María Inés Casado Antoniazzi

Verbs of Movement in English: Identification of Spacetime Parameters in a Corpus of 335 Fairy Tales a Semantic Application of Linguistic Models María Inés Casado Antoniazzi

Haste or hurry? Amble or walk? Dribble or trickle? Which one should I use? Lexicography confronts lexicology quite often. Based on the principle of pre-emption, words which share exactly the same meaning disappear with the passing of time or acquire different shades of meaning. Nevertheless, dictionaries define verbs like the above as synonyms, although they continue to exist. This wrong trend has led to a lack of lexical variety in the way Spaniards learn/use English. They use verb archetypes rather than hyponyms. This book, which follows the content-based approach, sheds a new light on the semantics of English verbs of movement of translocation/ displacement. Out of a corpus of 335 fairy tales from the Gutenberg Project, 27 charts have been elaborated, grouping verbs by the similarity in the movements they depict, while identifying their semantic differences. The concept of emotional space, coined to this effect, is fundamental to reveal their nuances. Thus, a new trend in lexicography and lexicology, with an impact on both methodology and didactics has developed. Teachers and learners of English (EFL/ESL) will raise their awareness after reading this book.