Краткий курс лекций по лексикологии английского языка для студентов неязыковых вузов. Москалёва Е.В. - 68 стр.

                  Polysemy does not interfere with the communicative
            function of the language because in every particular case the
            situation and context, i.e. the environment of the word, cancel all
            the unnecessary meanings and make speech unambiguous.

                  IV. The meaning of a word can change in the course of time.
            Changes of lexical meaning of the noun ‘pen’ was due to extra
            linguistic causes. Primarily ‘pen’ come a 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 can 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, e.g. 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 this meaning. It was specialized and now means
            ‘regular rise and fall of the sea caused by attraction of the moon’.
            The meaning of the word can also change due to ellipsis, e.g. 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 in his work ‘Prinzipien des
            Sprachgeschichte’. It is based on the logical principle. He
            distinguishes two main ways where the semantic change is
            gradual (specialization and generalization), two momentary
            conscious semantic changes (metaphor and metonymy) and also
            secondary ways: gradual (elevation and degradation), momentary
            (hyperbole and litote).
                  Specialization is a gradual process when a word passes from
            a general sphere to some special sphere of communication, e.g.
            ‘case’ has general meaning ‘circumstances in which a person or a

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