Cognitive Semantics : Meaning and Cognition

POLYSEMY AND DIFFERENTIATION IN THE LEXICON 123
Han hade strukit i gränden utanför He had been prowling around in the
Martinas hus. alley outside Martina’s house.
There are also many clear examples of of resultative strengthening, for example,:
Han strök av handen på byxbaken, He wiped his hand off on his pant-leg.
When certain types of nouns function as object, a specific instrument and a
specific result is understood. A sentence such as Per strök taket means ‘Per
painted the ceiling’, while Per strök sina byxor means ‘Per ironed his pants’.
The instruments in these examples are BRUSH(x) and IRON(x), respectively.
Any object that could naturally be interpreted as a surface that is conventionally
painted or a cloth that is usually ironed will strongly suggest these specific
meanings. The latter meaning can also be implied when there is no overt
object:
Det fattades smör, tvålen var slut, There wasn’t any butter, we’d run out of
hon hade inte tänkt på att stryka. soap, she had forgotten to do the ironing.
A further possibility is that the object refers to a word or an utterance,
TEXT(y), for short. In this case, the instrument PEN(x) is understood: Peter
strök under ordet (‘under the word’) ‘Peter underlined the word’ or Peter
strök över (‘over’) ordet ‘Peter crossed out the word’. The semantic representation
is shown in Table 13.
The drawing (‘stroking’) of a pen over a piece of paper causes a line to
exist. In addition, the line has a symbolic function, which shifts depending on
its position with respect to the text. A line under the words signals importance,
whereas a line through the words means that the text is not valid:
Han fick fram en penna ur He slipped a pencil from his pocket and
bröstfickan och satte igång att stryka began underlining phrases.
under diverse meningar.
Då skulle han ha strukit över He’d have scratched out some names,
vissa namn och satt in andra i stället inserted others, and scrawled notes
och gjort anteckningar i marginalen. across the margins.