Özet:

Literal and figurative meanings are two ends of a continuum and we can not talk about a sharp distinction between these two meaning types (Dirven, 2002; Gibbs & Colston, 2012; Radden, 2002). Such a continuum exhibits different degrees of figurativity. Radden (2002) considers this as literal-metonymy-metaphor continuum; where Dirven (2002) focuses on conceptual closeness and conceptual distance on the continuum. This study aims to analyse the semantic aspects of Turkish adjectives büyük (big) and küçük (small) by referring to Turkish National Corpus (TNC) in the light of the gradation of literal-figurative meaning proposed by Dirven (2002). In order to reach this aim; first the noun types and experiential domains modified by the adjectives are analysed and then the semantic categories on the continuum are identified. The results of the study show that for büyük the most frequently used adj+noun constructions are abstract nouns and the most common experiential domain is EVALUATION. For küçük the most frequently used adj+noun constructions are animate entities and the most common experiential domain is PHYSICAL DIMENSION. The semantic categories for both adjectives display a continuum from literal to figurative with literal, pre-metonymic, metonymic, post-metonymic and metaphoric meanings.

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