de la Cruz Cabanillas, Isabel (2007). Semantic primes in Old English: A preliminary study of descriptors. Selim, 14, 37-58.
The aim of this paper, which contains no explications, is to apply the methodology of semantic primes to Old English to check whether it represents a suitable theoretical and methodological framework for the lexical and semantic study of this period. It consists of a preliminary analysis of the semantic primes grouped as Descriptors: BIG/SMALL. The group is discussed taking into account a sample of texts provided by the Helsinki Corpus of English Texts and supplemented by the information contained in the Dictionary of Old English Corpus. The main sources of information on Old English definitions are A Thesaurus of Old English by Roberts and Kay (1995) and A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary by Clark Hall (1931). The article attempts at being just a first approach to the topic, which could be further developed and extended to other semantic categories.
