Lexico-Typological Study of the Prefixal Verbs of Throwing

This study continues the research tradition in lexical typology - studying verbs of movement. Its matter of study is formed by prefixed and phrasal verbs of throwing in two European languages – Russian and English. The data collected covers various usage cases in which verbs of throwing display different direct and figurative meanings. This study adds a new layer to the semantic analysis by bringing metaphors with verbs of throwing into the picture and matching them with direct meanings. Usage cases are derived based on previous studies, dictionaries and corpus data. The instances are analyzed, classified and clustered to match frames of meaning defined in the previous study (Blinova 2018); the list of meanings is updated and completed. Once groups have been formed and lists of meanings are present for both Russian and English, metaphors and direct meanings are matched, and hypotheses linking direct and figurative meanings are pretested with a view on further research. As a result of the study, nine direct meanings and twenty metaphorical frames have been identified for metaphors with verbs of throwing in Russian and English.. Semantic maps depicting metaphorical meanings of the verbs of throwing in Russian and English have been updated to include the new data, and a heat map and frequency grouping framework for metaphorical meanings within the domain have been developed. Furthermore, nine hypotheses regarding the links between direct and figurative meanings have been pretested. In general, matching direct meanings to figurative ones is a novel concept, and verbs of throwing may contribute greatly to the field. This paper suggests a framework for further studies that may broaden the scope of analysis, bring in new facts and observations, and collect an amount of quantitative data high enough to make hypothesis testing valid. Concerning practical value of this study, it may boost development in the sphere of artificial intelligence and machine learning by developing a framework of linking metaphorical meanings to direct ones as well as assessing the frequency of metaphors.