In diachronic (or historical) linguistics, semantic change is a change in one of the meanings of a word. Every word has a variety of senses and connotations which can be added, removed, or altered over time, often to the extent that words of one time period mean quite different things to the same words as spoken in a previous time. Moreover, two words derived from the same original may develop in very distinct ways: cognates across languages often look very similar but mean entirely different things. Historical linguistics (also diachronic linguistics or comparative linguistics) is primarily the study of the ways in which languages change over time. ... A word is a unit of language that carries meaning and consists of one or more morphemes. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...

Semantic change is not to be confused with etymology, another field in diachronic linguistics; etymology is the scientific study of word origin, while semantic change deals with the development of sense. In fact, semantic change is one of the factors that need to be taken under consideration, in order to evaluate a proposed etymology. Etymology is the study of the origins of words. ... In linguistics, meaning is the content carried by the words or signs exchanged by people when communicating through language. ...

Limitations of historical semantics

In recent years semantic change has received a large amount of attention, especially within the framework of pragmatics and cognitive linguistics. Nevertheless, the quest for a standard taxomomy of semantic changes, which would adequately account for all attested mechanisms, is still in doubt. Many linguists (chiefly comparatists) would agree with R.S.P. Beekes' assertion, that "studies on change of meaning do not offer satisfactory results" and no-one has so far presented a full-scale method for interpretation and classification of the data^[1]. In linguistics and semiotics, pragmatics is concerned with bridging the explanatory gap between sentence meaning and speakers meaning. ... In linguistics and cognitive science, cognitive linguistics (CL) refers to the currently dominant school of linguistics that views the important essence of language as innately based in evolutionarily-developed and speciated faculties, and seeks explanations that advance or fit well into the current understandings of the human mind. ...

There are certain linguistic causes behind this deficiency, related to inherent limitations of historical semantics:

• By contrast with the limited number of phonemes and morphemes in a linguistic system, the number of senses is unlimited. This bipolar position has been described as resulting from the co-existence of a closed phonetic/morphologic system and an open semantic system^[2].

• There are no semantic rules or principles that may exclude a certain change of meaning (according to Antoine Meillet's ascertainment^[3]). Therefore, historical grammars and handbooks, after dealing with the development of phonetic and morphological system of the language, tend to proceed with the study of lexical change or origin (loanwords, lexical diffusion, dialectic split etc.), setting aside any need for a logical classification of semantic changes.

• Information on the circumstances that contributed to an alteration are rare and scarce. A linguist cannot retrieve (or verify) valuable evidence concerning style, intonation (the suprasegmental parts of language) and the relevant position of synonyms in a lexical field. Accordingly, he is not able to define and evaluate the sociolinguistic background which may have favoured a certain change or a degree of intentionality that lead to the entrenchment of the new meaning.

• Polysemy, which constitutes a prerequisite for semantic change, is based upon the construction of a central (nuclear) meaning of a word and of marginal or peripheral senses, that form a radial network^[4]. In fact, change of meaning has been sometimes defined as drift or shift of semantic load from a nuclear meaning to a peripheral one. Unfortunately, texts and inscriptions tend to be silent on the prototypicality^[5] of the nuclear meaning and on the relevant semantic force of one synonym over another.

In human language, a phoneme is a set of phones (speech sounds or sign elements) that are cognitively equivalent. ... In morpheme-based morphology, a morpheme is the smallest lingual unit that carries a semantic interpretation. ... Antoine Meillet (Paul-Jules-Antoine Meillet, November 11, 1866 - September 21, 1936), was one of the most important French linguists of the early 20th century. ... In linguistics, prosody refers to intonation and vocal stress in speech. ... -1... Polysemy (from the Greek πολυσημεία = multiple meaning) is the capacity for a sign to have multiple meanings. ...

Types of change

The four most widely recognised types of semantic change are extension, narrowing, amelioration, and pejoration. The first two represent changes in a word's scope, while the second pair can also cover changes in a word's individual meanings.

Extension 

Extension is the widening of a word's range of meanings, often by analogy or simplification. For example, virtue was initially a quality that could only be applied to men, like our modern word manliness, but in contemporary society, it can equally be applied to women as well. Maverick used to be a rancher's term for an unbranded cow but can now mean a person who doesn't conform to the conventions of a group (Jeffers & Lehiste).

Narrowing 

Narrowing is the reduction in a word's range of meanings, often limiting a generic word to a more specialised or technical use. For example, broadcast originally meant "to cast seeds out;" with the advent of radio and television, the word was extended to indicate the transmission of audio and video signals. Today, because of narrowing, very few people outside of agricultural circles use broadcast in the earlier sense (Jeffers & Lehiste).

Amelioration 

Amelioration occurs as a word loses negative connotations or gains positive ones. For example, mischievous used to mean "disastrous", where it now only means "playfully annoying".

Pejoration 

Pejoration occurs as a word develops negative connotations or loses positive ones. For example, notorious initially meant "widely known". Yet it has gone through the process of extension to now mean "widely and unfavourably known". A much more famous example is of the word gay, which can mean happy or colorful and was used commonly until it became a reference to homosexuals. While this may or may not have been a euphemisation in itself, the word in the original sense is avoided. Gay is also extended in certain slang vocabularies as a pejorative adjective. See also euphemism treadmill.

Semantic shift 

Semantic shift occurs as a word moves from one set of circumstances to another, resulting in an extension of the range of meanings. An example of this is navigator, which once applied only to ships but, with the development of planes and cars, now applies to multiple forms of travel. Another example is Old English, meat, (or rather mete), which referred to all forms of solid food while flesh (flæsc) referred to animal tissue, and food (foda) referred to animal fodder. Meat was eventually restricted to flesh of animals, then flesh restricted to the tissue of humans and food was generalized to refer to all forms of solid food (Jeffers & Lehiste).

Semantic drift 

Semantic drift is the movement of the entire meaning of a lexeme to a new meaning, and is particularly evidenced by semantic differences between cognates.

For instance, the English word to starve is cognate with the German sterben ("to die") and in some parts of England, the word can mean "be cold" (since it evolved through the meaning "to die of cold"). Though both words arose from a common West Germanic root *sterb-a- ("to die"), and their meanings are still somewhat related, semantic drift has caused their specific meanings to differ. The same may occur language-internally, especially when one form is specifically agglutinated. For example, English to hurdle is cognate to hard and is agglutinated with the -le frequentative suffix.

A more extreme example is with the English word black, which is cognate with Slavic words for white (Russian белый); the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European root for both is *bhel. English black derives from Germanic *blakaz, a past participle of a verb meaning "to blaze." As an adjective, the word would indicate something that has burned and since what is burnt is generally black, the shift in meaning makes more sense.

Figurative use 

Figurative use is a change in meaning that is based on an analogy or likeness between things. For example, a crane is a bird with a long neck, but the word can now also mean a piece of equipment for lifting weights. The earlier examples of maverick and broadcast are also examples of figurative use.

Grammaticalisation 

Grammaticalisation is the development of function words and grammatical affices from content words. It often begins with extension of a word to include a grammatical function, and the subsequent narrowing of the word (usually after the word has suffered morphological changes) to a solely or predominantly grammatical use. An example of this is the French word pas, which literally means "step" but is also used with ne in forming negating statements like je ne pense pas ("I don't think so") as well as by itself: ma voiture a un toit ouvrant, la leur pas ("my car is convertible, theirs isn't").

Metonymy 

A type of extension, metonymy or synecdoche is the use of a part of an object to refer to a whole. In many languages, the word for head can be used as a substitute for the word for person. In English, we have the phrase "a head", resembling the Latin phrase "per capita", which we also use. The word "poll", originally meaning the top of the head, can refer to the whole head, and a "poll tax" is a fixed tax applied to each person. The convention of using capital cities to represent countries or their governments is another example of metonymy.

Euphemism 

A euphemism is the use of a substitute word in an attempt to replace or mask the negative connotations of the normal word for a certain object or action. The substitute word undergoes an extension, while the word replaced may suffer pejoration by dissimilation. For example, snogging was once an alternative word for sex, though it has now been ameliorated in most registers to mean a french kiss.

Political correctness 

Political correctness is a real or perceived attempt to refine or restrict language and terms used in public discussion to those deemed acceptable or appropriate. For example, in the United Kingdom in the early 1990s the term "blackboard" became perceived by some as being "politically incorrect", and so some schools instructed teachers to refer to it as a "chalkboard" instead.^[6]

Analogy is either the cognitive process of transferring information from a particular subject (the analogue or source) to another particular subject (the target), or a linguistic expression corresponding to such a process. ... Since its coinage, the word homosexuality has acquired multiple meanings. ... A word or phrase is pejorative if it implies contempt or disapproval. ... A euphemism is an expression intended by the speaker to be less offensive, disturbing, or troubling to the listener than the word or phrase it replaces, or in the case of doublespeak to make it less troublesome for the speaker. ... Note: This page contains phonetic information presented in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) using Unicode. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... The Germanic languages in Europe are divided into North (blue) and West Germanic (green and orange) Languages  Low Saxon-Low Franconian (Dutch)  High German (standard German, Schwyzerdütsch)  Insular Anglo-Frisian (English, Scots)  Continental Anglo-Frisian (Frisian)  East North Germanic (Danish, BokmÃ¥l Norwegian, Swedish)  West North Germanic (Nynorsk Norwegian... In grammar, a frequentative form of a word is one which indicates repeated action. ... Analogy is either the cognitive process of transferring information from a particular subject (the analogue or source) to another particular subject (the target), or a linguistic expression corresponding to such a process. ... Grammaticalisation, also referred to as Grammaticalization, Grammatisation or Grammatization is a theory describing the change of a content word (lexical morpheme) into a function word or grammatical affix. ... Function words are words that have little lexical meaning or have ambiguous meaning, but instead serve to express grammatical relationships with other words within a sentence, or specify the attitude or mood of the speaker. ... In rhetoric, metonymy (from Greek beyond/changed and , a suffix used to name figures of speech from name (OED)) (IPA //) is the substitution of one word for another with which it is associated. ... A euphemism is an expression intended by the speaker to be less offensive, disturbing, or troubling to the listener than the word or phrase it replaces, or in the case of doublespeak to make it less troublesome for the speaker. ... French Kiss is an American-made 1995 romantic comedy film set primarily in France. ...

Multiple processes

Many words go through more than one process. A good example of this is the word punk. It initially meant "a young boy". However it was then pejorated to mean "prostitute". In the 1970s, the word was then ameliorated to describe a music genre. In some areas, this change has gone even further and "punk" can mean someone who doesn't stand up for himself and thus is pushed around and disrespected. Prostitution is the sale of sexual services (typically manual stimulation, oral sex, sexual intercourse, or anal sex) for cash or other kind of return, generally indiscriminately with many persons. ...

History

It is certain that semantic change has occurred since human language first arose. However, the study of semantic change only dates back to the 1900s.

The pioneering work was carried out by the French linguist Michel Bréal, who published his book Essai de sémantique in 1899 (Paris, 2nd ed.). Bréal was soon followed by most linguists, who defined mechanisms of semantic change in harmony with his findings. Accordingly, in 1921 the German linguist Hermann Hirt classified semantic changes under six categories: (a) narrowing (Verengerung), (b) pejoration (Verschlechterung), (c) amelioration (Verbesserung), (d) extension (Erweiterung), (e) metaphor (Metapher), and (f) metonymy (Metonymie)^[7]. Michel Jules Alfred Bréal (March 26, 1832 - 1915), French philologist, was born at Landau in Rhenish Bavaria, of French parents. ... 1899 (MDCCCXCIX) was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... 1921 (MCMXXI) was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar). ... Hermann Hirt (born 1865 in Magdeburg, died 1936 in Giessen) was an Indo-Europeanist. ...

A few years later, Jost Trier, a German linguist, who presented his findings in 1934, was the first one to point out the importance of lexical / semantic fields. In his studies, he showed how the structure of the German language had changed between 1200 and 1300. Jost Trier (December 15, 1894, Schlitz bei Fulda - September 15, 1970, Bad Salzuflen) was a German Germanic linguist (Altgermanist). ... 1934 (MCMXXXIV) was a common year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ...

In 1200, the German language had no separate word for cleverness. It only had Kunst for "courtly skills" and List for "non-courtly skills." The language also included the word Wîsheit for any kind of knowledge.

By 1300, however, things had changed. Wîsheit had been narrowed to just mean "religious experience", kunst was beginning to take on the meaning of "art" or "skill", and List had been removed from the language entirely (it had begun to gain pejorative connotations). List has returned to Modern German, where it now means "cunning" or "trick".

Notes and References

• The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language (1987) David Crystal.
• The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language (1995) David Crystal.
• Jeffers, Robert J. and Lehiste, Ilse (1979). Principles and Methods for Historical Linguistics. MIT press.

1987 (MCMLXXXVII) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Professor David Crystal, OBE (born 1941 in Lisburn, Northern Ireland, UK) is a linguist, academic and author. ... 1995 (MCMXCV) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Professor David Crystal, OBE (born 1941 in Lisburn, Northern Ireland, UK) is a linguist, academic and author. ... The Mental space is a theoretic construct proposed by Gilles Fauconnier corresponding to possible worlds in Philosophy. ... The Sunday Times is the name of several Sunday newspapers. ...

See also

Language change Language change is the manner in which the phonetic, morphological, semantic, syntactic, and other features of a language are modified over time. ...