Derivation and semantic autonomy
A corpus study of Polish głowa “head” and its diminutive główka
The article focuses on the polysemy and usage patterns of the Polish lexeme głowa “head” and its
diminutive główka. Based on corpus methodology and cognitive linguistics analysis, it is argued that the two
lexemes are too autonomous in their meanings than predicted by their morphological relatedness. As the two words cover different
semantic domains, we observe that the diminutive suffix has developed a new function which signals lexicalization of meaning
toward a non-human semantic domain, for example, material objects, plants, etc. Our research contributes to studies on Polish
morphology and lexical semantics and to theoretical research on the polysemy of body part terms.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Previous research on “head” in Polish and other languages
- 3.Methodology
- 4.Findings
- 4.1Usage patterns of głowa and główka based on concordances
- 4.1.1The corporeal domain
- 4.1.2The “non-human” domain
- 4.1.3The “human” domain
- 4.1.4Summary of senses
- 4.2Collocations of głowa and główka
- 5.Discussion
- 6.Conclusion
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
-
References
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Cited by (2)
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2023.
Comparative construction morphology of diminutive forms in English and Urdu.
Cogent Arts & Humanities 10:1

Kraska-Szlenk, Iwona
2023.
Embodied Lexicon: Body Part Terms in Conceptualization, Language Structure and Discourse. In
Language in Educational and Cultural Perspectives [
Second Language Learning and Teaching, ],
► pp. 177 ff.

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