Original scientific paper

Kennings as blends and prisms

Vlatko Broz ; Faculty of Philosophy, University of Zagreb

Abstract

This paper argues that recent advances in cognitive linguistics could shed more
light onto solving a particular historical semantics problem, namely the semantics
of kennings in Beowulf. The well-known figures of speech are very difficult to
understand because of a rather enigmatic way of making reference to people or
things (Brodeur 1960; Wehlau 1997). The first part of the paper aims to define the
kenning as a particular type of compound to set it apart from ordinary compounds.
The second and third parts of the paper apply recent cognitive linguistic approaches
to semantic compositionality, treating kennings as composite expressions
whose meaning is derived from an intricate interaction of metonymy and
metaphor. For the purpose of a semantic analysis of kennings, a few of the best
known examples have been selected. They are analysed first within the framework
of mental space and blending theory (Fauconnier and Turner 1998 and 2002), and
then they are analysed applying the prismatic model (Geeraerts 2002).

Keywords

kenning; compound; blend; prism; prismatic model

Hrčak ID:

75890

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/75890

Publication date:

16.12.2011.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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