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Article published In:
Constructions and Frames
Vol. 11:1 (2019) ► pp.43–78

Diachronic frame analysis

The Purpose frame in French

| The University of Texas at Austin

Frame Semantics offers a valuable perspective on mechanisms of semantic change, particularly metonymy. However, corpus-based frame analysis has rarely been applied to diachronic data. The potential of this approach is illustrated with a diachronic description of the Purpose frame in French, based on 1,429 tokens of 17 frame-evoking words. Metonymic mappings in the frame allow Means and Medium to replace Agent. A multinomial logistic regression model shows that usage of these mappings has increased since 1600 and is conditioned by genre and the frequency and grammatical category of the frame-evoking word. The approach may inform how metonymy leads to lexicalized semantic change.

Keywords: Frame Semantics, FrameNet, metonymy, semantic change, purposive constructions, diachrony
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Semantic change
    • 1.2The frames approach to metaphor and metonymy
    • 1.3Diachronic work in Frame Semantics
    • 1.4Diachronic frame analysis
  • 2.Data
  • 3.Methods
  • 4.Results
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 3 July 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cf.00023.law
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