vii |
Abstract
The knowledge associated with lexical items can be seen
as including relations of
meaning across words and relations of meaning within a single word. Words that share a
similarity of meaning are said to be synonyms. A word that has multiple meanings is termed
polysemous. This study focuses on a set of Spanish verbs that exhibit both these features:
arrojar, echar, lanzar
and
tirar
(all can be glossed as ‘to throw’). The words are considered
synonyms (in thesauri and by speakers), yet the verbs are also
capable of expressing many
different meanings; they are polysemous. I investigated the charactersitics of the four verbs in
use by exploring data from corpora (in two studies) and from an experimental test. The data
were annotated for semantic traits and subjected to various statitstical tests to determine
whether there was any significantly distinct behavior between the verbs.
The focus of the
tests was on the characteristics of the most important participant roles or arguments of the
verb. The central concept shared by all four verbs is the notion of ‘throwing’, which involves
three participants (a thrower, an object thrown and a trajectory of motion).
Taking this
meaning (‘throwing’) as central or prototypical, the tests explored variations in the expression
and characteristics of these core participant roles. The tests are followed by a semantic
analysis. The results show that each meaning that a verb can express tends to be associated
with specific types of participant roles. Yet all the meaning
extensions are shown to be
semantically connected to the central throwing schema; in the overall semantics of the phrase
and at the level of the participant roles. Therefore, even though
the verbs are polysemous
their meaning extensions are motivated, despite not being predictable.
The results from the
study also show that the verbs can in fact be seen as synonymous. Though the meanings of
the verbs may not be identical (especially concerning pragmatics) they do have the ability to
express similar meanings. This synonymy includes the central ‘throwing’
sense and a few
other meaning extensions. Synonymy is only partial, though, since there are many meanings
which the verbs do not share. Overall, the behavior of each verb can be characterized by
noting its high occurrence in a handful of schemas and its infrequent
occurrence in other
constructions. A speaker’s knowledge of these four verbs includes the many meanings each
verb can express (including common collocates), the participant
roles associated with each
and the semantic links that connect the uses to the central ‘throwing’ meaning. Speakers also
have knowledge of overlap between the verbs: uses where verbs are used interchangeably and
cases where one verb is the (only) preferred choice.