Semantic changes of a word meaning in the english language

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 4
CHAPTER 1. SEMANTIC CHANGES OF A WORD MEANING: THEORETICAL ASPECTS 8
1.1 Semantic changes: essence of the term 8
1.2 Types of a word semantic change: general information 14
1.3 Semantic change: traditional classifications 23
1.4 Principles of semantic changes 29
1.5 Causes of semantic change 31
CHAPTER 2. WORD SEMANTIC CHANGE: PRACTICAL ANALYSIS 37
2.1 Discussion questions for semantic change of a word 37
2.2 Semantic change within word lexical change 45
CONCLUSION 51
LIST OF USED LITERATURE 55
LIST OF USED DICTIONARIES 56
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CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 4
CHAPTER 1. SEMANTIC CHANGES OF A WORD MEANING: THEORETICAL ASPECTS 8
1.1 Semantic changes: essence of the term 8
1.2 Types of a word semantic change: general information 14
1.3 Semantic change: traditional classifications 23
1.4 Principles of semantic changes 29
1.5 Causes of semantic change 31
CHAPTER 2. WORD SEMANTIC CHANGE: PRACTICAL ANALYSIS 37
2.1 Discussion questions for semantic change of a word 37
2.2 Semantic change within word lexical change 45
CONCLUSION 51
LIST OF USED LITERATURE 55
LIST OF USED DICTIONARIES 56

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) The opposite of generalisation is specialisation (also known as narrowing). In Middle English any young person could be called a girl; the restriction to female young persons is a development that occurred in the early Modern period. The second dimension on which certain semantic changes may be classified is whether they result from metaphor or metonymy. In metaphorical meaning changes, speakers perceive some sort of similarity between one concept (the source concept S) and another concept (the target concept T), and press the word for S into service to talk about T. The famous TV-chef Gordon Ramsay regularly calls participants in his cooking contests doughnuts if they fail to perform well. This is clearly not intended literally but figuratively. The basis of this metaphor is some sortof similarity between doughnuts and the contestants in question, probably including the fact that they are not very sophisticated or do not display any intelligence. This example demonstrates two characteristics of metaphor. First, the comparison between the source (here: doughnuts) and target (here: the contestants) is only partial: Ramsay is not implying, for instance, that the contestant could be filled with jam then eaten. Second, the source is more «concrete» than the target. To see that this is the case, consider that all of us can easily point to doughnuts. Sub-par contestants, on the other hand (or people who display a lack of some skill more generally), are much harder to identify objectively. Metonymy, like metaphor, involves some sort of connection between concepts, but in this case there is no similarity between them, but they are closely linked in some other way, for example because one is part of, or contains, the other. If we ask someone if they watched Gordon Ramsay last night, we actually want to know whether they watched the TV-show that the cook was in. This type of pars pro toto («part for whole»). Another metonymy is sometimes known as example of this would be where we use the phrase Number 10 to refer to the British Prime Minister (and possibly his government), who lives at 10, Downing Street. The development of the word rude, which we described above, could also be seen as a case of pars pro toto. A rude person used to refer to someone who was bad-mannered or vulgar. By applying the term to persons whose vulgarity is part of their attractiveness, young speakers of British English are using it metonymically. This example, then, shows that semantic changes may sometimes be of more than just one type: in this case melioration and metonymy, specifically pars pro toto. The reverse, totum pro parte («whole for part») is also possible. The third traditional typology of semantic changes is the division into changes whose result is a more positive meaning so-called melioration and those pejoration. A recent case of which give a more negative meaning known as melioration in British English is illustrated in the following two lines taken from “Fit”, but you know it, a song by “The Streets”: –I didn't wanna bowl over all geezer and rude, Not rude as in good but just rude like uncouth. These lines illustrate that the word rude, whose original meaning of «unmannered» (or indeed «uncouth») is obviously rather negative, can nowadays be used in a more positive sense. The exact meaning is something like «physically attractive (often in a slightly vulgar way)». It actually seems to be applied especially to females, as in She’s rude or using the currently fashionable intensifier well, as in She’s well rude. In order to understand the development of this more positive meaning, we may need to look to the dancehall and hip-hop subcultures. In 1960s Jamaican English, expressions such as rude boy or rude girl were used to refer to «cool» members of the dancehall scene. From there it may have spread (due to migration and the popular media) to the U.K.As an example of pejoration, consider that English sinister was derived from Latin, where the word did not carry any negative meaning but simply meant «left». (It may well be relevant, though, that most of you would refer to your left hand as your «bad hand».) We have seen that the traditional ways of classifying meaning changes involves various oppositions or contrasts, and that the meaning of linguistic items may develop in either direction. Meanings may become more positive or negative, broader or narrower, may involve metaphor or (different kinds of) metonymy, and may be caused by factors within or outside language. This impression that, at first blush in semantic change, «anything goes» was a problem for the status of the study of this level of language change as a serious scientific endeavour. After all, in science we are interested in finding patterns that, if not strictly predictable (as in for instance physics) are at least to some extent regular. Scientists, in other words, are not primarily interested in just cataloguing every phenomenon that is possible, but in constraints on those phenomena. Now in a field where anything and everything is possible we can really only offer descriptions of individual cases of historical semantic change, which are more like mere anecdotes as opposed to rigorous scientific analyses of what constrains what is possible, what isn’t, and why that should be so.These anecdotes may be interesting and entertaining enough to read, but they are not conducive to a general understanding of the phenomena in question. Indeed, a review of conferences and publications in historical linguistics in the previous century reveals that for a considerable period of time semantic change was not seen as worthy of many historical linguists’ attention. Fortunately some scholars, such as Elizabeth Traugott, persisted in the study of the phenomenon, and since about the 1980s some regularities have come to light. These regularities mainly fall under the umbrella term subjectification. Although many questions still remain in connection with subjectification, the discovery of this pattern (or set of patterns, see e.g. Traugott’s pioneering 1989 paper) has meant that linguists now take semantic change as an area that does merit serious scholarly attention. In order to understand what we mean by subjectification it is important to note that the term is not connected to what in grammatical analysis we call the subject of a clause. Instead it is related to the notion of subjective judgments (as opposed to objective statements): subjectification is the change from relatively objective meanings into increasingly subjective ones. The development of very is a clear case of this. When the word was borrowed from French, following the Normal Conquest, its meaning of «true» or «real» was borrowed along with it. (The French adjective vrai still means precisely that, and if you suspect a historical connection with the English words verify, veracity, and veritable, all of which have an element of «truth» in their meanings You’re absolutely right.) Thus, when a speaker of Middle English described a man as a very knight they meant that he was a true or real knight. Whether or not someone was or not could be established objectively: one would have been born as one or have been knighted by another knight. Nowadays if we say that language change is a very interesting area, we use the word very in a much more subjective sense: someone else may well disagree with our personal evaluation. The interesting thing about subjectification, from a scientific point of view, is that it is claimed to be unidirectional. That is to say, over time meanings may gradually become more subjective, but they do not become more objective. This is therefore a clear constraint on what is possible and what is not. Whether or not this unidirectionality is truly without exception is controversial: there are some debates over certain cases. The word gay could be a possible exception. Deciding whether or not someone is cheerful would, if anything, appear to be more subjective than saying whether or not they prefer partners of the same sex. But exceptions such as these do not detract much from the value of the notion of subjectification: the overwhelming evidence from English and other languages is that there are many more changes that go in the expected direction than in the opposite one. Coming back to our example of very, this is by no means the only case of an intensifier developing out of an adjective meaning «true» or «real». There are many other languages where we observe this, and in fact English itself provides other examples of this development as well. Right and really (and increasingly real, especially in American English) were not always used as an intensifier almost synonymous with very.The fact that we see word meanings travelling down this historical path again and again, and in languages that we do not consider to be related, is clear evidence that we have discovered something about the human mind, whose architecture and mechanisms are after all what language users around the globe have in common.1.4 Principles of semantic changesThe basic components of semantic change are the two processes:a)F a > F a bForm F with sense a acquires an additional sense b;b)F a b > F bForm F with senses a and b loses sense a.Process (b) must operate on a polysemous form. If we assume that polysemy must arise by process (a), process (b) is dependent on process (a), but not vice versa. Accordingly, the process of sense gain (as in (a)) is the sine qua non of semantic change.This work reviews proposals that in some semantic changes, implicature is the mechanism by which sense b initially comes to be associated with F a. The establishment of b as a sense of F is attributed to conventionalization of the implicature.The notion of implicature is not precisely defined, and may be compared to a concept with prototypical and peripheral instances. A prototypical implicature is a particularized conversational implicature as first proposed by Grice (1975), in which the implicature is intended by the speaker, dependent on the particular context of utterance, and calculated by identifiable inferential steps, including certain communicative principles as premisses – in Grice’s theory, the Cooperative Principle and its constitutive maxims, most importantly the maxims of Quantity and Relation. (Implicatures calculated under Quantity and Relation are discussed in more detail below.) Implicatures of this kind, though differently classified, remain important in post-Gricean and Neo-Gricean theories of communication.Grice also identified the more peripheral class of conventional implicatures, non-truth conditional inferences which attach to particular words by convention. A conventional implicature is not calculated or inferred under the Cooperative Principle and maxims, and being attached to an expression by convention, cannot be detached from it. If an expression E carries a conventional implicature I, any use of E will carry I, but if the utterance can be paraphrased without E, I will not be present. Grice’s example of this is the connective but, which he describes as an expression of conjunction carrying a conventional implicature of some sort of contrast between the two conjuncts, making their conjunction unexpected. The implicature of but, illustrated in «She was poor but honest», disappears in a paraphrase without but as in «She was poor and honest». In short, a conventional implicature is noncalculable and detachable. A conversational implicature, on the other hand, is detachable because (Manner implicatures aside) it arises from the sense of an utterance and not from its form. Any good paraphrase of an utterance with conversational implicature I will still carry I.This contrast presents an apparent tension for canonical conversational implicature as the mechanism underlying a sense gain F a > F a b. Conventional implicature is attached to a form, but it does not arise, being simply attached to the form as a listed property, corresponding only to the stage F a b. A conversational implicature arises but is not regularly attached to a particular form, giving only the process a > a b.Bridging the divide between conventional implicature and particularized conversational implicature, and presenting as a candidate for the mechanism underlying F a > F a b, is Grice’s generalized conversational implicature. Generalized conversational implicature is calculated under the Cooperative Principle, and thus arises. In addition, it is relatively independent of particular utterance contexts by virtue of being fairly regularly attached to particular expressions, as in, for example, Horn’s (1984) account of scalar implicature involving expressions of quantity or degree ranked on a scale of informational strength.The identification of conversational implicature along Gricean lines as the central prototype is consistent with the emphasis generally placed on this kind of implicature in the literature. But as Levinson points out, «Grice in fact intended the term implicature to be a general cover term, to stand in contrast to what is said or expressed by the truth conditions of expressions, and to include all the kinds of pragmatic (non-truth-conditional) inference discernible.» Understanding implicature in this broader sense shifts the focus away from the implicating speaker and towards any means at all by which the hearer may draw inferences, whether or not they are primarily grounded in communicative strategies. Here implicature may be taken to include cognitively-based inferences, arising out of the structure of lexical concepts.1.5 Causes of semantic changeIn comparison with classifications of semantic change the problem of their causes appears neglected. Opinions on this point are scattered through a great number of linguistic works and have apparently never been collected into anything complete. And yet a thorough understanding of the phenomena involved .in semantic change is impossible unless the whys and wherefores become known. This is of primary importance as it may lead eventually to a clearer, interpretation of language development. The vocabulary is the most flexible part of the language and it is precisely its semantic aspect that responds most readily to every change in the human activity in whatever sphere it may happen to take place.The causes of semantic changes may be grouped under two main headings: 1) linguistic and 2) extralinguistic ones. 1.Of these the first group has suffered much greater neglect in the past and it is not surprising therefore that far less is known of it than of the second. It deals with changes due to the constant interdependence of vocabulary units in language and speech, such as differentiation between synonyms, changes taking place in connection with ellipsis and with fixed contexts, changes resulting from ambiguity in certain contexts, and some other cases.Semantic change due to the differentiation of synonyms is a gradual change observed in the course of language history, sometimes, but not necessarily, involving the semantic assimilation of loan words. Consider, for example, the words time and tide. They used to be synonyms. Then tide took on its more limited application to the periodically shifting waters, and time alone is used in the general sense.Another example of semantic change involving synonymic differentiation is the word twist. In OE it was a noun, meaning «a rope» whereas the verb thrawan (now throw) meant both «hurl» and «twist». Since the appearance in the Middle English of the verb twisten («twist») the first verb lost this meaning. But threw in its turn influenced the development of casten (cast), a Scandinavian borrowing. Its primary meaning «hurl», «throw» is now present only in some set expressions. Cast keeps its old meaning in such phrases as cast a glance, cast lots, cast smth. in one’s teeth. Twist has very many meanings, the latest being «to dance the twist».Fixed context may be regarded as another linguistic factor in semantic change. Both factors are at work in the case of token. When brought into competition with the loan word sign, it became restricted in use to a number of set expressions such as love token, token of respect and so became specialized in meaning. Fixed context has this influence not only in phrases but in compound words as well. OE mete meant «food», its descendant meat refers only to flesh food except in the set expression meat and drink and the compound sweetmeats. No systematic treatment has so far been offered for the syntagmatic semantic changes depending on the context. But such cases do exist showing that investigation of the problem is important.One of these is ellipsis. The qualifying words of a frequent phrase may be omitted: sale comes to be used for cut-price sale, propose for to propose marriage, to be expecting for to be expecting a baby. Or vice versa, the kernel word of the phrase may seem redundant: minerals for mineral waters. Due to ellipsis starve which originally meant «die» (cf. Germ sterben) came to substitute the whole phrase die of hunger, and also began to mean «suffer from lack of food» and even in colloquial use «to feel hungry». Moreover as there are many words with transitive and intransitive variants naming cause and result, starve came to mean «to cause to perish with hunger».English has a great variety of these regular coincidences of different aspects, alongside with cause and result, we could consider the coincidence of subjective and objective, active and passive aspects especially frequent in adjectives. E.g. hateful means «exciting hatred» and «full of hatred»; curious— «strange» and «inquisitive»; pitiful— «exciting compassion» and «compassionate». Compare the different use of the words doubtful and healthy in the following: to be doubtful :: a doubtful advantage, to be healthy :: a healthy climate.2.The extralinguistic causes are determined by the social nature of the language: they are observed in changes of meaning resulting from the development of the notion expressed and the thing named and by the appearance of new notions and things. In other words, extralinguistic causes of semantic change are connected with the development of the human mind as it moulds reality to conform with its needs.Languages are powerfully affected by social, political, economic, cultural and technical change. The influence of those factors upon linguistic phenomena is studied by sociolinguistics. It shows that social factors can influence even structural features of linguistic units, terms of science, for instance, have a number of specific features as compared to words used in other spheres of human activity.The word being a linguistic realization of notion, it changes with the progress of human consciousness. This process is reflected in the development of lexical meaning. As the human mind achieves an ever more exact understanding of the world of reality and the objective relationships that characterize it, the notions become more and more exact reflections of real things. The history of the social, economic and political life of people, the progress of culture and science bring about changes in notions and things influencing the semantic aspect of language. For instance, OE Earth meant «the ground under people’s feet», «the soil» and «the world of man» as opposed to heaven that was supposed to be inhabited first by Gods and later on, with the spread of Christianity, by God, his saints and the souls of the dead. With the progress of science earth came to mean the third planet from the sun and the knowledge of it was constantly enriched.