2 Lexicalization Patterns: Semantic Structure in Lexical Forms
--- 2 Lexicalization patterns: semantic structure in lexical forms LEONAKD TALMY This chapter addresses the systematic relations in language between meaning and surface expression. Our approach to this has severa1 aspects. First, we assume we can isolate elements scparately within the domain of meaning and within the domain of surface expression. These are semantic elements like ‘Motion’, ‘Path’, ‘Figure’, ‘Ground’, ‘Man- ner’, anrl ‘Cause’, and surface elements like ‘verb’, ‘adposition’, ‘sub- ordinate clausc’, and what we will cliaracterize as ‘satellite’. Second, we examine which semantic elements are expressed by which surface elements. This relatinnship is largely not orle-to-one. A coml)ination of semnntic elements can be expressed by a single surface elemcnt, or ü single semantic element hy a combinatiun of surface elements. Or again, semantic elemeuts of different types can be exptessed by the same type of surface elenient, as well as the same type by severa1 dif-t‘erent ones. We finrl here a range of typological palterns anti universal principies. We do n»t look at every case of semantic-to-surface association, but only at enes that constitute a pervasive pattern, either within a language 01’ across lunguages. Our particular concern is to understand how sucll patterns compare across languages. ‘I’llilt is, Eor a particular semantic domain, we ask if languages exhibit a wicle variety of patterns, ä compüratively sniall n~~uiller of patlerns (a typology), or a single pattern (a universal). We will be intcrested primarily in the last two cases, as well as in the case where a pattern appears in no languages (universal exclusioii).
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