The Domain of Surface Texture

• Main Authors: Egor Kashkin, Olga Vinogradova
• Format: Report
• Language: unknown
• Subjects: khanty; nenets
• Online Access: http://www.hse.ru/data/2015/12/02/1081037337/30LNG2015.pdf

This paper deals with the typology of surface texture expressions, such as a slippery road, a smooth wooden board, rough hands, coarse or rough fabric. We discuss both their direct uses and metaphors formed with them, such as a slippery person, a smooth speech, a rugged captain. Our language sample includes 10 Uralic languages (Finnish, Estonian, Mari, Erzya, Moksha, Udmurt, Komi-Zyrjan, Hungarian, Khanty, Nenets), as well as 5 languages from other families (Russian, English, Spanish, Chinese, and Korean). The categorisation of these attributes includes primarily the division into visually perceived surfaces and surfaces perceived through physical contact. We discuss how much and in what ways the antonymic areas under observation are asymmetrical in their semantic features and combinability. One more focus in this research is to evaluate texture lexicon variation in an intragenetic study of a group of related languages in comparison with its variation across a broader sample of languages Lexical Typology; Semantic Typology; Corpus Research; Attributive Use; Metaphoric Shift