METAPHORICAL EXTENSIONS OF 5 ENGLISH AND PERSIAN VERBS
An image-schematic analysis
Keywords:
semantic change, mechanisms of semantic change, metaphor, image-schemaAbstract
Languages change and this change may occur in the sound structure, morphology, syntax, lexicon and the lexical meaning. Lexical and semantic changemay produce polysemy based on different mechanisms of semantic changes. Metaphor as one of the mechanisms of semantic change extends the possible range of lexical meaning, operates on the basis of a real or assumed similarity between the source and target domains. This similarity, in turn, derives from conceptual structures called image schemas that are active in the mind of speakers of different languages. The present research, therefore, attempts to investigate metaphorical extensions of 5 cognate English and Persian verbs of common Indo-European origin. The ultimate goal of the article is to compare and contrast image-schematic types of the selected verbs based on image-schemas proposed by Johnson (1987) and Lakoff and Turner (1989). The analysis reveals that the present verbs have similar types of image-schemas in both English and Persian including imageschemas of path, existence, containment and attraction. This is along with the fact that not all cases of polysemy act similarly due to the diachronic nature of semantic changes and different historical and social circumstances.
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