Granularity in the verbalization of events and objects

• Verfasst von: Stathi, Katerina [VerfasserIn]
• Titel: Granularity in the verbalization of events and objects
• Titelzusatz: a cross-linguistic study
• Verf.angabe: Katerina Stathi, University of Münster
• Verlagsort: Amsterdam ; Philadelphia
• Verlag: John Benjamins Publishing Company
• E-Jahr: 2023
• Jahr: [2023]
• Umfang: xviii, 536 Seiten
• Gesamttitel/Reihe: Studies in language companion series ; 233
• ISBN: 978-90-272-1382-2
• Sprache: eng
• Bibliogr. Hinweis: Erscheint auch als : Online-Ausgabe: Stathi, Katerina: Granularity in the verbalization of events and objects. - Amsterdam : John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2023. - 1 Online-Ressource (xviii, 536 Seiten)
• K10plus-PPN: 1846916658

Abstract

The study departs from the observation that in expressing ideas, some languages encode more details than others. It investigates whether languages encode events and/or objects at a coarse-grained (e.g., put, glass) as opposed to a fine-grained (e.g., lay, wine glass) level systematically. The level of detail is termed granularity, which is viewed as a cline from fine-grained (semantic specificity) to coarse-grained meaning (semantic generality). Four languages are investigated: German, English, Greek, and Turkish. The study draws on elicited data from a naming task. The verbalization of events is based on event and object descriptions in selected semantic domains. The results reveal significant granularity effects between languages and language types (satellite-framed vs. verb-framed). The study is relevant for scholars interested in linguistic typology, lexical and semantic typology, contrastive linguistics, event representation, psycholinguistics, and cognitive semantics