The semantics of temperature adjectives in Polish and Swedish (literal senses)

The paper presents a semantic comparison of the basic temperature adjectives in Polish (zimny ‘cold', chłodny ‘cool, chilly', letni ‘lukewarm, tepid', ciepły ‘warm', gorący ‘hot') and in Swedish (kall ‘cold', kylig ‘chilly', sval ‘cool', ljum ‘lukewarm, tepid', varm ‘varm', het ‘hot'). The semantics of temperature terms is reconstructed through an analysis of their collocability with names of different classes of objects.The analysis shows that Polish and Swedish differ in their division of the temperature domain. The similarities between the two languages are limited to the adjective pairs zimny – kall and letni – ljum, which have almost identical combinability and connotations. The differences occur in the case of temperatures described in Polish with the adjective chłodny. The two Swedish equivalents, kylig and sval, apply to the same temperature range, but they have different connotations – the former is associated with luck of thermal comfort, wheras the latter is used in relation to pleasantly cooling temperatures, often in contrast to very high temperatures.Polish and Swedish differ also in conceptualisation of warmer temperature regions. The Swedish lexeme varm has a wider usage than the Polish ciepły, and occures in contexts in which the Polish gorący is applied, for example varmchoklad – gorąca czekolada ‘hot chocolate'. Swedish het has more limited applicability than the Polish gorący and refers mainly to extremely high temperatures which are regarded as uncomfortable or dangerous (whereas gorący can be used referring to both pleasant and unpleasant temperatures).