Published 2008.
This book is the result of a joint project on lexical and semantic typology which gathered field linguists, semanticists, cognitivists, typologists, and a NLP specialist. The cross-linguistic studies of the lexicon concern semantic shifts ...
Published 2008.
This book is the result of a joint project on lexical and semantic typology which gathered field linguists, semanticists, cognitivists, typologists, and a NLP specialist. The cross-linguistic studies of the lexicon concern semantic shifts at large, be they diachronic or synchronic, i.e. the outcome of polysemy, heterosemy or semantic change at the lexical level. The first part presents a comprehensive state of the art of a domain typologists have long been reluctant to deal with. Part two focuses on theoretical and methodological approaches: cognition, construction grammar, graph theory, semantic maps, data base. It accounts for universals and variation across languages, illustrated with numerous examples from different semantic domains and languages. Part three is dedicated to detailed empirical studies on a large sample of languages in a limited set of semantic fields. It reveals possible universals of semantic associations, as well as areal, and cultural tendencies.
