Author(s): Iraide Ibarreche
E-mail: iraide@ling.ed.ac.uk
In this paper, it will be described how cognitive semantics explains the phenomenon of semantic change. Lakoff presented an account of how our knowledge of the world is structured by what he calls `Idealised Cognitive Models'. This concept is used in Sweetser's analysis of perception verbs. Based on Sweetser's analysis, it will be shown how these cognitive models can be applied to diachronic semantic change. It is argued that although Sweetser's path for semantic change from concrete source domain to abstract target domain seems to be right, it may be extended in order to account for some further meaning developments. She also raises the question of whether this approach is cross-linguistic; in order to verify this, which she only addressed for English, some other examples, from Spanish and Basque, will be presented.
Paper: Postscript (329544 bytes)