Semantic Motivation Research Articles

О НАЦИОНАЛЬНОМ СВОЕОБРАЗИИ ЦВЕТОВОЙ СИМВОЛИКИ В РУССКОМ И КИТАЙСКОМ ЯЗЫКАХ

The article is devoted to the research on the national specific features of color symbolism embodied in color words in the Russian and Chinese languages. In a language system, each color is characterized by cognitive, emotional and information functions for all the peoples of the world. However, in a particular culture each color serves as a special symbol, which can be associated by native speakers with similar or different emotions and reflect rich potential of national cultures. Color words, having symbolic properties, are not only important means to describe the world, but also they perform a cultural-linguistic function to convey emotions of people belonging to different nations. In the Russian and Chinese languages, there are many color words with a strong national flavor. Apart from evoking rich associations and expressing emotional experiences and feelings, they also form a distinct national color culture and have a great influence on human life of the two countries. The vivid contrast between the two languages helps to comprehend the semantic motivation of color words, shades of meanings of color symbolism and cultural identity.

Мотивированность терминов военного дискурса (на материале английского языка)

Specifics of motivation of terminological items of military sublanguage formed in semantic way is covered. The material is the English articles devoted to the military topic. In the analyzed sublanguage there is high frequency of cases of semantic motivation, arising from a metaphorical transfer of the meaning of words of common language. The study of military terminology in the aspect of its motivation is relevant in connection with active formation of terminology of the military sublanguage in conditions of modern technological progress. The study of the phenomenon of motivation in sublanguages gives an idea about general laws of development of a specific language as the language system. The terms are considered in the light of such criteria as the presence of motivation, type of motivation, type of a motivated term and the direction of metaphorization of motivated terms. The most productive metaphorical models of military terms in the English language are determined. The cases of combination of different types of motivation within the same term are revealed. It is discovered that multi-component terms containing more than two components have a lower degree of motivation of the name. The results of comparative analysis of the types of motivated English military terms and their Russian equivalents are presented.

The polysemy of the Croatian verbal prefix od-

This paper explores the polysemy of the Croatian verbal prefix od- ‘(away) from’ from a Cognitive Grammar perspective (Langacker, 1987, 1991, etc.; Taylor, 2002). Despite the seemingly inordinate semantic heterogeneity of od-prefixed verbs, we argue that the different uses of od- are semantically motivated and that this has at least as much to do with the existence of a single abstract sanctioning schema as it does with the motivated extensions from the prototype, viz. spatial ablativity, or other category members. In this way we depart not only from the deep-rooted Croatian tradition, which tends to ignore any semantic motivation among different uses of a single prefix (e.g. Babić, 1986), but also from those cognitive linguistic approaches which rely on meaning chains, i.e. categorization by extension, to account for the polysemy of prefixes, prepositions and particles (e.g. Janda, 1985, 1986, 1988; Šarić, 2006a, 2006b, 2008, etc.).

Studentų vardai Šiaulių universitete

Nors lietuvių asmenvardžiai yra gana intensyviai tyrinėjami jau daug metų, tačiau Šiaulių universiteto studentų vardai yra mažai nagrinėti. Šiame straipsnyje siekiama ištirti Šiaulių universiteto studentų vardus sociolingvistiniu aspektu, atlikti kalbinę ir statistinę vardų analizę, apžvelgti studentų vardų įvairovę, jų populiarumą, vardų kilmę ir semantinę motyvaciją. Ištirti 7 166 studentų, studijavusių Šiaulių universitete 2000–2015 metais, vardai, iš kurių 5 776 yra merginų vardai, 1 390 – vaikinų vardai. Per analizuojamą laikotarpį suskaičiuoti 735 skirtingi vardai, iš kurių 491 yra moterų vardas, 244 – vyrų vardai. Nustatyta, kad populiariausias moters vardas yra sulotynintas graikiškos kilmės vardas Kristina (180 studenčių), antras pagal dažnumą – lietuviškas vardas Lina (177 studentės), trečias – graikiškos kilmės Jurgita (154 studentės). Dominuojantis vaikinų vardas yra hebrajiškos kilmės vardas Tomas (72 studentai), antroje vietoje – lietuviškas vardas Mindaugas (54 studentai), trečioje – graikiškas vardas Andrius (41 studentas). Išanalizavus vardų etimologiją pastebėta, kad tarp labiausiai paplitusių moterų vardų daugiausia yra lietuviškos kilmės vardų, pavyzdžiui, Aušra, Daiva, Jūratė, Rasa, Vaida, o populiariausių vyrų vardų dalyje vyrauja kalendoriniai krikštavardžiai – hebrajų, graikų, lotynų, germanų ir keltų.Tyrimo metu surinkti duomenys lyginami su Lietuvoje registruotais vaikų vardais (remtasi Valstybinės lietuvių kalbos komisijos parengto Lietuvos Respublikos piliečių sąvado ir Gyventojų registro tarnybos duomenimis).Išanalizavus studentų vardus paaiškėjo, kad kai kurie lietuviški vardai turi aiškią motyvuotą semantiką: vardai, reiškiantys charakterio, asmenybės požymius; vardai, susiję su tam tikrais gamtos reiškinių ir augalų pavadinimais. Daug nelietuviškos kilmės vardų atspindi teigiamas socialines ir kultūrines visuomenės ypatybes.Atliktas tyrimas parodė, kad Šiaulių universiteto studentų vardai atspindi socialinę ir kultūrinę visuomenės atmosferą, išryškina visuomenėje dominuojančias vertybes. Tai parodė senųjų lietuviškų vardų ir kalendorinių krikštavardžių didelis populiarumas bei mažesnis apeliatyvinių ir neįprastų, vengtinų deminutyvinių vardų paplitimas.

Apprivoiser la richesse des couleurs sur la palette du peintre, ou vers une liste terminologique des noms de couleurs

HOW TO MASTER THE ABUNDANCE OF COLOURS ON THE PAINTER’S PALETTE, OR A STEP TOWARDS THE TERMINOLOGICAL LIST OFTERMS RELATED TO COLOURS Colour as a subject has led to numerous studies in various disciplines such as physics, psychology, chemistry or history of art, to name a few. In the field of linguistics, the names of colours have been analysed from different points of view but all those works concerned mostly the words related to colours used in the general language. The aim of the present paper is to focus on the terms related to colours used in history of art texts, and to show the unexpected complexity of such terminology. After presenting the definitions of colour we will describe two different aspects of French terminology related to colour: firstly, the forms of terms from the point of view of their morphological and semantic motivation, and secondly, the cultural and historical reasons of such linguistic abundance and complexity of the colours’ terminology.

FAZENDO DE CONTA QUE VULCANO NÃO EXISTE

Meu objetivo neste artigo é apresentar e analisar algumas versões de teorias do faz de conta para existenciais negativas. Vou rapidamente apresentar a perspectiva de Evans e, em maior detalhe, as perspectivas de Walton e Kroon. Sustentarei que as duas primeiras não fornecem um tratamento adequado do fenômeno das existenciais negativas singulares, e que a perspectiva de Kroon é melhor do que ambas. Contudo, argumentarei que todas as três têm um mesmo problema, que chamo de o problema da motivação semântica.

Skot – wardęga – bydło w polskiej leksyce i onomastykonie

In the paper, I describe and analyse the Old Polish synonymous chain skot – wardega – bydlo from the angle of its etymology. The review of examples is mainly intended to illustrate the thesis that the category of proper names in a diachronic perspective developed in close relation with the development of the appellative sphere. It is a secondary category, subordinate in relation to the appellative sphere as proper names were, and continue to be, the building blocks of onyms. A parallel analysis of appellatives and onyms confirms the high word-formative variantive quality of the early stages of the Polish language. On the sidelines of the main considerations, I show to what extent the polysemy of lexemes i.e. words building proper names and the appellative homonymy and homonymy of proper names in these words makes it difficult, indeed sometimes even impossible, to reconstruct the semantic motivation.

Odslik hrvatsko-mađarskih dodira u hrvatskim prezimenima

U uvodnome dijelu rada autorica se kratko osvrće na povijest hrvatskih prezimena te na hrvatsko-mađarske jezične dodire i njihovo proučavanje. Pretkazivi rezultat višestoljetnoga državnog zajedništva Hrvata i Mađara jesu i hungarizmi, od kojih je samo manji dio sastavnica leksika hrvatskoga standardnog jezika (npr. bunda, cikla, cipela, čipka, čopor, karika, kočija, korov, lopov, palačinka, šator, soba). O hrvatsko-mađarskim dodirima na svoj specifičan način svjedoči i hrvatska onimija (npr. ojkonimi Madžarevo, Banfi, Daruvar, Varaždin, Laslovo, Farkaševac). Dio onimijske ukupnosti jesu i prezimena temeljena na mađarskim elementima (npr. Balog, Gazdić, Janušić, Kanižaj, Matjašec, Nagy, Palfi, Pišpek, Pongračić, Sabolčec, Vargek). Središnji je dio rada motivacijsko-semantička i tvorbena klasifikacija u hrvatskome prezimenskom fondu zasvjedočenih prezimena s mađarskim elementima popraćena odabranim primjerima. Uzimajući u obzir stupanj prilagođenosti u prezime ugrađenih mađarskih leksema hrvatskomu jeziku, tvorbenu strukturu tih prezimena, potvrđenost leksika mađarskoga podrijetla u hrvatskoj povijesnoj leksikografiji i sadašnjim hrvatskim govorima – pretpostavlja se da su neka na hungarizmima temeljena prezimena nastala u Hrvatskoj, a neka su u različitim razdobljima unesena u hrvatski prezimenik doseobom svojih nositelja. U zaključnome se dijelu rada, uz ostalo, ističe potreba daljnjega popisivanja i istraživanja hungarizama u hrvatskim nestandardnojezičnim govorima te u svekolikome imenskom mozaiku.

Co się ukrywa za nazwami emocji?

The article is devoted to the semantic motivations of the names of feelings. Its aim is to prove that when one researches semantic motivations one discovers the original associations connected with referents, in this case, feelings. In order to present the problem in an accessible way the most legible of the names were chosen for the analysis – especially those which acquired the meaning of a feeling by way of metaphor. The names whose structure is clear but which lost their legibility due to lexicalisation were also considered.

Las Metáforas Zoomorfas desde el Punto de Vista Cognitivo

We are presenting here an analysis of zoomorphism, metaphorical expressions containing nouns referring to humans. The objective is to analyze, from a cognitive linguistics approach, semantic motivations involved in the metaphorical uses of zoomorphism. It will address the effect of prototypicality and frame semantics present in animal lexicon, and metaphorical projection from human dominium to animal dominium.

Semantic motivation for the denotational identity of arguments in predication structures

Semantic motivation for the denotational identity of arguments in predication structuresThis text is an attempt at a preliminary outline of the factors that motivate the denotational identity of argument content in the predication structure as well as the consequences of this identity for the shape of the sentence expression which is a realization of such a structure.The first question this analysis attempts to answer concerns the structure of predicative concepts that constitute the predication structure with arguments of the identical content?The second question the cursory analysis done attempts to answer concerns the manner, in which the identity existing on the semantic structure level is signaled on the surface, in the formal structure.

A Metaphorical Study on Chinese Neologisms

In cognitive linguistics, metaphor is a way of thinking and an important means to perceive or conceptualize the world. It is also an economic and efficient way to create new words. With the development of the society, many neologisms spring up and are widely used by people. This paper aims at examining these Chinese neologisms from the perspective of metaphor by interpreting some examples. The findings indicate that Chinese neologisms have their semantic motivations and the interpretation of them is the result of operation of human cognition mechanism, which involves the metaphorical and metonymic thinking of human beings. This study provides a new way and perspective to study Chinese neologisms, which can also be used to study neologisms in other languages as well.

Dehumanizing metaphors in UK immigrant debates in press and online media

Some Internet genres, in particular Weblogs and discussion fora, have a dubious reputation for giving voice to strongly polemical discourses or hate-speech. This paper investigates the use of dehumanizing metaphors, specificallyparasitemetaphors, in British debates about immigration. It compares the range of metaphors used in Blogs with that used in online fora and in mainstream newspaper coverage and concludes that despite substantial variation, they can be categorised into four main scenarios, of which one includes dehumanizing metaphors such as depictions of immigrants asparasites, leeches,orbloodsuckers. Whilst this kind of stigmatizing imagery occurs across the three different media genres, the samples also show significant quantitative and qualitative differences: dehumanizing metaphors occur most often and their potential for aggressive argumentation and polemics is exploited in more detail in Blogs than in the fora, and least in the mainstream press. It is then asked what cognitive import this differential usage has in view of a) the discourse histories of such metaphors and b) their most likely present-day semantic motivation. The paper concludes that while it is unlikely that present-day users have detailed knowledge of the etymological and conceptual histories of such metaphors, it is also improbable to assume a wholly “unconscious” or “automatic” use or reception in the respective community of practice, and that instead it is more likely that they are used with a high degree of “deliberateness” and a modicum of discourse-historical awareness.

Ojkonimi s podstavo ‑sad‑ v vzhodnoslovanskem etnojezikovnem prostoru

V članku je prikazan proces formiranja vzhodnoslovanskih ojkonimov s podstavo ‑sad‑ (Сад, Садок, Сады, Садки, Новосады, Новосадки, Садовка, Самосадка, Садовая, Садовое). Ugotavlja se konkretna semantična motivacija ob upoštevanju posebnosti socialno‑ekonomskega razvoja posameznih zgodovinsko izoblikovanih območij, določa se relativna kronologija njihovega nastanka, prikazano in komentirano je območje njihove razprostranjenosti. Članek je opremljen s shematskim zemljevidom.

A note on possession and mereology in Ulwa property concept constructions

Ulwa (Misumalpan; Nicaragua) shows a puzzling and unique pattern in which a single affix marks the head of a possessive noun phrase and appears on roots expressing property concepts. This pattern has been argued to be semantically motivated by Koontz-Garboden and Francez (2010). This paper discusses two constructions of Ulwa that do not receive a natural treatment in their analysis, potentially casting doubt on the plausibility of a semantic motivation for the syncretism. We provide a modified version of the analysis, in which property concept roots denote mereologically ordered sets of portions of substance (in the spirit of Link’s 2002 treatment of mass nouns), as argued for in Francez and Koontz-Garboden (2015), rather than property theoretic ones. Possessive relations are then taken to include mereological ones. Such an analysis not only retains the motivation for a semantic approach to the syncretism, but also strengthens it, by showing that the range of interpretations available to the allegedly possessive affix is one expected of possessive lexemes more generally.

Oblique case-marking in Indo-Aryan experiencer constructions: Historical roots and synchronic variation

This article addresses the variable alignment properties of experiencer constructions in Indo-Aryan (IA) languages in the light of the available historical data from Vedic Sanskrit onwards. The first aim of the article is to shed light on the possible historical sources, emergence and expansion of constructions with non-canonically marked arguments in Old IA in general. The second aim is to gain a better understanding of the variation in case marking and agreement patterns that can be attested in New IA experiencer constructions, given that the interplay among morphological cases, semantic roles and additional semantic motivations poses many unsolved questions.

THE CULTURAL RELEVANCE OF INDONESIAN PHRASEOLOGICAL UNITS AS CONTRASTED WITH POLISH

This article discusses Indonesian set phrases, a research area not previously investigated by Polish scholars. The aim is to analyze expressions which reveal the cultural specificity of the Indonesian speech community. Specifically, the author is concerned with two categories of multiword expressions. One of them is lexical combinations which preserve observations characteristic of the Indonesian speech community. These are reflected in a system of lexical connotations drawn upon in the process of semantic motivation of idioms. The other is expressions made up of units which are specific to Indonesian culture. The cultural relevance of Indonesian multi-word combinations is examined against the background of the Polish language. By examining research material derived from dictionaries of phrases and collocations and general dictionaries of the Indonesian language, the author provides insights into the way of thinking and responding to reality which is embedded in the language and in the collective experience of members of the Indonesian community.

METAPHOR, METONYMY, AND CATEGORY STRUCTURE IN SEREER- SALOUM NOUN CLASSES

ABSTRACTIn this work I investigate cultural, historical and cognitive motivations for noun classification in Sereer-Saloum, an Atlantic language of the Senegambian language family. I use a prototype theory approach to categorisation (following Lakoff 1987; Rosch 1975, among others), emphasising semantic motivations for noun classes based on underlying conceptual category structures. In keeping with similar studies, the analysis assumes that linguistic categorisation is reflective of underlying conceptual patterns that are motivated rather than generated. In Sereer, these patterns are largely predictable from information about shape, function and force-dynamics; deviations from the prototype are explained via metonymic and metaphoric extensions, and specific cultural information. Sereer illustrates that even in the face of dialectal diffusion and diachronic attrition of overt morphological noun classes, cognitively salient best examples are maintained and members are reassigned to the remaining classes based on best-fit family resemblances due to the internal logic of the conceptual category system.

Semantic and cultural analysis of the terms for ink in the Slavic languages

Semantic and cultural analysis of the terms for 'ink' in the Slavic languages This text will analyze the semantic and cultural motivation of the terms for ink in the Slavic languages and their dialects, followed by an etymological analysis of the corresponding terms in other European languages. The VIII Lexical volume of the General Slavic Linguistic Atlas (OLA) will be taken as a foundation; it contains the terms for ink in the Slavic dialects, i.e. approximately 850 settlements on the entire Slavic territory. Namely, various terms are used to refer to ink in the different linguistic areas of the Slavic territory, such as мастило, чернила, tinta, atrament, inkoust etc. This text will analyze their geographic distribution while presenting the semantic motivation of appropriate terms through etymological analysis. Taking the geographic distribution of the various terms for ink into consideration, the compatibility of areas is evident according to both the etymology of appropriate terms and the cultural influence that encompassed the appropriate semantic motivation. By analyzing various terms for ink, my tendency is to illustrate that lexical diversity does not depend only on lexical heritage, but on other factors as well, such as civilization and culture. Key words: language and culture, semantics, etymology, linguistic analysis

The Role of Cognitive Mechanisms and Semantic Motivation in Business English Idioms Acquisition: An experimental study

This paper aims to explore the possible application of cognitive semantics in the process of teaching and learningBusiness English idioms. The theoretical assumptions of this study are based on the cognitivist view that idioms are, to a certain extent, semantically motivated by cognitive mechanisms, with the conceptual metaphor being the most dominant one. This study is an attempt to test the hypothesis that metaphoric conceptualisation can contribute to a more successful acquisition of idioms, especially in comparison to pure memorisation of the same linguistic expressions. This small-scale experiment was carried out with 20 Business and Economics students divided into the experimental group and the control group. The students in the experimental group were introduced to the semantic motivation of idiom meaning, whereas the control-group students were taught the same idioms in the traditional way. After being presented with the carefully selected idioms in two different ways, the students in both groups were required to do four different types of exercises with a view to testing the semantic motivation hypothesis. As a result, the research findings and the results obtained in this experimental study suggest that the awareness of cognitive mechanism and semantic motivation behind the meaning of idioms can significantly assist students in the process of a somewhat systematic and consistent acquisition of Business English idioms. Keywords: Idiomatic expressions, Business English, cognitive mechanisms, conceptual metaphor, semantic motivation, language acquisition