An Exercise in Visualizing Colexification on a Semantic Map

This paper aims at investigating the polysemic patterns associated with the notion ‘soil/earth’ by using the semantic map model as a methodological tool. We focus on the applicability of the model to the lexicon, since most of past research has been devoted to the analysis of grammatical morphemes. The most concise result of our research is a diagrammatic visualization of the semantic spaces of twenty lexemes in nine different languages, mainly ancient languages belonging to the Indo-European and the Afro-Asiatic language families. The common semantic map for the various languages reveals that the semantic spaces covered by the investigated lexemes are often quite different from one another, although common patterns can also be detected. Our study highlights some shortcomings and methodological problems of previous analyses suggesting that a possible solution to these problems is the control of the data in the existing sources of the object languages. Finally, drawing upon the cognitive linguistics literature on the various types of semantic change, we show that some of the senses of the individual lexemes are the result of the function of such mechanisms as metaphor, metonymy, and generalization

Challenges of Annotation and Analysis in Computer-Assisted Language Comparison: A Case Study on Burmish Languages

The use of computational methods in comparative linguistics is growing in popularity. The increasing deployment of such methods draws into focus those areas in which they remain inadequate as well as those areas where classical approaches to language comparison are untransparent and inconsistent. In this paper we illustrate specific challenges which both computational and classical approaches encounter when studying South-East Asian languages. With the help of data from the Burmish language family we point to the challenges resulting from missing annotation standards and insufficient methods for analysis and we illustrate how to tackle these problems within a computer-assisted framework in which computational approaches are used to pre-analyse the data while linguists attend to the detailed analyses

Sources of BET

We investigate the sources of betting constructions, and specifically their predicates. The notion of risking something of value on an outcome is a complex one. Culturally, some degree of disposability of property is required. The concept is nevertheless lexicalized in many parts of the world. Betting takes various forms, ranging from betting between individuals, which we contend is the basic case, to betting in the context of an institution such as horse racing, cockfighting, lotteries, or on games such as card games. Taking a similar approach to Zalizniak (2008), we use polysemy as a means of investigating etymology. A sample of 271 polysemous predicates from 177 languages are surveyed, where one sense is BET. Treating relevant other senses as earlier senses, we find that the most frequent source concepts are ones that profile (in Langacker's 2008 sense) the relation between the bettor and the stake. The most frequent are SECURITY and PUT. Other important sources, profiling instead the relation between the bettors, are ARGUE, COMPETE and AGREE

Communicative need modulates lexical precision across semantic domains: A domain-level account of efficient communication

Different domains exhibit different degrees of lexical precision. Existing work has suggested that communicative need may modulate the precision of word meaning in individual domains. We extend this proposal across domains by asking why languages have more precise vocabulary in some domains than others. We hypothesize that lexical precision for a domain reflects how frequently speakers need to refer to it. We test this proposal using a cross-linguistic dataset of word-concept mappings for nine diverse domains from seven languages, and word frequencies from independent corpora. We find that the more frequent domains (except for kinship) tend to be more precise in every language, supporting a domain-level account of efficient communication on the precision of the lexicon

Conceptual similarity and communicative need shape colexification:An experimental study

Colexification refers to the phenomenon of multiple meanings sharing one word in a language. Cross-linguistic lexification patterns have been shown to be largely predictable, as similar concepts are often colexified. We test a recent claim that, beyond this general tendency, communicative needs play an important role in shaping colexification patterns. We approach this question by means of a series of human experiments, using an artificial language communication game paradigm. Our results across four experiments match the previous cross-linguistic findings: all other things being equal, speakers do prefer to colexify similar concepts. However, we also find evidence supporting the communicative need hypothesis: when faced with a frequent need to distinguish similar pairs of meanings, speakers adjust their colexification preferences to maintain communicative efficiency, and avoid colexifying those similar meanings which need to be distinguished in communication. This research provides further evidence to support the argument that languages are shaped by the needs and preferences of their speakers

Lexical typology through similarity semantics: Toward a semantic map of motion verbs

This paper discusses a multidimensional probabilistic semantic map of lexical motion verb stems based on data collected from parallel texts (viz. translations of the Gospel according to Mark) for 100 languages from all continents. The crosslinguistic diversity of lexical semantics in motion verbs is illustrated in detail for the domain of `go', `come', and `arrive' type contexts. It is argued that the theoretical bases underlying probabilistic semantic maps from exemplar data are the isomorphism hypothesis (given any two meanings and their corresponding forms in any particular language, more similar meanings are more likely to be expressed by the same form in any language), similarity semantics (similarity is more basic than identity), and exemplar semantics (exemplar meaning is more fundamental than abstract concepts)

Review: The Lexical Typology of Semantic Shifts.

2016. Koptjevskaja-Tamm and Juvonen (ed.) De Gruyter MoutonInternational audienc

Partial colexifications reveal directional tendencies in object naming

Expressions in which the word for a body part is also used for objects can be found in many languages. Some languages use body part terms to refer to object parts, while others have only a few idiosyncratic examples in their vocabulary. Studying the word forms referring to body and object concepts, i.e., colexifications, across languages, offers insights into cognitive principles facilitating such usage. Previous studies focused on full colexifications in which the same word form expresses two distinct concepts. Here, we utilize a new approach that allows us to analyze partial colexifications in which a concept is built out of the word forms for two separate concepts, like river mouth. Based on a large lexical database, we identified body and object concepts and analyzed 39 colexifications across 329 languages. The results show that word forms for body concepts are used slightly more frequently as a source for object names. However, the detailed examination of directional tendencies and colexifications of word forms between body and object concepts reveals linguistic variation. The study sheds light on meaning extensions between two concrete domains and showcases the synergies that arise through the combination of existing data and method