Semantic Inheritance in the Lexical Paradigms of Old English Strong Verbs

Abstract

This work delves into the semantics of Old English lexical paradigms based on strong verbs. Its aim is to describe the patterns of semantic inheritance that hold in these paradigms, which present morphologically related words sharing the form and meaning of the base of derivation. The analysis carried out permits to circumscribe semantic derivation in these Old English lexical paradigms into the lexical entailment relations of troponymy, -troponymy, backward presupposition and cause, and the semantic relations of synonymy and opposition. The data of research has been retrieved from the lexical database Nerthus (Martín Arista et. al 2016). On the theoretical side, this examination follows the English lexical database WordNet (Princeton, 2010). This research unfolds a systematic methodology that is thoroughly described and illustrated by means of the paradigm (ge)berstan. It has not only been possible to circumscribe semantic derivation into the six semantic relations mentioned, but also to determine their frequency of occurrence in the paradigms under analysis, which indicates that synonymy and troponymy are the most recurrent semantic relations.