Exploring vagueness: Preposition alternation in Spanish

TY - JOUR

T1 - Exploring vagueness: Preposition alternation in Spanish

AU - Lewandowski, Wojciech

PY - 2018/3

Y1 - 2018/3

N2 - This paper aims at showing the relevance of cognitive semantics in the study of linguistic units whose conceptual import tends to be underresearched within formalist frameworks. Specifically, I focus on the alternation between the prepositions con ‘with’ and de ‘of’ in the change-of-state variant of the locative alternation (e.g., cargar el camión con/de heno, lit. load the truck with/of hay). I show that although the con- and the de-constructions share many semantic properties and they can refer to the same conceptual content, experimental-based cognitive semantics offers powerful tools to elucidate subtle shades of meaning that might remain opaque in formal semantic theories.

AB - This paper aims at showing the relevance of cognitive semantics in the study of linguistic units whose conceptual import tends to be underresearched within formalist frameworks. Specifically, I focus on the alternation between the prepositions con ‘with’ and de ‘of’ in the change-of-state variant of the locative alternation (e.g., cargar el camión con/de heno, lit. load the truck with/of hay). I show that although the con- and the de-constructions share many semantic properties and they can refer to the same conceptual content, experimental-based cognitive semantics offers powerful tools to elucidate subtle shades of meaning that might remain opaque in formal semantic theories.

U2 - 10.1016/j.langsci.2017.11.001

DO - 10.1016/j.langsci.2017.11.001

M3 - Journal article

SN - 0388-0001

VL - 66

SP - 1

EP - 14

JO - Language Sciences

JF - Language Sciences

ER -