An account of inter-lexical polysemy in Italian prepositions: The case of per, tra, attraverso
The goal of this paper is to offer an account of an inter-lexical polysemy pattern connecting the three Italian prepositions per, tra and attraverso. It is shown via a corpus study that these prepositions can cover several related senses (i.e. they are polysemous), and that some of their senses ove...
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| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | deu |
| Published: |
Föreningen Tidskriften Moderna språk
2023-12-01
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| Series: | Moderna Språk |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://publicera.kb.se/mosp/article/view/10720 |
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| Summary: | The goal of this paper is to offer an account of an inter-lexical polysemy pattern connecting the three Italian prepositions per, tra and attraverso. It is shown via a corpus study that these prepositions can cover several related senses (i.e. they are polysemous), and that some of their senses overlap (i.e. inter-lexical polysemy is attested), thereby forming a clear-cut (lexical) contrast set. It is suggested that current theoretical proposals of polysemy cannot directly account for these data, and thus a new model must be introduced. The paper introduces such a model by combining generative (cartographic) syntactic insights with a Semantic Maps analysis. It is thus suggested that inter-lexical polysemy patterns arise because prepositions share syntactically equivalent structures, but partially different sense values are assigned to these structures. Therefore, these prepositions partition the semantic sub-space of ‘section’ spatial relations in only partially overlapping manners. Consequences for theories of polysemy and their connections to syntactic accounts of prepositions are discussed.
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| ISSN: | 2000-3560 |