Lexical Creativity and Semantic Underspecification in Abstract Nouns
When speakers struggle to name or evaluate a referent, they often resort to lexical creativity, particularly metaphorical processes. This paper analyzes various groups of nouns that undergo resemanticization in abstract contexts. Nouns with originally concrete meanings, such as anestesia or ancla, a...
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| Formato: | Artículo revista |
| Lenguaje: | Español |
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Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Buenos Aires
2025
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| Acceso en línea: | http://revistascientificas.filo.uba.ar/index.php/filologia/article/view/16854 |
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| Sumario: | When speakers struggle to name or evaluate a referent, they often resort to lexical creativity, particularly metaphorical processes. This paper analyzes various groups of nouns that undergo resemanticization in abstract contexts. Nouns with originally concrete meanings, such as anestesia or ancla, acquire abstract, underspecified meanings that enable metaphorical and hyperbolic references to social situations. Similarly, nouns like balazo and cañonazo (whose established meanings specify the ontological subtype disparo) lose this specification in their neological sense, relying on context for interpretation. This underspecificity allows for their interchangeability. Finally, nouns denoting natural phenomena, such as diluvio, tormenta and tsunami, also become underspecified upon resemanticization, making them interchangeable with one another.
In this article I focus on the analysis of the established and neological meanings of the following names: anestesia, ancla, filtro, pelotón, bolsón, tormenta, diluvio y tsunami. It has been observed that these nouns re-semanticize general like abstract nouns through metaphorical processes, giving rise to new, underspecified meanings. The general nature of these nouns is related to the variety of possible referents they present, which is reflected in an underspecified semantic structure. This study examines underspecification in the lexical field by exploring phenomena related to lexical creativity. Specifically, it investigates the boundaries between discursive metaphor and lexical metaphor in relation to nominal neologisms. |
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