This volume presents a lexico-typological study of several domains of physical qualities: 'sharp'/'blunt', 'wet', 'empty'/'full', 'old', as well as dimensions and surface texture.

• The Typology of Physical Qualities
• Editorial page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Table of contents
• Chapter 1. Introduction: The frame-based approach to the typology of qualities
  • 1. Subject of this book
  • 2. Methodology
  • 3. Language samples
  • 4. Data selection
  • 5. Lexical oppositions in qualities
    • 5.1 Taxonomy and mereology
    • 5.2 Topology
    • 5.3 Number of arguments
    • 5.4 Evaluation
    • 5.5 Type of perception
  • 6. Metaphoric shifts
  • 7. Conclusion
  • References
• Chapter 2. Methodology at work: Semantic Fields sharp and blunt
  • Introduction
  • 1. Defining the boundaries of the field and constructing a questionnaire
    • 1.1 The starting point: Russian data
    • 1.2 Intragenetic typology
    • 1.3 The “Shuttle” method and the core contexts
  • 2. Revealing the frame structure
  • 3. Constructing a semantic map
    • 3.1 Types of the sharp systems
    • 3.2 Intermediate cases
  • 4. Metaphorical extensions
  • 5. Semantic field blunt
  • 6. Discussion: Comparison to previous studies
  • 7. Conclusion
  • References
• Chapter 3. A matter of degree?: The domain of wetness in a typological perspective
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Amount of moisture and other properties
  • 3. Basic systems: Situations and frames
  • 4. Richer systems
  • 5. Constructing a semantic map
  • 6. Lexicalization of the domain of wetness in individual languages
  • 7. Conclusion
  • References
  • Dictionaries and corpora
• Chapter 4. Quality as a two-place predicate: The typology of full and empty
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Empty
    • 2.1 The main (physical) sense
    • 2.2 Adjacent domains
    • 2.3 Semantic extensions
  • 3. full
    • 3.1 The main (physical) sense
    • 3.2 Adjacent domains
    • 3.3 Semantic extensions
  • 4. Conclusion: Semantic maps
  • References
    • Sources
• Chapter 5. Typology of dimensions
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. The semantic map of dimension
    • 2.1 Topological classification
    • 2.2 The list of classes
    • 2.3 Building a semantic map
  • 3. Patterns of lexicalization: Latus
  • 4. On categorization of penetrable layers
  • 5. Patterns of lexicalization: Altus
    • 5.1 Ternary systems
    • 5.2 Unifying systems
  • 6. Discussion
    • 6.1 General remarks
    • 6.2 M. Bierwisch and E. Lang: A componential analysis approach
    • 6.3 Anna Wierzbicka: Dimensional terms in the natural semantic metalanguage
    • 6.4 Questions remaining
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
• Chapter 6. The domain of surface texture
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Literal uses
    • 2.1 Absence of roughness
    • 2.2 Roughness
  • 3. Metaphoric uses
    • 3.1 slippery
    • 3.2 smooth
    • 3.3 level
    • 3.4 Rough
  • 4. Discussion
  • Abbreviations
  • References
    • Sources
• Chapter 7. A new approach to old studies
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Semantics of old
  • 3. Data
  • 4. Typological results
  • 5. Dominant systems
    • 5.1 Polysemy across frames
    • 5.2 Dominant lexeme and its quasi-synonyms
  • 6. Subframes
    • 6.1 ‘Old person’: Oldness as a gradual property
    • 6.2 ‘Old person’: Gender opposition
    • 6.3 ‘Old person’: Speaking of children
    • 6.4 ‘Old person’ vs. ‘old oak’
  • 7. Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
  • Appendix
• Chapter 8. Talking temperature with close relatives: Semantic systems across Slavic languages
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Introducing the linguistics of temperature
  • 3. The temperature adjectives in Russian
  • 4. Slavic temperature adjectives for the warming zone (’warm’, ’hot’, ’extremely hot’): Forms and origin
  • 5. Temperature-frame distinctions across Slavic
  • 6. The ‘warm’ vs. ‘hot’ distinction in Slavic
  • 7. Slavic temperature adjectives for the cooling zone (‘cool’, ’cold’, ’extremely cold’): Forms and origin
  • 8. The ‘cold’ vs. ‘cool’ distinction in Slavic
  • 9. In-between temperatures: ‘Lukewarm’
  • 10. Wrapping up the Slavic comparison
    • 10.1 How (dis)similar are the temperature systems across Slavic?
    • 10.2 What is stable vs. changeable in the temperature terms across Slavic?
  • 11. Slavic temperature-term systems in a broader cross-linguistic perspective
  • Acknowledgements
  • Funding
  • Abbreviations
  • References
• Chapter 9. Lexical typology of Mandarin Chinese qualitative features
  • Introduction
  • 1. absence of irregularities on the surface: Typological expectations
  • 2. hard: Literal and figurative meanings
  • 3. heavy: Diagnosing oppositions within literal meanings through figurative ones
  • 4. Applying typological data to lexicology
  • 5. Conclusion
  • Abbreviations
  • Literature
• Chapter 10. The qualitative lexicon in Russian Sign Language from a typological perspective
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Iconicity and the word in sign languages
  • 3. Sign vs. spoken language lexicon: Previous studies
  • 4. Physical qualities in Russian Sign Language
    • 4.1 Research methodology
    • 4.2 Results of the study
  • 5. Discussion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
• Chapter 11. Constructing a typological questionnaire with distributional semantic models
  • 1. Introduction
  • 2. Previous research
  • 3. Typological questionnaires in the frame-based approach
  • 4. The algorithm for automatic questionnaire construction
    • 4.1 Collecting a list of collocations
    • 4.2 Dividing the contexts into frames
  • 5. Evaluation
    • 5.1 The metric
    • 5.2 Qualitative analysis of the obtained clusterings
  • 6. Discussion
  • 7. Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
• Languages index
• Subject index