The geometry of grammatical meaning: Semantic maps and cross-linguistic comparison

By Martin Haspelmath. 2003

529 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A recurrent problem in linguistic analysis is the existence of multiple senses or uses of a linguistic unit. While this affects all meaningful elements of language alike, content words as well as function words (such as prepositions and auxiliaries) and affixal categories (such as tense and case), it is particularly prominent with the latter two. Function words and affixes, which I will group together as "grammatical morphemes" (or "grams" for short), have more abstract and general meanings and are thus more apt to be used in multiple ways than content words. Moreover, many linguists regard the study of grammar as more interesting and prestigious, so the grams have tended to occupy center stage in linguistic theory. A few examples of grammatical morphemes with multiple senses/uses are given in (1)-(3). Each English example is followed by a short label describing the use or sense. The specific item whose uses/senses are exemplified is highlighted by boldface.

Subfields: Language and Linguistics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9cba918acf17d46e15fcd937da9153b3c732acb0

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Citations in the corpus

Phonological development: toward a “radical” templatic phonology (2007, methodology): “This model of categories is known as the semantic map model in typological theory (Haspelmath 2003; Croft 2003; Croft and Poole forthcoming).”
Crosslinguistic grammaticalization patterns of the allative (2007, background): “…with, and shows a striking similarity to, semantic maps proposed in recent years by several typologists and cognitive linguists (e.g., Croft 2001, Haspelmath 2003).20 Like semantic maps, our model attempts to capture the synchronic relationships between senses and their likely developmental…”
Semantic maps and the typology of colexification: Intertwining polysemous networks across languages (2008, methodology): “Section 4 will discuss the principles underlying the representation of lexical semantic maps, drawing on the principles set out by Haspelmath (2003).”
Logical and typological arguments for Radical Construction Grammar (2005, background): “Hence, distributional analysis in generative grammar is described as testing whether or not the putative category member undergoes the rule.”
The English dative alternation: The case for verb sensitivity1 (2008, background): “In English, the preposition to covers not only the notion of goal, but also part of the conceptual space of possessionrelated concepts – specifically including the notion of recipient (Haspelmath 2003: 219f., Newman 1996: 90f.).”