Differentiation of metaphorical meanings of verbs that are (also) synonymous in their literal meanings

Abstract

This paper constitutes part of a larger research project and is devoted to studying a type of synonymy in which the relevant verbs are fairly close to one another not only in their literal meanings but in their metaphorical uses as well. In particular, the paper offers an analysis of the meanings of three Hungarian verbs, szúr ‘pierce’, bök ‘poke’, and döf ‘stab’. The discussion is based on componential semantics within the so called organic-dialectical theory of language (see, e.g., Zsilka 1981) that attributes a decisive role to meaning components in metaphorisation processes, too. It also builds on relevant fundamental insights of functional cognitive linguistics (see,
e.g., Dancygier (ed.) 2017, Tolcsvai Nagy (ed.) 2017).

In the framework of this discussion, I seek answers to two interrelated questions: (i) Why do certain metaphorical meanings of the verbs szúr, bök and döf diverge from one another? (ii) How can the limits of their synonymy be established?

The meanings of the relevant verbs and the synonymy relationship(s) across them are detected with the help of the Mazsola search engine (Sass 2008) in data gleaned from the Hungarian Gigaword Corpus (HGC, see Oravecz et al. 2014). The paper surveys definitional aspects of the semantic system of the verbs szúr, bök and döf, and compares their meanings that are especially close to one another, those that are less close but still synonymous, and those that are not synonymous at all. Then, it will be explored what characteristic differences can be seen across metaphorical meanings of those verbs, how the traits (meaning components) that define them change over time, and whether there is any connection between the changes of those meaning components and the differences in meaning.