ИСТИНА

The objective of the present paper is to define cognitively relevant aspects of falling that obtain their specific lexical coding in three Western Indo-Aryan languages: Hindi-Urdu, Punjabi and Gujarati. The study employs the methodology proposed by the Moscow Lexical Typology Group implying the description of lexical items through combinability descriptions. This method implies resorting to a number of sources and tools: dictionaries, corpora and specially designed questionnaires used in fieldwork.The paper brings to light the main parameters and frames that govern the lexical choice in the domain of falling in Western NIA, the dominant lexemes of the domain and special lexemes that are used to describe certain subtypes of falling; it describes also metaphorical shifts of the main lexemes of the domain.