University Press of America
Pages: 302
Trim: 6 x 9¼
978-0-7618-4327-6 • Paperback • October 2008 • $72.99 • (£56.00)
Mika Shindo holds a Ph.D. in Cognitive Linguistics from Kyoto University. Her corpus research enables empirical diachronic analysis of semantic change. She has been a researcher at Japan's National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, and Visiting Scholar at Stanford University's Linguistics Department. She lectures on English at Kyoto University and other universities in the Kyoto area.
Chapter 1. Introduction
Chapter 2. Theoretical Framework
Chapter 3. Semantic Extensions of Sensory Adjectives to Abstract Domains: A Synchronic Perspective
Chapter 4. Gradual Processes of Semantic Extensions: A Diachronic Perspective
Chapter 5. Tendencies Inducible from Chronological Data: A Cognitive Perspective
Chapter 6. Conclusion
Dr. Shindo sheds welcome light on how pairs of terms like clear and bright or flat and plain that originally had similar sense-perception meanings developed significantly differentiated abstract, cognitive meanings. Her discussion of objective and subjective construals and of conversion of adjectives to verbs adds valuable dimensions to work on metaphor and schema-extension in semantic change from a cognitive linguistic perspective.
— Elizabeth Closs Traugott, professor emerita, Stanford University