Old english semantic primessubstantives, determiners and quantifiers
- Javier Martín Arista 1
- María Victoria Martín de la Rosa 2
- 1 Universidad de La Rioja, España
- 2 Universidad Complutense de Madrid, España
ISSN: 0210-6124
Año de publicación: 2006
Volumen: 28
Número: 2
Páginas: 9-28
Tipo: Artículo
Otras publicaciones en: Atlantis: Revista de la Asociación Española de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos
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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.