On the Meaning of Prepositions and Cases: The expression of semantic roles in Ancient Greek: 67 (Studies in Language Companion Series) - Hardcover

Luraghi, Silvia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 9027230773 ISBN 13: 9789027230775

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2003

Synopsis

Prepositions and cases constitute a fruitful field of research for semantics. The historical development of their meaning can shed light on the relations among the semantic roles of participants and on the organization of conceptual space. Ancient Greek allows an in-depth study of such development. The book, based on a wide, diachronically ordered corpus, aims at providing a usage-based analysis of possible patterns of semantic extension, including the mapping of abstract domains onto the concrete domain of space. An analysis of the Greek data further highlights the interplay between specific spatial relations and the internal structure of the entities involved, and shows how case semantics may account for differences on the referential level, rather than merely express clause internal relations. The first chapter contains a typologically based discussion of semantic roles, which sets the language-specific analysis in a wider framework, showing its general relevance and applicability.

About this title

Synopsis

This volume aims at describing the meaning, meaning extensions and patterns of polysemy displayed by Ancient Greek prepositions. It attempts to single out the semantic roles expressed by prepositions, possible affinities between semantic roles, and possible directions of semantic extension.

Edition details

• Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 9027230773
• ISBN 13: 9789027230775
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 378