Narrowing (or Specialisation) of Meaning

Broadening (or Generalisation) of Meaning.

Change of meaning.

Sometimes, the process of transference may result in a considerable change in range of meaning. For instance, the verb to arrive (French borrowing) began its life in English in the narrow meaning “to come to shore, to land”. In Modern English it has greatly widened its combinability and developed the general meaning “to come” (e.g. to arrive in a village, town, city, country, at a hotel, hostel, college, theatre, place, etc.). The meaning developed through transference based on contiguity (the concept of coming somewhere is the same for both meanings), but the range of the second meaning is much broader.

Extension (widening of meaning) is the extension of semantic capacity of a word, i.e. the expansion of polysemy in the course of its historical development, e.g. manuscript originally “smth hand-written”.

Another example of the broadening of meaning is pipe. Its earliest recorded meaning was “a musical wind instrument”. Nowadays it can denote any hollow oblong cylindrical body (e. g. water pipes). This meaning developed through transference based on the similarity of shape (pipe as a musical instrument is also a hollow oblong cylindrical object) which finally led to a considerable broadening of the range of meaning.

The word bird changed its meaning from “the young of a bird’ to its modern meaning through transference based on contiguity (the association is obvious). The second meaning is broader and more general.

It is interesting to trace the history of the word girl as an example of the changes in the range of meaning in the course of the semantic development of a word.

In Middle English it had the meaning of “a small child of either sex’. Then the word underwent the process of transference based on contiguity and developed the meaning of “a small child of the female sex”, so that the range of meaning was somewhat narrowed. In its further semantic development the word gradually broadened its range of meaning. At first it came to denote not only a female child but, also, a young unmarried woman, later, any young woman, and in modern colloquial English it is practically synonymous to the noun woman (e.g. The old girl must be at least seventy), so that its range of meaning is quite broad. Cf. UA стріла n. → стріляти v originally meant пускати стрілу з лука, the word gradually broadened its range of meaning to стріляти із будь-якої зброї, що вражає на відстані (з гвинтівки, пістолета чи пушки).

Narrowing of meaning is the restriction of the semantic capacity of a word in the historical development, e.g. in Old English the word (ОЕ hlǽfdize) denoted the mistress of the house, i. e. any married woman. Later, a new meaning developed which was much narrower in range: “the wife or daughter of a baronet” (aristocratic title). In Modern English the word lady can be applied to any woman, so that its range of meaning is even broader than that of the OE hlǽfdize. In Modern English the difference between girl and lady in the meaning of woman is that the first is used in colloquial style and sounds familiar whereas the second is more formal and polite.

Here are some more examples of narrowing of meaning:

Deer: any beast → a certain kind of beast

Meat: any food → a certain food product

Boy: any young person of the male sex → servant of the male sex

It should be pointed out once more that in all these words the second meaning developed through transference based on contiguity, and that when we speak of them as examples of narrowing of meaning we simply imply that the range of the second meaning is more narrow than that of the original meaning.

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