Book review

From Polysemy to Semantic Change

Vanhove, Martine (Ed.). 2008. From Polysemy to Semantic Change. Towards a Typology of Lexical Semantic Associations. Amsterdam and Phildelphia: John Benjamins

Reviewed by: Anna Szlávi, Doctoral Program of Cultural Linguistics, ELTE University of Budapest

From Polysemy to Semantic Change is the result of a European joint project dedicated to the typology of semantic associations. The 16 articles of the volume offer insights into various approaches to semantic change. The relevance of the book lies in the fact that the cross-linguistic search for potential semantic universals in the lexicon is a relatively new trend. The work in this book uncovers universal (or near-universal) patterns and identifies area-specific phenomena.

The book has three sections. Part 1 surveys the field of lexical typology; Part 2 addresses theoretical and methodological issues; Part 3 offers empirical case studies focusing on the semantic asssociations in particular domains. Martine Vanhove’s overview serves as a guideline throughout the volume, as it binds not only the three sections but also the specific articles into a coherent unity. The book closes with three indices (of key words, languages, and names).

Part 1 includes a single article, Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm’s “Approaching lexical typology.” The aim of this paper is to provide a larger context for the studies of the volume, that is, to locate semantic and lexical typology within the general frames of typological research. The author introduces main terms like “semantic typology” versus “lexical typology,” “polysemy” versus “semantic generality,” “denotation” versus “sense.” The paper thus familiarizes the reader with the main trends and findings in lexical typology, which re-appear in the subsequent studies (like PERCEPTION verbs, as in Viberg 1984, 2001; Goddard 2001), and it draws attention to the multiplicity of methodologies that are applied.

Part 2, which constitutes more than half of the book, turns to the more specific field of semantic associations, a broad cover term for the phenomena of polysemy, heterosemy, semantic change, semantic extension, etc. The seven studies of this section analyze theoretical issues like the schema-based categorization of semantic associations, along with methodological matters such as the exploration of paradigmatic networks with the help of field graphs.

Stéphane Robert’s “Words and their meanings” provides a thorough and clear overview of the cognitive processes behind meaning, explicating its variation and stability on the grounds of frames (Fillmore 1977, 1982), figure and ground organization (Langacker 1991a, 1991b), metaphor (Lakoff & Johnson 1980), and metonomy (Kövecses & Radden 1998), among others. Bernard Pottier’s paper categorizes semantic associations (in his terminology, “semantic affinities”) along four mental schemas. Peter Koch examines cross-linguistic semantic parallels due to cognitive constants within the EYE frame. He makes relevant comments on saliency and universals in conceptual relations; his methodology of applying a 2-dimensional lexical grid is also worth mentioning. The following two thematic articles take a map-based approach to semantics. Neiloufar Family analyzes semantic spaces (or “notional islands”) around the Persian light-verb xordćn ‘eat’, linking her results to the patterns within the EAT domain as detected in other languages. Alexandre François, on the other hand, develops semantic maps of the polysemous senses of BREATHE on the basis of cross-linguistic comparisons. The last two papers present a possible methodology for the analysis of cross-linguistic parallels. Anna A. Zalizniak presents a catalogue that was designed for this purpose by the Russian Academy of Sciences; the joint article of Bruno Gaume, Karine Duvignau & Martine Vanhove introduces an automatic method that was developed on the basis of data processing resources, graph theory, and cognitive semantics.

Part 3 turns to case studies. Each of the six papers focuses on a specific domain, examining it from a cross-linguistic perspective. The semantic field of EAT receives further attention: Emilio Bonvini analyzes its semantic scope within Niger-Congo languages; Christine Hénault presents Indo-European data. Pascal Boyeldieu’s research also relates to this semantic field, as he is concerned with the concepts of MEAT/ANIMAL and DRINK. The findings of these four interconnected studies nicely illustrate how the conceptualization of a universal human experience, such as eating and drinking, is shaped by culture-specific and quasi-universal patterns.

The papers of Sergueď Sakhno & Nicole Tersis and Michel Masson cover two lesser studied semantic fields: one is social relations with FRIEND as a reference point, the other is the theme of CATS as connected to MONKEYS and BUGS (and Indo-European superstitions). After that, Martine Vanhove revisits the widely researched area of sensory and mental perception. Her results, based on the analysis of the notions of “hear”/”listen,” “see,” “feel,” and their cognitive extensions in 25 languages of 8 different genetic stocks, contradicts the influential findings of Sweetser (1990), whose results are shown to have a Indo-European bias.

As the foreword claims, the goal of the project and the volume is to stimulate studies in the neglected field of semantic typology. With its extensive content and well-designed structure, the book shows that a multi- and interdisciplinary approach is indispensable in this area. A slight drawback of the volume is that not all authors present their ideas at a level that is suitable for an expert audience and, at the same time, accessible to the non-expert. Some of the articles of the volume do not find this balance, but still From Polysemy to Semantic Change is without doubt a successful enterprise.

References

Fillmore, Charles. 1977. Scenes-and-Frames Semantics. In Zampolli (Ed.), Linguistics Structures Processing. Amsterdam: North Holland, 55-81.
Fillmore, Charles. 1982. Frame semantics. In Linguitics Society of Korea (Ed.), Linguistics in the Morning Calm. Seoul: Hanshin, 111-38.
Goddard, Cliff. 2001. Lexico-semantic universals: A critical overview. Linguistic Typlogy 5: 1-65.
Kövecses, Zoltán. 2005. Metaphor in Culture. Universality and Variation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kövecses, Zoltán and Günter Radden. 1998. Metonymy: Developing a cognitive linguistic view. Cognitive Linguistics 9(1): 37-77.
Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Langacker, Ronald W. 1991a. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar. 2 Vols. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Langacker, Ronald W. 1991b. Cognitive Grammar. In Droste and Joseph (Eds), Linguistic Theory and Grammatical Description. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 275-306.
Sweetser, Eve. 1990. From Etymology to Pragmatics. Metaphorical and Cultural Aspects of Semantic Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Viberg, Ĺke. 1984. The verbs of perception: a typological study. Linguistics 21: 123-162.
Viberg, Ĺke. 2001. Verbs of perception. In Martin Haspelmath, Ekkehard König, Wulf Oesterreicher & Wolfgang Raible (eds.) Language typology and language universals: An international handbook. Berlin: de Gruyter, Vol. 2, 1294-1309.

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