Typology of dimensions
Course author
Alexey Kozlov
Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences
Course materials
Course annotation
The course will focus on a very specific case study—the typology of dimensions. Quality terms like deep, high, thick and wide are very stable diachronically (most of them belong to Swadesh’s 100-word list); the semantic domain of dimensions is neatly structured and not too vast; its semantic map is organized relatively simply. Using the example of dimensions, we shall address some issues in lexical typology that go beyond just constructing a map. Does “polyfunctionality” from the typological point of view always mean polysemy in individual languages? To what extent antonymic semantic zones (e. g. ‘long’ and ‘short’) can be asymmetrical?