Article published in:
Review of Cognitive Linguistics
Vol. 17:2 (2019) ► pp. 511–530

The conceptual basis of ablativity

| Universität Erfurt
| Universität Leipzig
The aim of the present paper is to define the notion of ablativity in terms of its event structure. To achieve this goal, the authors discuss the contribution of several semantic theories dealing with that conceptual class to finally propose their own definition, extensively based on the cognitive frame-based model by Wotjak (2006; 2011a; 2016). Even though the survey is mainly concerned with the theoretically relevant aspects of that semantic class, many of them are also illustrated with examples from different languages, especially from Latin, Spanish and German. Finally, the authors explain how ablativity conceptually relates to other semantic classes, such as concomitance or possession.
Keywords: ablativity, cognitive-conceptual structure, event structure, frame semantics
Article outline
  • 1.Ablativity and its precedents
  • 2.Some attempts to describe abl(ativity)
    • 2.1Terminological diversity
    • 2.2Some (formal) approaches
  • 3.The role of boundaries in the cognitive-conceptual structure of ablativity
  • 4.A cognitive representation for ablativity, prosecutivity and adlativity
  • 5.The semantic variation of ablativity
  • 6.Final remarks
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 10 January 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/rcl.00045.her
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