Unpublished conference/Abstract (Scientific congresses and symposiums)
Polysemy in Language Contact. Borrowing of the Greek-origin adposition κατά in Coptic
Polis, Stéphane
201346th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea. Workshop Typology of Adposition and Case Marker Borrowing
 

Files


Full Text
Abstract_Borrowing_Polis_NOREF.pdf
Author preprint (1.43 MB)
Download
Annexes
Polis_2013_Kata.pdf
Publisher postprint (8.18 MB)
Download

All documents in ORBi are protected by a user license.

Send to



Details



Keywords :
Language contact; Adposition; Borrowing
Abstract :
[en] Adpositions tend to be highly polyfunctional. While some approaches to lexical semantics search for abstract basic meanings, recent research indicates that polysemy is probably a more insightful analysis of the one-to-many form-function mappings associated with adpositions (e.g. Hagège 2008, Koptjevskaja-Tamm 2008, Grossman and Polis 2012). The recent burst of work on semantic maps (see e.g. the special number of Linguistic Discovery 8/1, 2010) has provided a useful tool for evaluating the empirical validity of polysemy. The aim of the present paper is to examine an aspect of the semantics of adposition borrowing, focusing on the extent to which polysemy networks associated with a source-language adposition are borrowed. Taking the Greek-origin adposition κατά (Luraghi 2003, Bortone 2010) in Coptic as a test-case, I show that adpositions are usually not borrowed with their entire polysemy networks. In order to demonstrate this point, I build a semantic map of the spatial (motion from, downwards, towards, etc.), temporal (extension, duration) and conceptual senses (conformity, comparison, cause, distributive, iterative) covered by the preposition κατά in Greek, based on existing semantic maps and additional typological evidence. Thanks to this map, it is possible to ground a contrastive analysis of the senses associated with the preposition κατά in Greek, on the one hand, and with kata in two Coptic dialects, on the other. In terms of adposition borrowing, the semantic maps method allows one to show (1) that a small part of the polysemy network associated with the preposition in Greek is borrowed, (2) that spatial meanings are hardly borrowed, while conceptual ones can easily be, (3) that the polysemy network of kata in Coptic is fairly different from one dialect to another. This, in turns leads to an interesting question, which can be evaluated empirically: do the ways in which adpositions are borrowed shed light on the Connectivity Hypothesis associated with semantic maps?
Disciplines :
Classical & oriental studies
Languages & linguistics
Author, co-author :
Polis, Stéphane  ;  Université de Liège > Département des sciences de l'antiquité > Egyptologie
Language :
English
Title :
Polysemy in Language Contact. Borrowing of the Greek-origin adposition κατά in Coptic
Publication date :
20 September 2013
Number of pages :
54
Event name :
46th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea. Workshop Typology of Adposition and Case Marker Borrowing
Event organizer :
Italian and English Departments and the Center for Interdisciplinary Research Studia Mediterranea
Event place :
Split, Croatia
Event date :
18-21th of September
Audience :
International
Funders :
F.R.S.-FNRS - Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique [BE]
Available on ORBi :
since 12 May 2015

Statistics


Number of views
122 (8 by ULiège)
Number of downloads
468 (3 by ULiège)

Bibliography


Similar publications



Contact ORBi