Pour une archéologie du sens figuré - Archive ouverte HAL
Article Dans Une Revue Langue française Année : 1997

Towards an archaeology of figurative meaning

Pour une archéologie du sens figuré

Résumé

Cognitive semantics postulates that specific mental mechanisms belonging to the human imagination, namely metaphorical and metonymical mappings, are involved in semantic changes. Nevertheless, a thorough examination reveals the weakness of this theory. I therefore advocate a radically different analysis which allows us to do without these postulated cognitive mechanisms. Systematizing Meillet’ s observations about the role of “discontinuity in transmission” in semantic change, I propose, for each case studied, to look for what circumstances in collective experience can make the discrepancy between the new and the former meaning imperceptible to the speakers themselves. I argue that a semantic change at its decisive moment must most often perform in a covert way, without its investigators’ knowledge. The efficiency and heuristic fruitfulness of this method is illustrated in this paper by the study of certain Latin polysemous words expressing not only a physical bond but also a juridical obligation (‘obligare’, ‘obligatio’, ‘nectere’, ‘obstingere’, ’solvere’, ‘absolvere’).
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Dates et versions

hal-04036473 , version 1 (19-03-2023)

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  • HAL Id : hal-04036473 , version 1

Citer

Vincent Nyckees. Pour une archéologie du sens figuré. Langue française, 1997, 113, pp.49-65. ⟨hal-04036473⟩

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