Reti sinonimiche e antonimiche di metafore animalesche impiegate per raffigurare caratteristiche degli esseri umani
Synonymic and Antonymic Networks of Animalistic Metaphors Used to Depict Characteristics of Human Beings

Summary/Abstract: The paper is aimed at examining the paradigmatic relations that each animal metaphor has with the others within the metaphorical field of animals. The fact that one metaphor can be viewed as belonging to two or more metaphorical fields proves the close relatedness among them. Metaphors with more than one meaning belong to different microfields, and within each one, paradigmatic relations are established. An animal metaphor found at the intersection of two or more metaphorical fields enters different synonymic and antonymic relations. The great number of synonyms that make up these series is due to the variations of the diastratic register to which most of the animal metaphors belong. This article shows that the metaphorical meanings of the lexemes should not be viewed or analyzed in an atomistic way, but they should be constantly compared with the synonymic series and antonymic pairs that exist within every metaphorical microfield.

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