| dc.description.abstract | In this thesis, seven temperature adjectives in Swedish are analysed:
varm ’warm’, kall ’cold’, het ’hot’, ljum/ljummen ’lukewarm’ or ’tepid’,
kylig ’chilly’, sval ’cool’ and mild ’mild’. A model for analysis, inspired
by cognitive semantics etc., has been elaborated for the purpose of analysing
these adjectives. The materials are mainly corpora (a newspaper,
19,4 million words, and novels, 3,7 million words). 33 meaning variants
are discerned. These meaning variants are concrete (physical), abstract
(non-physical; i.e. extended meanings), as well as concrete and abstract
at the same time. The meaning variants concern phenomena like the
human body, the climate, certain artefacts like food and drink, feelings,
social activities, colours etc. The meaning variants are compared to
associations by informants, as well as to previous research in linguistics
and other disciplines, like medicine and psychology. It is concluded that
”metaphorical” structures in language and (immediate) thought seem to
differ in certain respects. The primary metaphors of Grady (1997) including
temperature, especially AFFECTION IS WARMTH, are confirmed
by the results. They point out important conceptual bindings between
the physical and extended meanings in the temperature domain in
Swedish. Because of such fundamental conceptual structures, it is
argued in the thesis that a phenomenon called gradual metaphors is
made possible in language (and mind). Physical descriptions (e.g. he
was feeling cold, a warm wind) might include a non-physical
(metaphorical etc.) dimension. Also, a hypothesis of ”the conceptual
web” is proposed, based on associated concepts, like, to warmth: light,
movement, life etc.; and, to cold: darkness, non-movement, death etc. | en |
