Semantic change. Causes of Semantic Change

Notion and meaning.

Motivation. Types of Motivation.

Types of Meaning. The semantic structure.

The words are not monosemantic, they are polysemantic. Each meaning is called lexical meaning. And this number of meanings form semantic structure of the word. Generally we distinct grammatical and lexical meanings: time flies – grammatical meaning, time fly – lexical meaning, “ flies ” possesses lexico-grammatical meaning. Lexical meaning within itself possesses connotational and denotational meanings. Denotational is the main meaning – word-denotative. Connotational is the shades of this meaning. Denotational (referential) meaning can be: 1) Significative; 2) Stylistic; 3) Expressive; 4) Emotional; 5) Evaluative. Communicative: we express approval, disapproval – stylistic connotation. Expressive: try to show not only attitude, but also to emphasize it.

Motivation is the reationship between morphemic structure and meaning. There are 4 types of Motivation: 1) Phoenetic Motivation – the similarity between the sound the word made of and the meaning of the word: bees – buzz, sakes – hiss. In English initial “p” means disapproval: phy – фу. Sound symbolism – some combinations of letters may mean smth other: sting – a quick movement; initial “fl” – also: flop; “gl”: glare, glited – associated with fire. 2) Morphological motivation: there can be Fully motivated, Partially motivated and Non-motivated words: blackbird – fully motivated, because all the morphemes are clear; repeat is non-motivated: all one-syllable words are non-motivated; strawberry – partially motivated, cause straw has no connections with berries, also: T-shirt, U-turn. 3) Semantic motivation: there can be Direct and Figurative meaning. Figurative: a foot of the mountain, a mouth of the river. Direct meaning: flowers and colours: pink – розовый, гвоздика. Humming bird – roduces this long coninuous sound. 4) Graphical motivation – mathematicians. + or – more or less.

Meaning (a component of a word through which a concept is communicated) belongs to linguistics, while Notion (concept) belongs to the category of logic. Logic is international category, but the meaning is national. Notions may be represented with different meanings: man, человек. Notion is neutral, but meaning may express people attitude to what they are talking about. E.G. with the help of synonyms: look, stare... There are also some words in English, which have meaning but no notion: Articles, Prepositions, Interjections.

Semantic change is the development of the word and its semantic structure. The language is a system, its body develops and all the units too. If we try to compare the meaning of the word of different languages or of different times, they are different: I’m fond of reading: In O.E. fond meant foolish – no connection.

Linguists payed a great attention on Semantic change. At the end of the 19^th – beginning of the Af20^th century Brill and Poll investigated Semantic change and noticed that some words specialize their meaning and some – generalize. Specialize means narrowing: case (event) – becomes case in medicine. Generalize – when a word extends its meaning: to fly – to move with the help of wings – becomes to move quickly, without any wings.

As any problem, Semantic change has its nature, reasons, problems and as a result – Causes. There are two types of Semantic changes: 1) Linguistic; 2) Extra-linguistic (any change in the society which results the change in naming objects: inventing a new word (on the basis of existing linguisitcs), borrowing, to name with the help of existing word-association): a box (ложа) – association, cause it looks like a box; black box – mysterious: in real it’s orange. 1) Linguistic cause may be: a) Syntagmatic; b) Paradigmatic. a) Syntagmatic. There is a term – ellipsis, when instead of two components we use only one: to starve, to propose; b) Paradigmatic level – discrimination of synonyms. It means that there existed two or more synonymic words but in the course of time they changed their meaning: deer denoted any beast, then a word animal appeared. First, the coincided, but then they became two different words: deer – special beast, animal – general beast.

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