Реферат: Polysemy In The Semantic Field Of Movement In The English Language

glide

Water

Air

Land

To move over liquid

To move through the air

To move smoothly

To move (boat) quietly and smoothly across water

To fly quietly

To move quietly and smoothly in an effortless way

The verb dart describes sudden movement in air and on land:

(3) He darted across the room.

(4) Bees were darting from one flower to another.

The verbs dive, plunge and sink designate downward movement in air and water:

(5) She plunged into the swimming-pool.

(6) The falcon plunged towards its prey.

Sink, as the general term, denotes movement in a wider variety of contexts:

(7) Helen sank into water/mud/an armchair.

However, we postulate that the verbs dart, dive and sink prototypically describe movement in a given medium: dart is prototypically associated with air, and dive and sink with water. Our claim is supported by the fact that the medium parameter need not be syntactically present:

(8) She dived from the bridge and rescued the drowning child.

(9) The aircraft-carrier, hit by a torpedo, sank at once.

Further, as we will show below, sink has a metaphorical projection onto FEELING, which codifies the metaphor Emotion = Liquid (Goatly 1997):

(10) When he crashed, his heart sank at the thought that he might die.

Finally, glide refers to quiet/smooth movement in a wide range of contexts (water, air, land):

(11) The cruiser glided across the sea.

(12) An owl glided over the fields.

(13) The snake glided towards its prey.

As mentioned above, the domain of MOVEMENT is marked by the semantic parameter of direction, which can determine verb membership. The lexemes jump, vault, leap, hop and spring are subsumed under various subdomains depending on whether they denote forward or upward/downward movement over an obstacle: