Old english semantic primes: substantives, determiners and quantifiers

Javier Martín Arista ^[1] ; María Victoria Martín de la Rosa ^[2]
1. [1] Universidad de La Rioja
  
  Universidad de La Rioja
  
  Logroño, España
2. [2] Universidad Complutense de Madrid
  
  Universidad Complutense de Madrid
  
  Madrid, España
Localización: Atlantis: Revista de la Asociación Española de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos, ISSN 0210-6124, Vol. 28, Nº 2 (December 2006), 2006, págs. 9-28
Idioma: inglés
Enlaces
- Texto completo (pdf)

Resumen
- The aim of this journal article is to apply the methodology of semantic primes to Old English. In this preliminary analysis the semantic primes grouped as Substantives, Determiners and Quantifiers are discussed: I, YOU, SOMEONE, PEOPLE, SOMETHING/THING, BODY, THIS, THE SAME, OTHER, ONE, TWO, SOME, ALL and MUCH/MANY. After an analysis of several instances of portmanteaus, allolexy and non-compositional polysemy, the conclusion is reached that even though the nature of the linguistic evidence that is available does not allow for native speaker judgements, semantic primes represent a powerful theoretical and methodological tool for the lexical and syntactic study of Old English.