Научный семинар Школы лингвистики

The semantic role source in the space domain is the role taken by a
landmark of a motion event, in which a trajector moves away from the
landmark. In Mary goes from Moscow to Milan, Milan is the landmark of
the spatial relation and takes the role of source. Similar to source
but not necessarily connected with motion is the role origin, as in A
woman from Moscow. In the domain of causal relations, source and
origin are typically connected with roles taken by participants that
initiate an event, such as agent and cause. Diachronically, agent
markers may arise from morphemes that were earlier limited to source
or origin, or from genitive markers. The relation between
source/origin and genitives, which is cross-linguistically very
frequent, is based on the part/whole relation and on a metaphor by
which possessors are conceived as wholes and possessed entities are
conceived as being their parts.

A comparatively lesser investigated issue connected with the space
domain is the so-called source-goal asymmetry, which includes various
characteristics of the two roles. In general, goals of motion are
expressed more frequently and in more fine-grained ways than sources.
In addition, unlike sources, which often behave as adjuncts, goals
tend to share properties with verbal arguments. Patterns of polysemy
within systems of spatial marking also point in the same direction:
static locations are commonly coded synchronically by the same markers
as goals of motion, and in a way distinct from sources. Notably, this
pattern of polysemy does not mean that diachronic mergers of source
and location are not attested: much to the contrary, many individual
locative markers in European languages – such as French dedans
‘inside’ or Ancient Greek ópisthe(n) ‘behind’ – often go back to
ablative expressions, suggesting an earlier ablative-locative
transfer. However, it is remarkable that once a marker acquires the
locative meaning, it loses the original ablative meaning. Thus, while
the extension from source to location is attested, possibly even more
frequently than commonly believed, polysemy tends to be avoided.
Note, however, that special types of landmarks (spatial referents,
human beings) often allow some overlap in the use of ablative and
locative encoding, and can be at the origin of ablative-locative
transfers. The encoding of certain spatial relations depends on the
type of landmark, and non-conventional landmarks (e.g. human beings)
often require special types of encoding. With time, such differential
marking may give rise to markers that are no longer obviously related
to the original spatial concept. Differential marking is relevant in
the domain of causal relations as well, as human landmarks taking the
role of cause can be kept distinct from agents if they are not
controllers.

In my talk, I will discuss some general features of the semantic role
source based on cross-linguistic evidence, and then will concentrate
on source encoding in Ancient Greek. Issues discussed will include
semantic extension and polysemy in the space domain as well as in
other cognitive domains, asymmetries, and differential marking.

Афиша доклада:Научный семинар 27.05 (PDF, 345 Кб)