “the irregular upper and lower surfaces of gas”, and “the upper and lower surfaces of a flat body part”. This reflects the cognitive commonality of different countries from different regions and cultures. For most Asian languages, “THICK/THIN” can only be used to describe the upper and lower surfaces of flat objects. For most European languages, “thick/thin” can describe flat as well as cylindrical and linear objects, which reflects cognitive characteristics of each country in different regions. Even within Asia, “THICK/THIN” are used in very different ways in Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, and Indonesian. In Korean, “THICK/THIN” can describe not only flat objects but also “linear objects on a flat surface”, while Vietnamese can describe not only flat objects but also “linear objects”, “linear objects on a flat surface”, and “cross-sections of cylindrical objects”. These two languages expand the semantic range of “THICK/THIN” in Asian languages. As with European languages, Indonesian and Thai use “thick/thin” for flat objects as well as cylindrical objects. However, “THICK/THIN” in Indonesian cannot describe the “cross-section of a cylindrical body part”. It is possible in Thai, but one cannot use “THICK/THIN” to describe the four limbs. Among European languages, French is an exception. “THICK/THIN” cannot describe a linear object placed in a three-dimensional space and not on a flat surface. We have thereby demonstrated cross-linguistic semantic commonalities and verified the feasibility and applicability of the MLexT theory in lexical typology. Meanwhile, the differences between different languages in different regions and in the same region also reveal the differences in the socio-cultural context of human cognition.

Language, Conceptualization and Embodied Cognition

The article presents one of the four research programs of the Center for Philosophy of Consciousness and Cognitive Sciences, which is focused on studying cognitive processes on the basis of linguistic material and in interaction with other cognitive sciences. The program is prepared at the junction of modern cognitive linguistics, cognitive anthropology, and the theory of embodied cognition. It involves an analysis of several “levels” of cognition: pre-conceptual experience, perception and motor cognition, thinking, and philosophical creativity. After a brief outline of the program, one of the examples of its implementation — an interdisciplinary approach to the problem of prenoetic schematization (“image schemas”) — is discussed. Materials of descriptive semantics, lexical and grammatical typology, theory of conceptual metaphor, theory of grammaticalization, etc. are involved. As a result, it is demonstrated, first, the practical interaction of different cognitive sciences to study one of the areas of cognition; second, the real complexity of such interaction; third, the relevance of such interaction for a deeper understanding of philosophical problems and our own facticity.

A FRAGMENT OF THE LEXICAL SYSTEM OF KAZYM KHANTY: THE VERBS PITTI ‘TO FALL; TO GET INTO SOMEWHERE’ AND ΧƆJTI ‘TO TOUCH; TO HIT THE TARGET’, AND THEIR ARGUMENT STRUCTURE

The study describes the semantics of the Kazym Khanty verbs pitti ‘to fall; to get into somewhere’ and χɔjti ‘to touch; to hit the target’ as analyzed from the perspective of the frame-based approach to lexical typology. According to this approach, semantic fields consist of certain situation types, or frames, which are denoted by the lexemes belonging to the field. The situation types correspond to distributional patterns and serve as a basis for cross-linguistic comparison of word meanings. The paper identifies and illustrates the sets of physical meanings of the verbs in question, with a special focus on the domain of variation between pitti and χɔjti. It is shown that these verbs concur in contexts involving the semantics of either getting (occasionally) into somewhere (cf. A fly got into my soup) or hitting the target (cf. The arrow hit him in the arm). Evidence from Kazym Khanty, as well as from available cross-linguistic data, suggests that these meanings are adjacent to each other, while the meaning ‘to get into somewhere’ is closer to the domain of falling, and the meaning ‘to hit the target’ is closer to the domain of physical contact. Thus, the meanings ‘to fall’, ‘to get into somewhere’, ‘to hit the target’, and ‘to touch’ form a semantic continuum with no clear-cut boundaries between the semantic fields. This hypothesis is further supported by morphosyntactic variation in encoding of the patientive argument of the verb χɔjti, which seems to be influenced by the morphological pattern inherent to the verb pitti.

A Comparative Analysis of Chinese ‘玩, English ‘play’ and Korean ‘놀다’ from the Perspective of Lexical Typology

Different languages have the same way of cognition of the same concept, but also have many differences. There are also ambiguities for words with the same conceptual meaning. The similarities will help people understand this language faster and easier, and the existence of differences and ambiguities also brings many barriers to understanding. Therefore, it is very necessary for people to understand the language to compare words in different languages under the same concept and find the similarities and differences between them.<BR> Regarding the similarities and differences between the cognitive existence of languages, this article chooses to analyze the semantic map. This paper sorts out and analyzes the data of dictionaries, corpora and related dictionary websites, and sums up 36 different meanings in three languages. After comparing and analyzing these 36 different sense items, 28 sense items were determined as the base points of the semantic map, and the semantic map was drawn on this basis. Through the comparison of semantic maps, it can be seen that in the three languages, the meaning of ‘玩耍’ diverges outwards, thus forming numerous meanings. Among the three languages, Korean has the strongest divergence and produces the most meanings. The semantic divergence of the three languages also has completely different expansion paths.<BR> Through this article, you can have a preliminary understanding of the commonalities and differences between languages. For learners of English, Chinese and Korean, they can also have a deeper understanding of the three languages, and they can use more accurate vocabulary when choosing words and making sentences.

Smell terms are not rara: A semantic investigation of odor vocabulary in Thai

AbstractLarge lexica of basic smell terms are considered to be restricted to a handful of small languages of non-industrialized societies. Accordingly, they are thought to belong to the sphere of rara within lexical typology (Plank 2001.Das grammatische Raritätenkabinett. Konstanz: University of Konstanz.https://typo.uni-konstanz.de/rara/intro/index.php(accessed 3 October 2017)). However, smell lexica might in fact be more common than previously suggested. In this article, we discuss the case of Thai – a language with a population of tens of millions of speakers – which defies this assumption. We show Thai has a sizeable lexicon of terms for olfactory qualities, and investigate their semantics using a multi-method approach. In particular, we demonstrate a novel use of exemplar listing where – in addition to giving insights into the terms’ extensions – exemplar data is used to reveal the structure of the lexicon. Additionally, we use corpus data to provide complementary information on meaning and usage, thereby showing the advantage of multi-method approaches. Overall, the findings suggest smell lexica are not rara, and their distribution in the world’s languages goes beyond the stereotypical cases of languages spoken by small-scale societies.

Глаголы падения в норвежском языке (букмол)

This paper deals with verbs of falling in Norwegian (Bokmål). The study is based on the frame approach to lexical typology developed by the Moscow lexical typology group. In accordance with this approach, lexical units are described with regard to the possibilities of their use in typical situations (frames), where prototypical participants occur. As the study shows, Norwegian has a dominant system of verbs of falling, in which the whole set of frames is covered by one verb (in the case of Norwegian it is the verb falle). The dominant verb has a fairly wide network of synonyms, which consists mainly of expressive verbs. Among them, there is a subgroup of lexemes that convey a sound which a falling object produces when it reaches a solid surface. There is also a number of onomatopoeic verbs describing light objects falling from above in the air or describing the fall of large masses of liquids. A separate small group is made up of so-called meteorological verbs denoting precipitation. On the periphery of the semantic domain of falling there are verbs marking a change from normal vertical position of floating objects to horizontal or vertical (and some other verbs). Of particular interest are cases of the development of ‘falling’ semantics for verbs that are etymologically related to other meanings (for instance, ‘roll’) or have a different basic meaning in modern Norwegian (‘trickle’, ‘slam, punch’).

Глаголы падения в чукотском языке

The paper focuses on the lexicalization of falling events in Amguema Chukchi, which is a variety of the eastern dialect of Chukchi, spoken by inland reindeer herders in the tundra around the village of Amguema in the Chukotka Peninsula. The data on which the research is based were collected in course of authors’ own fi eldwork. The research is done in the framework developed by the Moscow Lexical Typology Group: the authors investigate diff erent frames pertaining to the conceptual field of falling, checking whether they can or cannot be lexicalized by several verbs that the language possesses. The system has two main verbs, peqetatək, which denotes falling from a higher level to a lower one, and eretək, which is used to describe toppling down of vertically oriented elongated objects. For example, only the former will be used in a sentence describing a cup falling from a table onto the ground, and only the latter describes falling down of a tree during a windstorm or of a person who has slipped up. This semantic opposition is cross-linguistically recurrent, furthermore, it is the major opposition which structures the field of falling from the typological point of view. The system is further furnished by several verbs which lexicalize narrow classes of situations: atsatək ‘topple down (of non-elongated objects that have a prototypical orientation in space and lose this orientation)’, kuwɬitkuk ‘roll down’, pəɬqetək ‘fall into water, drown’ и ŋərepetək ‘fall into a substance’. Another interesting feature of the Chukchi system is the absence of metaphors with falling as source cognitive domain. This fact is cross-linguistically peculiar, as in general falling events are particularly prone to give rise to metaphors. Finally, the verbs ŋətək ‘break free from a leash, separate oneself from something’ и pirqək ‘bend down to earth’ develop secondary meanings that pertain to the semantic domain of falling, ‘fall out (e.g. of teeth or hair)’ and ‘sink in (e. g. of a tent)’ correspondingly

Глаголы со значением падения в корейском языке

The article discusses the semantic field of the verbs of falling in Korean language. Semantics of the fi eld of falling is investigated by using frame-based methodology of Moscow Lexical Typology group that is widely used for analysis of different semantic fi elds. In the article theoretical background is shortly discussed, necessary terms are presented (frame, domain etc.), and then semantic fi eld of falling in Korean is investigated. It is shown that the choice of the verb of falling depends on several features of the falling object and situation on the whole (type of falling: falling from above vs. loss of vertical orientation vs. crashing down vs. detachment, starting and ending point, reason of falling etc.). In Korean there is one dominant verb tteleci-ta that can be used in the majority of situations with some exceptions. However, we have found eleven other specifi c lexemes — their usage is limited by the type of falling. The wideness of the usage diff ers from verb to verb, but there is no verb that would cross the frame borders: every lexeme covers a whole frame, its part, or a combination of frames, but not a set of parts related to diff erent frames. We describe the meaning of each verb in terms of frames (or subframes) that they cover and provide examples. In our analysis, we rely on the set of frames that was developed beforehand by Moscow Lexical Typology group based on cross-linguistic data. Our Korean data were collected with the help of a context-based questionnaire: native Korean speakers were asked to translate sentences representing various situations of falling from Russian or English to Korean using the verb that suits the best the situation and providing synonyms for the verb in this context. In conclusive remarks we present an overview of metaphorical usages of the verbs of falling, and compare the semantic shifts to those found in other languages.

Глаголы падения в современном китайском языке

This paper deals with verbs of falling in modern Chinese within the framework of lexical typology. The core and peripheral lexemes are described in detail, the structure of disyllabic lexemes is analyzed. A description of the structure of the semantic fi eld in Chinese and summary tables reflecting the verbs characteristic of each of the basic frames are proposed. Based on the analysis of the semantics of disyllabic lexemes and the monosyllables forming them, three types of semantic relations are distinguished: disjunction, intersection and mixed. Within the disjunction type the meaning of the disyllabic item coincides with the meaning of one of the components: for 掉落 diàoluò, 洒落 sǎluò, 降落 jiàngluò, 坠落 zhuìluò, 滴落 dīluò the meaning of the whole lexeme is equivalent to the meaning of the first component, for 坍塌 tāntā — of the second component. Within the intersection type the meaning of the disyllable is the intersecting part of the values of monosyllables. E.g., 倒 dǎo covers the frames “falling of a vertical object” and “destruction of a vertical object”, 塌 tā — “destruction of a vertical object”, “falling of the supporting surface”, “falling of the ceiling”, “collapse of mountains and coasts”, and 倒塌 dǎotā — only “destruction of a vertical object”. In the mixed type the value of the disyllable does not coincide with the value of monosyllables. It is also concluded that disyllabic lexemes, in contrast to monosyllabic ones, tend to be used in written language and are rarely used in colloquial language. Monosyllabic lexemes often express both direct and figurative meanings, disyllables tend to either direct or figurative meaning.