Semantic change

Semantic change . The language is not something fixed and immutable, the words change with the passage of time. The evolution of the lexical-semantic subsystem is so abrupt, changes occur with such speed, that sometimes the cause that originated it cannot be found immediately. It has been said that of all the linguistic elements caught in the flow of language , meaning is probably the least resistant to change. There are several factors and causes that affect it.

Summary

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• 1 History
• 2 Exchange rates
• 3 Factors
• 4 Causes of semantic change
  • 1 Linguistics
  • 2 Historical
  • 3 Social
  • 4 Psychological
  • 5 Foreign influence
  • 6 The demand for a new name
  • 7 The trend to the economy
    • 7.1 Ellipsis
    • 7.2 Truncations or cuts
  • 5 Bibliography

History

Until the 1930s in the twentieth century , the change of meaning was the focus of attention of the first semantics, such as Bréal (founder of semanticsmodern), and its predecessor Reisig. It was then a matter of classifying semantic changes and discovering the semantic laws. Both attempts were very ambitious, but did not reach satisfactory results, although they served as the basis for later studies on the subject. Research on the lexical-semantic subsystem continued for thirty more years, but by now the interest of most linguists was centered around descriptive and structural problems, while the change in meaning took a back seat. Despite this, there have been valuable contributions in the field of semantic changes.

Exchange rates

• Expansion of meaning.
• Alteration of meaning.

Factors

Among the many factors that facilitate semantic changes, the following are of fundamental importance:

• The languageis transmitted in a discontinuous way, from one generation to another: children often misunderstand the meaning of words and in most cases these errors are corrected in time, but, if for some reason this does not happen, they are it will produce a semantic change in the use of that generation. Example: to count your beads, originally meant “to count your prayers”, but since the act of praying was done by counting the beads of a rosary, the word beads was taken to refer to the beads and lost its initial meaning.
• The vagueness of meaning: this source of semantic changes is given by the generic nature of words, the multiplicity of their aspects, the lack of familiarity and the absence of well-defined borders.
• Loss of motivation: if a word is not detached from its rootor from other members of the same family , it will maintain its meaning to some extent, but, if for some reason this does not happen, the meaning can change freely and move away, for so much, of its origins.
• The existence of polysemy: a word can have one or more new senses without changing its initial meaning. Some of these new senses may be short-lived when used by an individual in a single context, but others will pass into the language and will be enduring, giving rise to one of the forms of polysemy(specialization), figurative expressions.
• Many semantic changes arise in ambiguous contexts: an isolated word can be taken in two different senses, while the meaning of the context remains unchanged.
• The structure of the vocabulary: This is perhaps the most important of the factors governing semantic change. The phonological and grammatical system of a language is made up of limited and closely related elements. On the other hand, the vocabulary, being made up of a greater number of units, is much more fluid and mobile. The vocabulary of a language is an unstable structure in which individual words can acquire and lose meaning with the utmost ease.

Causes of semantic change

Linguistics

Some semantic changes are due to associations that words make in speech. Habitual placement can permanently affect the meaning of the terms in question; By “contagion”, the meaning of one word can be transferred to another simply because they appear together in many contexts. For example, there are expressions that acquire negative meaning because they always appear with the negation, such as:

• I’ve seen it in my life.
• I do not care.

Historical

The language is more conservative than civilization , so with the passage of time objects, institutions, ideas, sciences , customs change , and yet the name is preserved.

• Objects: the English word car (car) comes from the Latin carrus (word of Celtic origin), which meant “four-wheeled vehicle”. Modern cars bear little resemblance to 1st century BCECeltic vehicles , but the name remains.
• Institutions: the word parliament (copied from the old Frenchparlament) has been maintained despite the gradual constitutional changes that have occurred.
• Ideas: the term bumour (humor) is based on outdated physiological conceptions: the theory of the four cardinal fluids or humors of the body(blood, phlegm, anger or bile and melancholy or trabilis), by whose propositions the qualities were considered to be determined physical and mental and the constitution of a person . Later these notions were forgotten, but humor gradually became one of the key terms of the British way of life ; also of the genius or nature of the character of a person.
• Scientific Concepts: There are multiple scientific concepts that have retained their traditional names despite the changes they have undergone. For example: atomhas become inappropriate, since in Greek it meant “indivisible”.

Social

They occur when there are social loans and displacement of the social area of ​​the word, specialization or generalization, which lead to a displacement of its semantic area (restriction or extension). An example of generalization is the word strategy and specialization, the word assimilation, referring to a phonetic phenomenon.

Psychological

Changes in meaning are often rooted in the speaker’s state of mind or in some more permanent feature of his mental nature. These causes provoke the search for expressiveness, taboos and euphemisms, the emotional force, and so on.

• Emotional factors: if you are intensely interested in a topic, you tend to talk about it frequently, which will suggest similesand metaphors for the description of other experiences. For example: during the First World War for the printing of certain terrifying weapons, picturesque and festive metaphors were applied to it to strip them of some of their terror. Thus, a machine gun became a “coffee grinder”.
• Taboo: when a word is changed because it means something sacred, dangerous, mysterious, for another of harmless meaning (euphemism), it is said that the word has been subjected to taboo.
  • Taboo of fear: the fear of supernatural beings has frequently imposed interdictions, taboos on their names. For example, the name of the devil has given rise to countless euphemisms.
  • Taboo of delicacy: it is a human tendency to avoid direct reference to unpleasant matters. For example, the euphemisms linked to illness and death, such as the bad euphemism, when referring to cancer: what you have is bad.
  • Taboo of decency: the three spheres most directly affected by this form of taboo are sex, certain parts and functions of the body, and oaths. In French, the use of the word filie (daughter or girl) as a euphemism to refer to the prostitute, has become a taboo, and now, to refer to a girl it is necessary to say jeune filie.

Foreign influence

Many changes of meaning are due to the influence of some foreign model. For example: bear, to denote the constellations: the Great and the Lesser Bear (Ursa Major and Ursa Minor) are paralleled in many languages: in French, Ourse; in Italian, Orsa, etcetera.

The demand for a new name

Whenever a new name is required to denote a new object or idea, a new word can be formed with existing elements; copy a term from a foreign language or alter the meaning of an old word. For example, landing on the moon arose when the first cosmonauts arrived on the Moon , to designate or name the act of descending the ships on the Earth’s satellite .

The trend to the economy

It is based on the principle of least effort, so everything that is not necessary in communication is suppressed.

Ellipse

• The capital cityof Cuba ……… .The capital.
• A cold ………… .A beer.
• A smooth ……… ..A smooth cigar.

Truncations or cuts

• Auto ……… Automobile.
• Cinema……… Cinematographer.
• Taxi ……… .Taximeter.