Words For Women's Boots in Present-Day Polish: A Quantitative and Contrastive Onomasiological Study

• Authors: Andrew Wilson
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Footwear terminology demonstrates interesting cross-linguistic differences and is, consequently, also a problematic area for non-native speakers. In order to arrive at a more accurate picture of a subset of footwear terminology in present-day Polish, 82 native speakers were asked to name a range of six contemporary women's boot styles. No style showed a complete agreement in the preferred head noun, although a clear trend was evident for each one, with kozaki being the most commonly used overall. The possibly uniquely Polish use of a military metaphor for tall riding-style boots (oficerki) and the special subcultural case of Dr. Martens-style boots are discussed in particular. The choice of modifiers within noun phrases for boots is also examined. Some contrastive data are presented from speakers of Greek and Russian.

Keywords

EN

Polish; onomasiology; terminology; footwear; boots; dictionaries; learner language; elicitation experiments; subcultures

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Łódzki. Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego
• Journal: Research in Language
• Year: 2007
• Volume: 5
• Pages: 221-234

Dates

published

2007-01-01

online

2007-12-18

Contributors

author

Andrew Wilson

• Lancaster University

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Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/v10015-007-0011-5