On the linguistic potential of archaic language use from a functional cognitive perspective

Abstract

The study intends to establish the stylistic description of archaic language use through the semantic approach of linguistic elements labelled stylistically as archaic. The functional linguistic presuppositions of the investigation are motivated by a comprehensive epistemological starting point, which follows from the hermeneutic critique of the historical cognition of the modern Western episteme. The study approaches the linguistic potential of archaic expressions from a structural and a procedural perspective on the basis of Langacker’s cognitive grammar, Fillmore’s frame semantics and of the cognitive grammatical model of discourse, bringing also the notions of perspective and grounding in the explanation. In this approach, archaic language use is interpreted as a continuum in a model which explains comprehensively both the phonological and the conceptual, as well as the encyclopaedically and the intertextually motivated use of archaic language from a usage based perspective. The operativeness of the suggested model is demonstrated by the analysis of sample texts.