On the Development of an Abstract Meaning: Verbs of Doing and Making in a Diachronic Perspective

The paper discusses the process of semantic generalization, i.e. semantic evolution from a more concrete to a more abstract meaning. We focus on the development of verbs of doing as evidenced by available etymological data of Germanic, Slavic, Turkic, Semitic and some other languages. The general line of this development goes from the idea of creating a certain type of objects (cf. ‘cook’) via a more general meaning of any action that results in creation of a new entity (cf. Engl. make) to the expression of any telic action and then to a verb of any (including atelic) agentive activity. This evolution is challenging from a theoretical standpoint since it exhibits a complex interaction between metonymic and metaphorical mechanisms of semantic change.

Keywords

abstract verbs, semantic generalization, semantic shift, verbs of doing, verbs of making

Acknowledgment

This work was supported by the Humanitarian Research Foundation of the Faculty of Humanities, HSE University in 2022, Project “Lexical analysis of biblical texts in a typological perspective”. The author is deeply grateful to all the project participants, and especially to Maria Belova, for the discussion of the Semitic data.

Received

11.11.2022

Publication date

11.11.2022

Number of characters

21736

Cite

GOST	Reznikova T. On the Development of an Abstract Meaning: Verbs of Doing and Making in a Diachronic Perspective // Izvestiia Rossiiskoi akademii nauk. Seriia literatury i iazyka – 2022. – V. 81. – Issue 5 C. 48-56 [Electronic resource]. URL: https://izv-oifn.ru/S160578800022746-6-1 (circulation date: 06.05.2024). DOI: 10.31857/S160578800022746-6
MLA	Reznikova, Tatiana I "On the Development of an Abstract Meaning: Verbs of Doing and Making in a Diachronic Perspective." Izvestiia Rossiiskoi akademii nauk. Seriia literatury i iazyka 81.5 (2022):48-56. DOI: 10.31857/S160578800022746-6
APA	Reznikova T. (2022). On the Development of an Abstract Meaning: Verbs of Doing and Making in a Diachronic Perspective. Izvestiia Rossiiskoi akademii nauk. Seriia literatury i iazyka 81(5), pp.48-56 DOI: 10.31857/S160578800022746-6

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