The Semantic Network of the Japanese Verb Kuru ‘Come’
Hui Yin

Abstract
Traditional analyses of the Japanese verb kuru ‘come’ involve mere itemization of its various senses. An image schema has yet to be presented to characterize its diverse instantiations. This paper undertakes this goal within the framework of Cognitive Grammar. A network model and a source-path-goal schema are proposed to capture the relatedness of the various senses of this verb. This study shows cognitive domain selection/shifting plays an important role in motivating its semantic extensions. This paper supports a semantic network model by demonstrating that all the senses of kuru are far from random and that all the extensions are related to its basic meaning through family resemblance. This study also shows that all the variants of kuru result from profiling different parts of the trajectory of the motion and that it is human conceptualization of phenomena (mainly metaphor) that directly motives extensions including grammaticalization of a particular lexical item.

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