The Development of the Concept of SMELL in American English - A Usage-Based View of Near-Synonymy

The last decades have witnessed a renewed interest in near-synonymy. In particular, recent distributional corpus-based approaches used for semantic analysis have successfully uncovered subtle distinctions in meaning between near-synonyms. However, most studies have dealt with the semantic structure of sets of near-synonyms from a synchronic perspective, while their diachronic evolution generally has been neglected. Against this backdrop, the aim of this book is to examine five adjectival near-synonyms in the history of American English from the understudied semantic domain of SMELL: fragrant, perfumed, scented, sweet-scented, and sweet-smelling. Their distribution is analyzed across a wide range of contexts, including semantic, morphosyntactic, and stylistic ones, since distributional patterns of this type serve as a proxy for semantic (dis)similarity. The data is submitted to various univariate and multivariate statistical techniques, making it possible to uncover fine-grained (dis)similarities among the near-synonyms, as well as possible changes in their prototypical structures. The book sheds valuable light on the diachronic development of lexical near-synonyms, a dimension that has up to now been relatively disregarded.

Dettagli sul prodotto

• Autori: Daniela Pettersson-Traba
• Editore: De Gruyter
• Lingue: Inglese, Tedesco
• Formato: Copertina rigida
• Pubblicazione: 01.01.2022
• EAN: 9783110792201
• ISBN: 978-3-11-079220-1
• Pagine: 270
• Dimensioni: 155 mm x 26 mm x 230 mm
• Peso: 534 g
• Illustrazioni: 25 b/w and 8 col. ill., 67 b/w tbl.
• Serie: Applications of Cognitive Linguistics [ACL]
• Categoria: Scienze umane, arte, musica > Scienze linguistiche e letterarie > Letteratura / linguistica inglese