An account of inter-lexical polysemy in Italian prepositions: The case of per, tra, attraverso

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.58221/mosp.v117i3.10720

Keywords:

polysemy, Italian prepositions, cartography, semantic maps, metaphor identification procedure

Abstract

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.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Downloads

Published

2023-12-30

How to Cite

Ursini, F.-A., & Zhang, Y. (Sara). (2023). An account of inter-lexical polysemy in Italian prepositions: The case of per, tra, attraverso. Moderna Språk, 117(3), 114–141. https://doi.org/10.58221/mosp.v117i3.10720

Issue

Section

Original Articles

Similar Articles

1 2 3 > >> 

You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.