Semantics of (Udmurt) spatial cases. Theoretical and methodological perspectives.
Riku Erkkilä (LMU)
In this presentation I discuss the theoretical and methodological background of the study of the semantics of spatial cases. Theoretical questions pertaining to the study of the semantics of the spatial cases are:
- How to model the semantic structure of spatial cases? The question is, can a spatial case be thought of having an internal structure with each meaning having relations to other meanings, and thus forming a radial set structure, or should the semantic structure be modeled in some other way.
- What can be said about the mental representation of spatial cases? Are all uses of spatial cases stored in a grand semantic network, or are they rather computed from some more general instances stored in the memory of the speaker?
- What can a linguist say about the cognitive representation of spatial cases in general?
- How general cognitive processes of humans may affect the semantic structure of spatial cases? Can effects of such processes as, e.g., categorization, memory, and inference be seen in the semantics of spatial cases?
Moreover, I consider the methodology of assessing different meanings of spatial cases. I review the previous methods that have been proposed for the analysis of the semantics of spatial prepositions of Indo-European languages and present some modifications that are necessary to accommodate the analysis of spatial cases, as syntactically rather different class of spatial elements than prepositions.
The presentation is based on my doctoral dissertation on Udmurt spatial cases, and therefore I discuss the matters mainly from an Udmurt point of view. However, the observations should be valid for spatial cases of any language.