TOWARDS A LEXICAL TYPOLOGY OF ‘FLYING’ AND ‘JUMPING’
Ekaterina Rakhilina2015, NRU HSE. Series WP BRP "Linguistics". 2015.
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Abstract
This paper focuses on some lexical properties of two groups of verbs in the languages of the world, without trying to provide an exhaustive typological description of these groups. The first group includes the verbs of movement through air (verbs of 'flying'); the other includes those verbs that designate temporary separation from a supporting surface (verbs of 'jumping'). Keywords: lexical semantics, lexical typology, verbs of motion, flying, jumping, falling
Key takeaways
- At first glance, and especially if we focus on the data from European languages, verbs of 'flying' and 'jumping' belong to two totally different semantic domains that have no overlap whatsoever.
- Thus, not only lexical but also grammatical properties provide important arguments for considering 'flying' and 'jumping' to be two distinct semantic domains.
- Apparently, the verbs of flying and jumping penetrate into each other's domain.
- Verbs of jumping are often translated into another language by verbs of flying, and vice versa.
- This domain covers verbs of free falling and has much in common with passive flying.
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