Guarddon Anelo, María del Carmen (2009). Un análisis de las propiedades combinatorias de los primitivos semánticos a través de las adposiciones complejas en inglés antigua [An analysis of the combinatorial properties of semantic primes through a study of complex adpositions in Old English]. Revista española de lingüística, 39(2), 93-122. PDF (open access)
This paper presents a study of the lexical content of a number of complex adpositions in Old English and the morpho-semantic processes that have motivated them. Specifically, I have analysed the adpositions which have in, on and at as controlling elements. The theoretical framework supporting this analysis is the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (henceforth, NSM). The main goal of this paper is to demonstrate
that the explication of the combinatorial properties of the spatial primes put forward in the NSM can serve to shed light upon certain aspects of the grammar of spatial relations that have not received attention by schools highly focused in this type of metalanguage, i.e. Cognitive Linguistics.
The spatial primes are used to address four fundamental issues: 1) Semantic content of the resulting adposition; senses of the constituent elements that are transferred to the complex adposition, senses that are blocked and senses not present in the constituents that arise in the process of compounding; 2) Semantic incompatibilities preventing the combination of certain simple adpositions; 3) Internal syntactic organization found in these complex adpositions. 4) The diachronic evolution of the complex adpositions analyzed in the article. Particularly, I unveil the semantic factors that have led to the disappearance of some of these adpositions while others have survived up to the present day.
