Lecture 2. Change of Meaning

Semantic motivation of words

Morphological motivation of words

This direct connection between the morphemic structure of the word and its meaning is termed morphological motivation. It implies a direct connection between the lexical meaning of the constituent morphemes, the pattern of their arrangement and the meaning of the word. Hence, by his definition all one-morpheme words, such as man, bad, go are non-motivated, because the connection between the structure of these words and their meaning is completely arbitrary, conventional.

Morphological motivation is present in derived and compound words. For example, the word reader is motivated by its immediate and, here, ultimate constituents the morphemes read- and –er, which, in their turn, are not motivated. So morphological motivation stops on the word level.

As to compounds, their motivation is morphological if the meaning of the whole is based on the literal meaning of the components, and semantic if the combination of components is used figuratively. For example, the word eyewash is motivated morphologically in its literal meaning ‘a lotion for the eyes’; but it is motivated semantically in its figurative meaning ‘deception’.

Morphological motivation is relative/ It means that the degree of morphological motivation may be different. Between the extremes of complete motivation, as in the word reader, and lack of motivation, as in the word man, there exist various grades of partial motivation, as in the case of cranberry, where the morpheme cran- has no lexical meaning, at least synchronously.

From the historical point of view motivation changes in the course of time. Words that are no-motivated at present may have lost their motivation due to changes in the vocabulary. Their motivation is said to be faded. For example, the word lady is not motivated at present, but historical analysis shows that it is derived from the OE hlāf-diZe ‘loaf-kneader’.

Semantic motivation is based on the co-existence of direct and figurative meaning, that is the connection of the old sense and the new one within the same synchronous system. For example, the word foot denotes ‘a limb of the human body’, but it can also mean ‘the foot of a table or a mountain’. In its direct meaning the word foot is not motivated. In the figurative meaning it may be explained as a metaphorical extension of the central meaning based on the similarity of different classes of referents denoted by the word.

The vocabulary is the most flexible part of the language and it is precisely its semantic aspect that responds most rapidly to every change in the human activity. Word-meaning is liable to change in the course of the historical development of the language. Changes of lexical meaning may be illustrated by a diachronic semantic analysis of common English words. For example, the word glad in OE Zlæd had the meaning of ‘bright’, ‘shining’.

The term change of meaning or semantic change may be applied to two kinds of change: (1) the semantic change which results in the disappearance of the old meaning which is replaced by the new one, and (2) a change in the number and arrangement of word-meanings in the semantic structure of a word without a single meaning disappearing. Here we confine ourselves only to the first kind of semantic change.

There are three closely bound up but essentially different aspects of the problem of semantic change. Here its necessary to discriminate between the causes of semantic change, the nature of the process of the change of meaning and the results of semantic change.

Discussing the cause of semantic change we concentrate on the factors bringing about this change and attempt to find out why the word changed its meaning. Analyzing the nature of semantic change we seek to clarify the process of this change and describe how various changes of meaning were brought about. Our aim in investigating the results of semantic change is to find out what was changed; that is we compare the resultant and the original meanings and describe the difference between them mainly in terms of the changes in the denotational and connotational components of lexical meaning. By the analysis of the nature and the results of semantic change we can reveal the types of semantic change.

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