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Article published In:
International Journal of Corpus Linguistics
Vol. 28:1 (2023) ► pp.1–27

Derivation and semantic autonomy

A corpus study of Polish głowa “head” and its diminutive główka

ORCID logo | University of Warsaw
ORCID logo | University of Warsaw

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.

Keywords: cognitive linguistics, lexical semantics, head, Polish, polysemy
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
Published online: 21 July 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.20074.kra
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