Keywords
polysemy
conceptual metaphor
discovery
evaluation
English verb to find.
How to Cite
Abstract
The verb to find is one of the most frequent and semantically rich verbs in English. At first glance, it appears to denote a simple act of discovery or locating something that was previously unknown or lost. However, from the perspective of cognitive semantics, to find represents a complex network of meanings that extend far beyond physical discovery. This article explores the cognitive semantic structure of the verb to find, tracing its semantic development from concrete acts of discovery to abstract processes of evaluation, realization, and judgment. Using the tools of cognitive linguistics—such as conceptual metaphor, polysemy networks, and embodied cognition—the study demonstrates how diverse meanings of to find are motivated by human experience and conceptualization rather than arbitrary linguistic rules.References
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