Лекции по лексикологии английского языка. Гусева Г.В. - 10 стр.

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Lecture III

Semantic Changes

I. The Causes of Semantic Changes

The meaning of a word can change in the course of time. Transfer of the

meaning is called lexico-semantic word-building. In such cases the outer aspect of

a word does not change.

The causes of semantic changes can be extra-linguistic and linguistic: the

change of the lexical meaning of the noun pen was due to extra-longuistic causes.

Primarily pen comes back to the latin word penna (a feather of a bird). As people

wrote with goose pens the name was transferred to steel pens which were later on

used for writing. Still later any instrument for writing was called a pen.

On the other hand, causes may be linguistic, e.g. the conflict of synonyms

when a perfect synonym of a native word is borrowed from some other language

one of them may specialize in its meaning. The noun tide in Old English was

polysemantic and denoted time, season, hour. When the French words time,

season, hour were borrowed into English they ousted the word tide in these

meanings. It was specialized and now means regular rise and fall of the sea caused

by attraction of the moon. The meaning of a word can also change due to ellipsis:

the word-group a train of carriages had the meaning of a row of carriages, later

on of carriages was dropped and the noun train changed its meaning, it is used

now in the function and with the meaning of the whole word-group.

Semantic changes have been classified by different scientists. The most

complete classification was suggested by a German scientist Herman Paul. It is

based on the logical principle. He distinguishes two main ways where the semantic

change is gradual (specialization and generalization), two momentary conscious