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The diachrony of polysemy networks. Cognitive and cultural motivations for the semantic extension of time-related lexemes in Ancient Greek and Ancient Egyptian – Coptic
Georgakopoulos, Athanasios; Polis, Stéphane
2017AFLiCo 7 - Discours, Cognition & Constructions: Implications & Applications. 7e Colloque International de l'Association française de Linguistique cognitive
 

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Keywords :
Polysemy networks; Semantic maps; Time; Diachrony
Abstract :
[en] This paper aims at contrasting the semantic extension of time-related lexemes in Ancient Greek and Ancient Egyptian – Coptic in order to identify shared cognitive motivations and to assess the potential impact of cultural factors on the evolution of this lexical field in both languages. In doing so we first take as a point of departure semantic networks inferred from synchronic polysemy data in large language samples, such as Youn et al. (2016) and CLICS (List et al., 2014). In a second step, we identify the lexemes that lexicalize meanings associated with DAY/DAYTIME/TIME in Ancient Greek (8th – 1st c. BC) and Ancient Egyptian (26th c. BC – 10th c. AD), two languages with significant diachronic material. The data are extracted from dictionaries, grammars, and from the Perseus digital library (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/) for Ancient Greek, and from the Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae (http://aaew.bbaw.de/tla/), the Ramses corpus (http://ramses.ulg.ac.be), and Coptic etymological dictionaries for Ancient Egyptian. Based on this diachronic material we describe the semantic extensions of time-related lexemes and map them onto the synchronic polysemy networks. In a final step, our results are checked against The Catalogue of Semantic Shifts in the Languages of the World (http://semshifts.iling-ran.ru/). Fig. 1 exemplifies how meaning extension may be added to polysemy networks. A diachronic analysis reveals that, for the Ancient Greek lexical unit hṓra, the meaning ‘time’ is historically prior to the meaning ‘hour.’ Accordingly, we may add a directed arrow representing the directionality of change from ‘time’ to ‘hour.’ Similarly, Ancient Egyptian data points to an extension of the polysemy network of the lexical unit tr – originally meaning ‘time,’ ‘moment in time’ – to ‘season’ (cf. Coptic ⲧⲏ tê ‘time, season’). One can then describe the cognitive motivations (e.g., metaphor, metonymy, etc.) for meaning extensions and analyze the cultural factors underlying the observed evolutions. In the case of the Greek word hṓra, for instance, a metonymic motivation between TIME and HOUR could be established. Finally, the analysis can be refined by searching in the corpus bridging contexts that allow such extensions of the polysemy networks of content items. The approach adopted here is closely connected to the semantic map method, which has recently shifted its focus from the study of the polysemic patterns of grammatical morphemes (in this respect, see, e.g., Haspelmath, 2003) to the study of lexical items (e.g., François, 2008, Perrin, 2010, Wälchli and Cysouw 2012, and Georgakopoulos et al., 2016). As such, our paper has also a methodological bearing on the semantic map model, both because of its focus on content words and on diachrony (see van der Auwera, 2008; Narrog, 2010; Luraghi, 2014; Juvonen and Koptjevskaja-Tamm, 2016). All things considered, this diachronic take on the polysemic networks of lexemes belonging to a particular semantic domain offers a new perspective on dealing with the question of the directionality of meaning change.
Research center :
Mondes anciens - ULiège
Disciplines :
Languages & linguistics
Classical & oriental studies
Author, co-author :
Georgakopoulos, Athanasios ;  Université de Liège > Département des sciences de l'antiquité > Département des sciences de l'antiquité
Polis, Stéphane  ;  Université de Liège > Département des sciences de l'antiquité > Egyptologie
Language :
English
Title :
The diachrony of polysemy networks. Cognitive and cultural motivations for the semantic extension of time-related lexemes in Ancient Greek and Ancient Egyptian – Coptic
Publication date :
02 June 2017
Number of pages :
71 slides
Event name :
AFLiCo 7 - Discours, Cognition & Constructions: Implications & Applications. 7e Colloque International de l'Association française de Linguistique cognitive
Event organizer :
Julien Perrez, Lot Brems, Christelle Maillart, Laurent Rasier
Event place :
Liège, Belgium
Event date :
31 mai - 3 juin 2017
Audience :
International
Funders :
F.R.S.-FNRS - Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique [BE]
Available on ORBi :
since 02 June 2017

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