Other types of semantic change

Cause of semantic change

Specialization

Word meaning is liable to change in the course of the historical development. Change of meaning has been thoroughly studied and attracted the attention of all semanticists whose work till 1930’s was devoted almost exclusively to the description and classification of various changes in meaning.

A thorough knowledge of various types of semantic change helps to understand the semantic structure of English words at the present stage of their development. The development and change of the semantic structure of a word is a source of qualitative and quantitative development of the vocabulary.

All the types depend upon some comparison between the earlier and the new meaning of the given word. The order in which the various types are described will follow the diachronic classification of M. Breal and H.Paul. H. Breal was the first to emphasize the fact that in passing from general usage into some specific sphere of communication a word undergoes some sort of specialization of its meaning.

E.g. the word “case”, alongside its general meaning of “circumstances in which a person or a thing is” possesses special meanings in law-дело, grammar-possessive case, in medicine-a patient or an illness. This difference is revealed in the difference of contexts in which the word occurs:

e.g. One of Charles cases had been a child ill with a form of diphtheria

Words connected with illness and medicine, words connected with law form the semantic paradigm of the word case. In this example the word which formerly represented a notion of broader scope has come to render a notion of a narrower scope. When the meaning is specialized, the word can name fewer objects. At the same time the content of the notion is being enriched as it includes a greater number of relevant features by which the notion is characterized. The word is now more applicable to more things, but tells us less about them. The reduction of scope is called “narrowing of meaning” or “specialization”. This type of semantic change is particularly frequent in vocabulary of professional and trade groups.

As a special group belonging to the same type one can mention the formation of proper names from common nouns:

E.g. the City-the business part of London

The Highlands-the mountainous part of Scotland

The Tower (of London)-originally a fortress and palace

In the above examples the change of meaning occurred without change of sound form and without any intervention of morphological process. But in many cases the 2 processes, semantic and morphological go hand in hand. For example, when considering the effect of the agent suffix-ist added to the noun stem-art-we might expect the whole to mean any person occupied in art, but usage specializes the meaning of the word artist and restricts to a synonym of “painter”.

1. Generalization

The process reverse to specialization is called generalization. In that case the scope of the new notion is wider than that of the original one, whereas the content of the notion is poorer. The transition from the concrete meaning to an abstract is frequent in the semantic history of words.

E.g. fly-to move through the air with wings

Now it denotes any kind of movement in the air, outer space, or very quick movement.

3. A necessary condition of any semantic change is some connection, some association between the old and the new meaning. There are 2 kinds of association involved in various semantic changes: a). similarity of meanings and b). contiguity of meanings. Similarity of meanings may be described as a semantic process of associating 2 referents, one of which in some way resembles the other. The word hand acquired in the 16th century the meaning of a pointer of a clock or a watch because of the similarity of the functions, performed by the clock. A cunning person is called as a fox, a woman can be named as a peach, a cat a goose.

3.Metaphor may be used upon different types of similarity: a). shape: head of a cabbage, teeth of a saw; b). function: the head of the school, the key of the mystery; c). by position: foot of the mountain, d). behavior: bookworm.

Anthropomorphic metaphors are among the most frequent. The way in which the words denoting parts of the body are made to express a variety of meanings may be illustrated by the following: head of the army, arms and mouth of the river, eye of a needle, tongue of a bell.

Another group of metaphor comprises transitions of proper names into common ones: e.g. Falstaff-hero of Shakespeare’s plays, but at the same time Falstaff is used to some persons to show that they are impudent-нахальный. Don Juan is a profligate.

4. Metonymy. Contiguity of meanings or metonymy may be described as the semantic process of association of two referents one of which makes part of the other or is closely connected with it.

E.g. tongue as the organ of speech and tongue in the meaning of language as the mother tongue

The transfer can be conditioned by spatial-прострвнственный, temporal, casual, symbolic, instrumental, and functional and other relations:

Book is derived from the name of a tree, on which the inscriptions were made,

Cash (French word “caisse”-box) naming the container came to mean what was contained-money

Chair- the chairman (spatial)

Town-inhabitants

Crown-monarchy (symbolic)

Glass-material, it is made of.

Common names may be derived from proper names also metonymically: diesel, volt, ampere, named after great scientists

The White House, the Pentagon-the places used not only for the establishments, but also for its policy.

Boston, china, tweed –geographic names turned into common nouns.