The present study investigates the semantics of Manner of Motion verbs used as predicative heads of constructions expressing motion events in Italian, French and Spanish. The corpus-based investigation, carried out on a diachronic corpus consisting of the translations of an original Latin text (Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita) into the three languages investigated in three different time stages, revealed that the semantics of Manner of Motion verbs can be described in terms of basic values, which can be conveyed individually or in association with additional Manner or Path values following a cluster of neighbouring, inferable meanings. The existence of such clusters may be taken as a key to describe phenomena of variation and change in the encoding of Motion events: starting from a core meaning, other peripheral meanings can be inferred, thus favouring the emergence of newer usage strategies, as well as of newer semantic and syntactic patterns.
Est modus in… verbo. Valori e gerarchia di conflazione della maniera nei verbi di moto romanzi
ALFONSINA BUONICONTO
2020-01-01
Abstract
The present study investigates the semantics of Manner of Motion verbs used as predicative heads of constructions expressing motion events in Italian, French and Spanish. The corpus-based investigation, carried out on a diachronic corpus consisting of the translations of an original Latin text (Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita) into the three languages investigated in three different time stages, revealed that the semantics of Manner of Motion verbs can be described in terms of basic values, which can be conveyed individually or in association with additional Manner or Path values following a cluster of neighbouring, inferable meanings. The existence of such clusters may be taken as a key to describe phenomena of variation and change in the encoding of Motion events: starting from a core meaning, other peripheral meanings can be inferred, thus favouring the emergence of newer usage strategies, as well as of newer semantic and syntactic patterns.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.