Dogs know it, trees wait for it, and the wind snatches it : Verbal collexemes and semantic domains of noun + verb personifications in Hungarian

Simon, Gábor (2022) Dogs know it, trees wait for it, and the wind snatches it : Verbal collexemes and semantic domains of noun + verb personifications in Hungarian. STUDIA LINGUISTICA HUNGARICA, 34. pp. 5-21. ISSN 2062-1841

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Abstract

Verbal constructions of personification (i.e. nonhuman subject + predicate verb primarily used for human beings only) can be considered a key linguistic realization of personification. Although as grammatical metaphors they are rather invisible, the verb’s selection restrictions have a crucial role in expressing conceptual personification. In other words, the nominal form of personification as cross-domain mapping (e.g. WIND IS A THIEF ) is often realized via verb + argument structures (e.g. the wind grabbed the papers out of my hand). In a previous study, the domains of MOVEMENT , CONTROL and MENTAL ACT proved to be the most frequent conceptual categories of verbal personifications in a corpus of 20 th -century Hungarian poems. However, despite these initial findings, we have relatively little knowledge about what are the typical verbal components of personifications in Hungarian on a more general level.

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