Holistic outlook or specialisation? Lexicogenic processes, semantics and syntax in the VerbLexGen project

Abstract

Studies on languages have undergone a similar evolution to that of all the sciences: in the early days there is an overall view that gradually gives way to progressive specialisation, enabling more in-depth and far-reaching conclusions to be drawn. After decades of growing specialisation in philological research we think it may be interesting to return to an overall view of the language, as this loss of holistic perspective can sometimes lead to the formulation of theories with such a high degree of abstraction that they can even cause errors in the interpretation of the linguistic phenomenon being studied. As an example we will present the VerbLexGen, which puts forward an all-embracing holistic type of view for structuring a specialised verb dictionary with proverbs.