Cover not available

Article published In: Constructions and Frames
Vol. 11:1 (2019) ► pp.43–78

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
authorization required

Diachronic frame analysis

The Purpose frame in French

 | The University of Texas at Austin
Published online: 3 July 2019
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/cf.00023.law
Abstract
Frame Semantics offers a valuable perspective on mechanisms of semantic change, particularly metonymy. However, corpus-based frame analysis has rarely been applied to diachronic data. The potential of this approach is illustrated with a diachronic description of the Purpose frame in French, based on 1,429 tokens of 17 frame-evoking words. Metonymic mappings in the frame allow Means and Medium to replace Agent. A multinomial logistic regression model shows that usage of these mappings has increased since 1600 and is conditioned by genre and the frequency and grammatical category of the frame-evoking word. The approach may inform how metonymy leads to lexicalized semantic change.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Semantic change
    • 1.2The frames approach to metaphor and metonymy
    • 1.3Diachronic work in Frame Semantics
    • 1.4Diachronic frame analysis
  • 2.Data
  • 3.Methods
  • 4.Results
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (58)
References
ARTFL-Frantext corpus.ATILF – CNRS & Université de Lorraine. [URL]. December 2016 version under PhiloLogic3.
Baker, C. F., Fillmore, C. J., & Lowe, J. B. (1998). The Berkeley FrameNet project. In COLING-ACT ’98: Proceedings of the Conference held at the University of Montréal (pp. 86–90). Association for Computational Linguistics.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Barcelona, A. (2000). Metaphor and metonymy at the crossroads: a cognitive perspective. [Topics in English linguistics]. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Blank, A. (1997). Prinzipien des lexikalischen Bedeutungswandels am Beispiel der romanischen Sprachen. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1999a). Co-presence and succession. In K.-U. Panther & G. Radden (Eds.), Metonymy in language and thought (pp. 169–191). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1999b). Why do new meanings occur? A cognitive typology of the motivations for lexical semantic change. In A. Blank & P. Koch (Eds.), Historical semantics and cognition (pp. 61–89). Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2003). Words and concepts in time: Towards diachronic cognitive onomasiology. In R. Eckardt, K. Von Heusinger, & C. Schwarze (Eds.), Words in time: Diachronic semantics from different points of view (pp. 37–66). Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bréal, M. (1900). Semantics: Studies in the science of meaning. New York: Henry Holt & Company.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Candito, M., & Djemaa, M. (2017). ASFALDA French FrameNet – Guide d’annotation. The ASFALDA Project. Retrieved from [URL]
Cioranescu, A. (1960). Diccionario Etimológico Rumano. Tenerife, Spain: Biblioteca Filológica.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Croft, W. (1993). The role of domains in the interpretation of metaphors and metonymies. Cognitive Linguistics, 4(4), 335–370. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
de Gaulle, C. (1956). Mémoires de guerre, l’unité, 1942–1944. Paris: Plon.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Djemaa, M., Candito, M., Muller, P., & Vieu, L. (2016). Corpus annotation within the French FrameNet: A domain-by-domain methodology. In Proceedings of LREC 2016 (pp. 3794–3801). Portoroz, Slovenia, May 2016.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Durkheim, E. (1915). L’Allemagne au-dessus de tout. Paris: Armand Colin.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Eckart de Castilho, R., Mújdricza-Maydt, É., Yimam, S. M., Hartmann, S., Gurevych, I., Frank, A., & Biemann, C. (2016). A Web-based tool for the integrated annotation of semantic and syntactic structures. In Proceedings of the LT4DH workshop at COLING 2016, Osaka, Japan.
Feltgen, Q., Fagard, B., & Nadal, J.-P. (2017). Frequency patterns of semantic change: Corpus-based evidence of a near-critical dynamics in language change. Royal Society Open Science, 4(11), 1708301, 1–14. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fillmore, C. J. (1982). Frame semantics. In Linguistic Society of Korea (Εd.), Linguistics in the morning calm (pp. 111–137). Seoul: Hanshin.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fillmore, C. J., & Atkins, B. T. (1992). Toward a frame-based lexicon: The semantics of RISK and its neighbors. In A. Lehrer & E. Kittay (Eds.), Frames, fields, and contrasts: New essays in semantic and lexical organization (pp. 75–102). Hillsdale: Erlbaum.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fillmore, C. J., Wooters, C., & Baker, C. F. (2001). Building a large lexical databank which provides deep semantics. In B. Tsou & O. Kwong (Eds.), Proceedings of the 15th Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation. Hong Kong.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
FrameNets In Other Languages. (2019). FrameNet. Retrieved March 21, 2019 from [URL]
Fried, M. (2007). A frame semantic account of morphosemantic change : The case of Old Czech věřící. In D. Divjak & A. Kochanska (Eds.), Cognitive paths into the Slavic domain (pp. 291–328). De Gruyter Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2013). Principles of constructional change. In T. Hoffmann & G. Trousdale (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of Construction Grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Galland, A. (1717). Les mille et une nuit: Contes arabes traduits en français, Tome 111. Paris: Florentin Delaulne.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
García-Pardo, A. (2017). Location verbs and the instrument-subject alternation. In A. Kaplan, M. K. McCarvel, & E. J. Rubin (Eds.), Proceedings of the 34th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (pp. 232–240). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project. [URL], document #3316.
Goldhahn, D., Eckart, T., & Quasthoff, U. (2012). Building large monolingual dictionaries at the Leipzig corpora collection: From 100 to 200 Languages. In Proceedings of the 8th International Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC’12), 2012.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Győri, G. (2002). Semantic change and cognition. Cognitive Linguistics, 13(2), 123–166. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hamilton, W. L., Leskovec, J., & Jurafsky, D. (2016). Diachronic word embeddings reveal statistical laws of semantic change. In Proceedings of the 54th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (pp. 1489–1501). Berlin: Association for Computational Linguistics.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heine, B., & Kuteva, T. (2002). World lexicon of grammaticalization. New York: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hilpert, M. (2013). Corpus-based approaches to constructional change. In T. Hoffmann & G. Trousdale (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of Construction Grammar (pp. 458–477). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Huyghe, R. (1955). Dialogue avec le visible. Paris: Flammarion.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Koch, P. (1999a). Cognitive aspects of semantic change and polysemy: The semantic space HAVE/BE. In A. Blank & P. Koch (Eds.), Historical semantics and cognition (pp. 279–305). Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1999b). Frame and contiguity: On the cognitive bases of metonymy and certain types of word formation. In K.-U. Panther & G. Radden (Eds.), Metonymy in language and thought (pp. 139–167). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2008). Cognitive onomasiology and lexical change: Around the eye. In M. Vanhove (Ed.), From polysemy to semantic change (pp. 107–138). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. R. D. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Langacker, R. W. (2008). Cognitive Grammar: A basic introduction. New York: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Levin, B. (2015). Semantics and pragmatics of argument alternations. Annual Review of Linguistics, 11, 63–83. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lowe, J. B., Baker, C. F., & Fillmore, C. J. (1997). A frame-semantic approach to semantic annotation. In M. Light (Ed.), Tagging text with lexical semantics: Why, what and how? (pp. 18–24). Special Interest Group on the Lexicon.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Michel, J.-B., Shen, Y. K., Aiden, A. P., Veres, A., Gray, M. K., Brockman, W., The Google Books Team, Pickett, J. P., Hoiberg, D., Clancy, D., Norvig, P., Orwant, J., Pinker, S., Nowak, M. A., and Aiden, E. L. (2010). Quantitative analysis of culture using millions of digitized books. Science (Published online ahead of print: 12/16/2010).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nerlich, B., & Clarke, D. D. (1992). Outline of a model for semantic change. In G. Kellermann & M. D. Morrissey (Eds.), Diachrony within synchrony: Language history and cognition (pp. 125–144). New York: Peter Lang.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nunberg, G. (1995). Transfers of meaning. Journal of Semantics, 12(2), 109–132. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Panther, K.-U., & Thornburg, L. (1999). The potentiality for actuality metonymy in English and Hungarian. In K.-U. Panther & G. Radden (Eds.), Metonymy in language and thought (pp. 333–357). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
R Core Team (2018). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. [URL]
Radden, G., & Kövecses, Z. (1999). Towards a theory of metonymy. In K.-U. Panther & G. Radden (Eds.), Metonymy in language and thought (pp. 17–60). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Romeo, V. (2011). Behind the store: Stories of a first-generation Italian American childhood. Bloomington: iUniverse.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ruppenhofer, J., Ellsworth, M., Petruck, M. R. L., Johnson, C. R., Baker, C. F., & Scheffczyk, J. (2016). FrameNet II: Extended theory and practice. FrameNet. Retrieved from [URL] %5Cn [URL]
Saint-Simon, L. de R. duc de. (1856). Mémoires Tome 4. Paris: Chéruel. (Original work published 1702).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Saldanya, M. P. (2015). Paradigms as triggers of semantic change: Demonstrative adverbs in Catalan and Spanish. Catalan Journal of Linguistics, 141, 113–135. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sorel, C. (1646). La vraye histoire comique de Francion. Troyes: Jacques Balduc.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stern, G. (1931). Meaning and change of meaning; with special reference to the English language. Oxford: Wettergren & Kerbers.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
TLFi : Trésor de la Langue Française informatisé. (2012). ATILF – CNRS & Université de Lorraine. Retrieved from [URL]
Traugott, E. C., & Dasher, R. B. (2001). Regularity in semantic change. [Cambridge Studies in Linguistics]. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ullmann, S. (1957). The principles of semantics (2d ed., Vol. 84.;84;). Oxford/Glasgow: Jackson.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1964). Semantics: An introduction to the science of meaning. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Venables, W. N., & Ripley, B. D. (2002). Modern applied statistics with S. Fourth Edition. New York: Springer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wickham, H. (2017). tidyverse: Easily install and load the ‘tidyverse’. R package version 1.2.1. [URL]
Zeileis, A., & Hothorn, T. (2002). Diagnostic checking in regression relationships. R News, 2(3), 7–10. [URL]
Cited by (4)

Cited by four other publications

Matsumoto, Yoshiko
2025. Frame Semantics. In The Cambridge Handbook of Construction Grammar, ► pp. 23 ff. DOI logo
Croft, William
2024. Philosophical reflections on the future of construction grammar (or, confessions of a Radical Construction Grammarian). Constructions and Frames 16:2 ► pp. 191 ff. DOI logo
Law, James
2022. Metonymy and argument alternations in French communication frames. Cognitive Linguistics 33:2 ► pp. 387 ff. DOI logo
Law, James
2023. Constructional change and frameelement selection. Constructions and Frames 15:1 ► pp. 119 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue