Why is Semantic Change Asymmetric? The Role of Concreteness and Word Frequency and Metaphor and Metonymy
Why is Semantic Change Asymmetric? The Role of Concreteness and Word Frequency and Metaphor and Metonymy
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DOI：
10.1080/10926488.2021.1945419
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发表时间：
2022-01-02
影响因子：
1.1
通讯作者：
Srinivasan, Mahesh
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Winter, Bodo;Srinivasan, Mahesh
隐喻和其他比喻通常被认为反映了具体性的不对称，具体的来源被用来谈论相对更抽象的目标。同样，历时语义变化中的起源意义往往被认为比延伸意义更具体。在本文中，我们使用的跨语言证明语义变化的数据集，实证检验的想法，比喻语言中的不对称性预测的不对称性的具体性。我们只找到了具体性作用的微弱证据，并认为具体性在描述起源和扩展意义都高度具体的变化时不是一个有用的概念（例如，皮肤>树皮，肝脏>肺）。此外，我们发现，从英语和其他语言的词频数据是一个更强的预测这些类型学上常见的语义变化。我们讨论了我们的研究结果的隐喻理论和语义变化理论的影响。
Metaphors and other tropes are commonly thought to reflect asymmetries in concreteness, with concrete sources being used to talk about relatively more abstract targets. Similarly, originating senses in diachronic semantic change have often been argued to be more concrete than extended senses. In this paper, we use a dataset of cross-linguistically attested semantic changes to empirically test the idea that asymmetries in figurative language are predicted by asymmetries in concreteness. We find only weak evidence for the role of concreteness and argue that concreteness is not a helpful notion when it comes to describing changes where both originating and extended senses are highly concrete (e.g., skin > bark, liver > lungs). Moreover, we find that word frequency data from English and other languages is a stronger predictor of these typologically common semantic changes. We discuss the implications of our findings for metaphor theory and theories of semantic change.