Basic verbs in typological perspective

• This article presents an approach towards verb typologies based on verbal semantic fields. The comparison of the 20 most frequent verbs in a sample of European languages shows that the lexical verbs tend to have basic meanings which are distributed between the most basic verbal semantic fields (indicated within parentheses): ‘go’, ‘come’ (Motion); ‘give’, ‘take’ (Possession), ‘make’ (Production), ‘say’ (Verbal communication), ‘see’ (Perception), ‘know’ (Cognition), ‘want’ (Desire). In addition, there are a number of grammatical verbs such as ‘be’, ‘have’ and modals. The result is compared to similar frequency counts from non-European languages and to data concerning the meaning of simple verbs in languages with closed verb classes. It appears that there are clear similarities that hold across languages but few absolute universals.

Subject headings

HUMANIORA  -- Språk och litteratur (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Languages and Literature (hsv//eng)

Keyword

lexical typology

lexical semantics

semantic fields

nuclear verbs

Linguistics

Lingvistik

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kap (subject category)