Naslov
The Conceptual Category of Light in Croatian: A Diachronic Perspective

Autori
Raffaelli, Ida

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Sažeci sa skupova, sažetak, znanstveni

Skup
10th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference

Mjesto i datum
Kraków, Poljska, 15.07.2007. - 20.07.2007

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Predavanje

Vrsta recenzije
Međunarodna recenzija

Ključne riječi
concept of light; conceptual metaphor; morphosemantic field; cognitive linguistics; Croatian

Sažetak
Within current research in Cognitive Linguistics the concept of light has been considered one of the most basic human concepts. Being part of human external experience, the concept of light shows systematic metaphorical connection with the vocabulary referring to human mental activities.(Lakoff – Johnson, 1980 ; Lakoff – Turner, 1989, Gibbs, 1994) The conceptual metaphors understanding/knowing is seeing and ideas are light as part of the more general Mind-as-Body metaphor are some of the most common if not universal conceptual metaphors in Indo-European languages. (Sweetser, 1990) In I-E languages words meaning “ see” regularly acquire the meaning of “ know” . Taking into account some language specific properties of Croatian as a language with rich word formation, we would like to examine the structure of the conceptual category of light, especially with respect to the diachronic development of the vocabulary (see Sweetser, 1990), i.e. word formation and grammar. The cognitive importance of the concept of light in Croatian is reflected in the structure of the vocabulary related to the visual domain. This vocabulary has systematically acquired meanings connected not only to the mental domain but also to other domains such as personal character and emotions (adj. vedar “ bright” , “ clear” ), moral qualities, (noun svjetlo “ light” ), luxury and abundance ( noun sjaj “ shine” ” glitter” ). The semantic and grammatical development of the vocabulary related to the visual domain in Croatian shows significant extension of the conceptual category of light towards the mental domain. Some of lexemes that are morphologically derived from words whose prototypical meaning is related to vision or light exhibit conceptual specification of their meaning related exclusively to the mental domain. For example adjective jasan “ clear” was diachronically used mostly in relation to water, weather and bright colours. Based on corpus data analysis , it is synchronically used, in relation to thoughts, ideas and other mental activities in more than 90 percent of all cases. Diachronically it served for the formation of verbs such as razjasniti, objasniti, izjasniti “ to make something clear” , as well as the noun nejasnoća “ something not mentally clear” , which are semantically related exclusively to the mental domain. A similar pattern is exhibited by some verbs derived from the noun svjetlo “ light” . For example the verb prosvijetliti “ to enlighten” is entirely related to the mental domain while the verb rasvijetliti is related to the mental domain in the majority of cases. In languages with rich word formation such as Croatian, the diachronic analysis of grammatical structures provides clear insight into the extension of conceptual categories. The most salient conceptual shift within the category of light was towards the mental domain which is reflected in the semantic and grammatical formation of the vocabulary related to the concept of light.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Filologija

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