Onomasiology is concerned with the question "how do you express X"?. It is most commonly understood as a branch of lexicology, the study of words. It departs from a concept in the (extralinguistic) reality (= an idea, an object, a quality, an activity etc.) and asks for its names. The opposite approach is known as semasiology: here one departs from a word and asks what it means, or what concepts the word refers to. Lexicology is a speciality in linguistics dealing with the study of the lexicon. ...

By onomasiology many linguists automatically think of diachronic questions, i.e. questions on how and why things change their names. Historical linguistics (also diachronic linguistics or comparative linguistics) is primarily the study of the ways in which languages change over time, by means of examining languages which are recognizably related through similarities such as vocabulary, word formation, and syntax, as well as the surviving records of ancient languages. ...

Explanations of lexical/onomasiological change

When speaker has to name a particular referent in context (speaker-hearer situation, type of discourse, communicative goal, syntactical co-text), s/he first tries to categorize it by the perception of its surface and detail features. If speaker can classify the referent as member of a familiar concept, s/he, while carrying out a cost-benefit-analysis (conversational maxims: motoric and cognitive effort on the cost side vs. persuasion, representation, image, relationship and aesthetics on the benefit side), can fall back on an already existing word (provided that s/he was not mistaken in the classification of the referent or in the choice of the word, thus unintentionally triggering off lexemic change in the parole) or s/he can, more or less consciously, decide to coin a new designation.

The (intentional or non-intentional) coinage of a new designation can be incited by various forces, which can also co-occur:

• onomasiological fuzziness (i.e. difficulties in classifying the thing to be named or attributing the right word to the thing to be named, thus mixing up designations)
• dominance of the prototype (i.e. fuzzy difference between superordinate und subordinate term due to the monopoly of the prototypical member of a category in the real world)
• social reasons (i.e. everyday contact situations)
• institutional and non-institutional linguistic pre- and proscriptivism (i.e. legal and peer-group linguistic pre- and proscriptivism)
• flattery
• insult
• disguising things (i.e. euphemistic language, "doublespeak")
• taboo (i.e. taboo concepts)
• aesthetic-formal reasons (i.e. avoidance of words that are phonetically similar or identical to negatively associated words)
• communicative-formal reasons (i.e. abolition of forms that can be ambiguous in many contexts)
• word play/punning
• excessive length of words
• morphological misinterpretation (keyword: “folk-etymology”, creation of transparency by changes within a word)
• logical-formal reasons (“lexical regularization”, deletion of irregularity)
• desire for plasticity (creation of plastic/illustrative/telling name for a thing)
• anthropological salience of a concept (i.e. “natural importance”)
• culture-induced salience of a concept (“cultural importance”)
• changes in the referents (i.e. changes in the world)
• world view change (i.e. changes in the categorization of the world)
• prestige/fashion (based on the prestige of another language or variety, of certain word-formation patterns, or of certain semasiological centers of expansion)

The following alleged motives found in previous works have proven to be invalid: decrease in salience, reading errors, laziness, excessive phonetic shortness, difficult sound combinations, unclear stress patterns, cacophony.

If we use a “word death” metaphor, the valid motives, which are also tied to the seven conversational maxims presented above, can be localized on con-scious-subconscious continuum, where the gradual subconscious loss of a word can be compared to “natural (word) death” and where the conscious avoidance of a word can be compared to “(word) murder” (these two poles embrace several intermediate degrees):

• [“natural word-death” = lack of motivation]

• subconscious “creation of lexical life” with “involuntary word-slaughter, negligent lexicide” = onomasiological fuzziness, dominance of the prototype, social reasons, morphological misinterpretation; subconscious “creation of lexical life” = logical-formal reasons; analogy

• relatively conscious “creation of lexical life” = ?logical-formal reasons, anthropological salience/emotionality of a concept, desire for plasticity, culture-induced salience of a concept, flattery, insult, word play, excessive length; analogy

• “creation of lexical life” with “(voluntary) word-slaughter” = communicative-formal reasons, prestige/fashion

• “first-degree word murder, first-degree lexicide” and “creation of lexical life” = non-institutional linguistic pre- and proscriptivism, institutional linguistic pre- and proscriptivism, taboo, aesthetic-formal reasons, world view change, disguising language; [conscious “creation of lexical life” = change in things, new concept, ?world view change]

Subconscious innovations come up in the form of folk-etymologies, meto-nymies, synecdoches, generalization, specialization, cohyponymic transfer, “syntactic recategorization” (i.e. conversion), morphological alteration or phon-etic-prosodic alteration.

Processes of lexical/onomasiological change

In the case of intentional, conscious innovation speaker has to pass several levels of a word-finding, or name-giving, process: analysis of the specific features of the concept, onomasiological level (where the semantic components for the naming units, the so-called iconemes, are selected [“naming in a more abstract sense”]), and the onomatological level (where the concrete morphemes are selected [“naming in a more concrete sense”]). The level of feature analysis (and possibly the onomasiological level) can be spared if speaker simply borrows a word from a foreign language or variety; it is also spared if speaker simply takes the word s/he originally fell back to and shortens it by way of morpheme deletion (ellipsis), morpheme shortening (clipping), morpheme symbolization (acronymy and short-forms), or blending of its elements (blending).

If speaker does not shorten an already existing word for the concept, but coins a new one, s/he can select from several types of processes: various forms of composing (incl. blends and phraseologisms), back-derivation, adoption of an already existing word, syntactical recategorization (i.e. conversion), several forms of alteration, word-play and root creation. The coinages may be based on a model from speaker’s own idiom, on a model from a foreign idiom, or, in the case of root creations, on no model at all. In sum, we get the following catalog of formal processes of word-coining:

1. adoption of either (a) an already existing word of speaker’s own idiom (semantic change) or (b) a word from a foreign idiom (loanword)
2. syntactical recategorization (i.e. conversion, e.g. to e-mail from the noun e-mail)
3. composition (in a broad sense, i.e. compounds and derivations, which are, very consciously, not further subclassified)
4. ellipsis (i.e morpheme deletion, e.g. the noun daily from daily newspaper)
5. clipping (i.e. morpheme shortening, e.g. fan from fanatic)
6. acronyms (e.g. VAT from value added tax)
7. blendings (including folk-etymologies, although these come up non-intentionally, e.g. sparrow-grass for asparagus)
8. back-derivation (e.g. to baby-sit from babysitter)
9. reduplication (e.g. goody-goody)
10. morphological alteration (e.g. number change as in people as a plural word instead of a singular word)
11. clarifying compounds (i.e. tautological compounds, e.g. peacock for original pea, which already meant 'peacock')
12. wordplaying
13. stress alteration (e.g. stress shift in E. ímport vs. impórt)
14. graphic alteration (e.g. E. discrete vs. discreet)
15. phraseologism
16. root creation (including onomatopoetic and expressive words)

The name-giving process is completed with the actual phonetic realization on the morphonological level. Reduplication, in linguistics, is a morphological process in which the root or stem of a word, or only part of it, is repeated. ...

In order to create a new word on the onomatological level, speaker first selects one or two physically and psychologically salient aspects on the onomasiological level (respecting the situational context, i.e. the conversational maxims and the motives for innovating). The search for the motivations (iconemes) is based on one or several cognitive-associative relations. These relations are:

1. identity (e.g. with loans)
2. “figurative”, i.e. individually felt, similarity of the concepts, partially in connection with contiguity of concepts (e.g. mouse for a computer device that looks like a mouse)
3. contiguity of concepts, partially in connection with “ figurative” similarity of the concepts (e.g. a Picasso for a painting by Picasso or glass for a container made out of glass)
4. partiality of concepts (e.g. bar 'place of an inn where drinks are mixed' for the entire inn)
5. contrast of concepts (e.g. bad in the sense of "good")
6. “literal” or “figurative” similarity between the forms of a sign and the concept (e.g. with onomatopoetic words like purr)
7. strong relation between contents of signs and “literal” similarity of concepts (e.g. with generalization of meaning, e.g. Christmas tree for any kind of fur tree or even any kind of conifer)
8. strong relation between contents of signs and contrast of concepts (e.g. with learn in the sense of "teach" in some English dialects)
9. strong relation between contents of signs and “literal” similarity of concepts and partially contiguity of the forms of signs (e.g. corn in the English sense of "wheat" or Scottish sense of "oats" instead of "cereal")
10. (“literal”) similarity of the forms of signs (e.g. sparrow-grass for asparagus)
11. contiguity of the forms of signs (e.g. brunch from breakfast + lunch, VAT from value added tax)
12. “literal”, i.e. objectively visible, similarity and contiguity of concepts (e.g. with the transfer of names among spruce and fir)
13. “literal” similarity of referents and strong relation between contents of signs
14. multiple associations (e.g. with certain forms of word-play)

The concrete associations can or cannot be incited by a model, which may be of speaker’s own idiom or a foreign idiom. The differentiation between models from speaker’s own language vs. foreign models with both the cognitive-associative aspect and the formal aspect shows that loan influences cannot easily be included as a separate unique process in an overall scheme. Loan influence can become effective on various levels of the name-finding process.

Link

Onomasiology Online