The Development of the Concept of SMELL in American English

Daniela Pettersson-Traba

Ahead of Publication Published by De Gruyter Mouton 2022

The Development of the Concept of SMELL in American English

A Usage-Based View of Near-Synonymy

Daniela Pettersson-Traba

Volume 51 in the series Applications of Cognitive Linguistics [ACL]

Overview

About this book

The last decades have witnessed a renewed interest in near-synonymy. In particular, recent distributional corpus-based approaches used for semantic analysis have successfully uncovered subtle distinctions in meaning between near-synonyms. However, most studies have dealt with the semantic structure of sets of near-synonyms from a synchronic perspective, while their diachronic evolution generally has been neglected. Against this backdrop, the aim of this book is to examine five adjectival near-synonyms in the history of American English from the understudied semantic domain of SMELL: fragrant, perfumed, scented, sweet-scented, and sweet-smelling. Their distribution is analyzed across a wide range of contexts, including semantic, morphosyntactic, and stylistic ones, since distributional patterns of this type serve as a proxy for semantic (dis)similarity. The data is submitted to various univariate and multivariate statistical techniques, making it possible to uncover fine-grained (dis)similarities among the near-synonyms, as well as possible changes in their prototypical structures. The book sheds valuable light on the diachronic development of lexical near-synonyms, a dimension that has up to now been relatively disregarded.

Author information

Daniela Pettersson-Traba, Complutense University of Madrid, Spain.

Topics

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
Audience: Researchers interested in Semantics, Cognitive Linguistics, Corpus Linguistics and English Linguistics in general.
Pages
- Main content: 300
Illustrations
- Illustrations: 25
- Coloured Illustrations: 8
- Tables: 67
Keywords: Near-Synonymy; Semantic Change; Collocation; SMELL

eBook

Planned Publication: October 24, 2022
ISBN: 9783110792294

Hardcover

Planned Publication: October 24, 2022
ISBN: 9783110792201

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The Development of the Concept of SMELL in American English

A Usage-Based View of Near-Synonymy