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Part of
The Typology of Physical Qualities
Edited by Ekaterina Rakhilina, Tatiana Reznikova and Daria Ryzhova
[Typological Studies in Language 133] 2022
► pp. 161–188

Chapter 6
The domain of surface texture

| Vinogradov Russian Language Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences
| HSE University

The paper deals with the typology of surface texture expressions, such as slippery road, smooth wooden board, rough hands, coarse or rough fabric. We discuss both their literal uses and metaphors formed with them, such as slippery person, smooth speech, rugged captain. Our language sample includes 10 Uralic languages (Finnish, Estonian, Meadow 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 includes primarily a division into visually perceived surfaces and surfaces perceived through physical contact. We discuss in what ways the antonymic areas under observation are asymmetrical in their semantics and combinability. One more focus is on evaluating variation in the texture lexicon in genetically related languages in comparison with its variation across a broader sample of languages.

Keywords: lexical typology, intragenetic typology, corpus research, metaphoric shift, Uralic languages
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literal uses
    • 2.1Absence of roughness
      • 2.1.1The way a surface is perceived
      • 2.1.2Slippery surfaces
      • 2.1.3Smooth surfaces
      • 2.1.4Level surfaces: Land areas vs. artefacts
    • 2.2Roughness
  • 3.Metaphoric uses
    • 3.1slippery
    • 3.2smooth
    • 3.3level
    • 3.4Rough
  • 4.Discussion
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 25 May 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.133.06kas
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