Idiomaticity and analogy in inflection

A usage-based investigation of the correlation between spatial cases and lexical-semantic classes in Hungarian

Abstract

There has been little discussion on two problems of spatial cases, which might relate to lexical-semantic classification: neither the issue of semantic opacity, nor alternation has been dealt with in depth. The present paper has as its objective to broaden our current knowledge on Hungarian spatial cases by exploring how they correlate with lexical-semantic classes. The paper focuses on the Hungarian bidimensional spatial case system in which the so-called ON-configuration, IN-configuration, and AT-configuration markers express the
image schema of the Ground, and, at the same time, they also express whether the Ground is a source, a location, or a destination in relation to the Figure. The paper argues that inflection is lexically organized, and analogy is responsible for the productivity of constructions as well as for the semantic opacity (idiomaticity) of inflected word forms. It also argues that locative alternation is mainly due to the highlighting of different semantic substructures in the nominal’s meaning, to metonymy, and to differences in semantic grounding. Through typical linguistic examples and corpus analyses, the relationships between ON-configuration, IN-configuration, and AT-configuration markers and some lexical-semantic classes are demonstrated. As for cognitive motivation, perceptual experiences are obviously crucial to the establishment of a morpholexical cluster. However, based on an analysis of relatively opaque word forms, the paper argues that speakers tend to overlook kinaesthetic perceptual experiences when an already established exemplar cluster gains a new member by analogical extension mainly based on culturally accessible associative information.