Ye, Zhengdao (Ed.) (2017). The semantics of nouns. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198736721.001.0001

Abstract:

This volume represents state-of-the-art research on the semantics of nouns. It offers detailed and systematic analyses of scores of individual nouns across many different conceptual domains – ‘people’, ‘beings’, ‘creatures’, ‘places’, ‘things’, ‘living things’, and ‘parts of the body and parts of the person’. A range of languages, both familiar and unfamiliar, is examined. Each rigorous and descriptively rich analysis is fully grounded in a unified methodological framework consistently employed throughout the volume, and each chapter not only relates to central theoretical issues specific to the semantic analysis of the domain in question, but also empirically investigates the different types of meaning relations holding between nouns, such as meronymy, hyponymy, taxonomy, and antonymy.

This is the first time that the semantics of typical nouns has been studied in such breadth and depth, and in such a systematic and coherent manner. The collection of studies shows how in-depth meaning analysis anchored in a cross-linguistic and cross-domain perspective can lead to extraordinary and unexpected insights into the common and particular ways in which speakers of different languages conceptualize, categorize and order the world around them.

Table of contents:

  1. The semantics of nouns: A cross-linguistic and cross-domain perspective (Zhengdao Ye)
  2. The meaning of kinship terms: A developmental and cross-linguistic perspective (Anna Wierzbicka)
  3. The semantics of social relation nouns in Chinese (Zhengdao Ye)
  4. The meanings of ‘angel’ in English, Arabic, and Hebrew (Sandy Habib)
  5. Personhood constructs in language and thought: New evidence from Danish (Carsten Levisen)
  6. Some key body parts and polysemy: A case study from Koromu (Kesawai) (Carol Priestley)
  7. The semantics of standing water places in English, French, and Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara (Helen Bromhead)
  8. The semantics of demonyms in English: Germans, Queenslanders, and Londoners (Michael Roberts)
  9. The semantics of honeybee terms in Solega (Dravidian) (Aung Si)
  10. Furniture, vegetables, weapons: Functional collective superordinates in the English lexicon (Cliff Goddard)

More information:

Each chapter has its own entry, where additional information is provided.

Rating:


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners