FROM SIGHT TO THOUGHT. A DIACHRONIC VIEW ON THE GREEK VERBS OF COGNITION
Corresponding author:
[email protected]
Accepted
26 March 2026
Available Online
15 November 2014
Abstract
THIS PAPER LOOKS AT THE SEMANTIC EVOLUTION OF THE VERBS OF THOUGHT IN GREEK, NAMELY VERBS WHICH MEAN ‘UNDERSTAND’, ‘KNOW’ AND ‘THINK’, FROM A COGNITIVE PERSPECTIVE (COGNITIVE SEMANTICS AND THE THEORY OF FRAMES). INTERESTINGLY, AFTER INVESTIGATING THE LEXICAL FIELD UNDER DISCUSSION, WE HAVE IDENTIFIED THE FOLLOWING PATTERN OF EVOLUTION FOR SOME OF THE VERBS: THEY ORIGINALLY HAD THE MEANING ‘SEE’, ‘WATCH’, ‘LOOK’, ‘OBSERVE’ AND DEVELOPED THE SECONDARY SENSE ‘UNDERSTAND’, WHICH BECAME SALIENT AND REPLACED THE PREVIOUS MEANING. MORE PRECISELY, SOME VERBS, WHICH DERIVED FROM INDO-EUROPEAN ROOTS DENOTING ‘SIGHT’ (‘SEE’, ‘WATCH’, ‘EYE’ ETC.), UNDERWENT A SEMANTIC SHIFT AND, FINALLY, DENOTED AN ABSTRACT AND INTELLECTUAL SENSE. THE FINDINGS OF THIS PAPER, NAMELY THIS PARTICULAR SEMANTIC PATTERN, COULD BE COMPARED TO THE EVOLUTION OF THE SAME SEMANTIC FIELD IN OTHER LANGUAGES, IN ORDER TO IDENTIFY A MORE GENERAL LINGUISTIC TENDENCY AND SOME UNIVERSALS WHICH ARE VALID BEYOND LINGUISTIC BORDERS.
Keywords
GREEK
VERBS OF THOUGHT
SEMANTIC EVOLUTION
FRAME SEMANTICS
COGNITIVISM
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