Abstract

The aim of the present study is to investigate the role of conceptual metaphor in the polysemy of the visual verb of /baxmaq/ (look) in Azerbaijani Turkish within the framework of cognitive semantics. The research method is a descriptive—analytic and the study tries to present the various meanings of the verb. To achieve this goal, the linguistic data was gathered by using Azerbaijani Turkish dictionaries, books, magazines, newspapers, and one of the authors’ linguistic intuitions. The findings indicate that for visual verb /baxmaq/ there are 19 senses with regard to its classification and abstracting away of contextual variations. They also show that the polysemy is a systematic phenomenon and factor such as metaphor and metonymy are crucially involved in the formation and description of polysemy and this makes broad meaning and eventually leads to polysemy of verb. In this way, semantic extensive network of verb is formed and on the other hand, it is claimed that metaphor has stronger role than metonymy in the formation of polysemy and usage of verb in the different context. The findings also show that polysemy is not randomly and forms based on our experiences of different concepts and the meanings of verbs are different from each other because they are understood from different ways.

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