The Causes and Types of Semantic Changes

The meaning of a word changes in the course of time. The causes of semantic changes can be extra-linguistic and linguistic: For example, the change of the lexical meaning of the noun pen was due to extra-linguistic causes. Primarily pen comes back to the latin word penna (a feather of a bird).

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.

Semantic changes have been classified by different scientists. The most complete classification was suggested by a German scientist Herman Paul. He distinguishes two main ways where the semantic change is gradual (specialization and generalization), two momentary conscious semantic changes (metaphor and metonymy) and secondary ways: gradual (elevation and degradation), momentary (hyperbole and litotes).

Specialization. In some cases it takes place when a word passes from a general sphere to some special sphere of communication, e.g. case has a general meaning circumstances in which a person or a thing is.

Generalization is the transfer from a concrete meaning to an abstract one, e.g. journey was borrowed from French with the meaning one day trip, now it means a trip of any duration.

Metaphor is a transfer of the meaning on the basis of comparison. a bookworm (a person who is fond of books). Metaphor can be based on different types of similarity: similarity of shape head (of a cabbage), similarity of position foot (of a page), similarity of function, behaviour; similarity of colour.

Metonymy is a transfer of the meaning on the basis of contiguity. There are different types of metonymy based on spatial, temporal relations, relations of cause and result, instrumental (tongue 'the organ of speech' – ‘language'), relations between the material of which an object is made and the object itself: a glass, etc. A variety of metonymy is synechdoche, that is the transference of meaning from part to whole, e.g. the case when the nouns denoting the parts of human body come to denote human beings.

Elevation. It is a transfer of the meaning when it becomes better in the course of time: knight originally meant a boy, then a young servant, then a military servant, then a noble man. Now it is a title of nobility given to outstanding people.

Degradation. It is a transfer of the meaning when it becomes worse in the course of time, e.g. villain originally meant working on a villa, now it means a scoundrel.

Hyperbole. It is a transfer of the meaning when the speaker uses exaggeration, e.g. to hate (doing something), not to see somebody for ages. hyperbole is often used to form phraseological units, e.g. to split hairs.

Litotes. It is a transfer of the meaning when the speaker expresses the affirmative with the negative or vice versa, e.g. not bad (it is good), no coward, not half as important.

III. Системные отношения в лексике

1. Омонимия. Ее источники и классификация.

2. Омонимия и полисемия.

3. Синонимические и антонимические отношения в английском языке. Паронимы. Эвфемизмы.

4. Стилистически маркированная и стилистически нейтральная лексика.

1. Homonymy and Its Sources Homonyms are words different in meaning but identical in sound or spelling, or both in sound and spelling. The causes by which homonymy is brought may be divided into 2 groups:

1) homonymy through convergent sound development – 2 or 3 words of different origin accidentally coincide in sound form E.g.: the homonyms case ‘instance of thing occurring’ and case ‘a box’ originated from two different Latin verbs - cadere ‘to fall’ and capere ‘to hold’.

2) homonymy through divergent sense development – arising from polysemy, and sometimes accompanied by morphological processes such as loss of ending. E.g.: box (a kind of receptacle, a slap on the ear with the hand, to put into a box (verb), to fight with fists in padded gloves (verb, sports)).

The arisal of homonyms through divergent sense development is very difficult to establish – the only way of doing it is by judging if there is any connection between the meanings or not. And for linguistically trained people there will also be less unrelated homonyms than for an untrained person.

Walter Skeat classified homonyms according to their spelling and sound forms and he pointed out three groups: perfect homonyms, words identical in sound and spelling: school – косяк рыбы and школа; homographs, words with the same spelling but pronounced differently: bow – поклон and bow – лук; homophones, words pronounced identically but spelled differently: night - ночь and knight - рыцарь.

Another classification was suggested by A.I. Smirnitsky. He added to Skeat’s classification one more criterion: grammatical meaning. he subdivided the group of perfect homonyms into two types:

- perfect homonyms: seal₁ — ‘a sea animal’ and seal₂ — ‘a design printed on paper by means of a stamp’. The paradigm “seal, seal’s, seals, seals’ ” is identical for both of them.

- and homoform, e.g. seal₁ — ‘a sea animal’ and (to) seal, — ‘to close tightly’, we see that although some individual word- forms are homonymous, the whole of the paradigm is not identical

In other books these types are called full and partial homonyms.

Homonyms may be also classified by the type of meaning into lexical, lexico-grammatical and grammatical homonyms. We can say that seal₂ and seal₁ are lexical homonyms because they differ in lexical meaning. If we compare seal₁ — ‘a sea animal’, and (to) seal₃ — ‘ to close tightly, we shall observe not only a difference in the lexical meaning of their homonymous word-forms but a difference in their grammatical meanings as well. We describe these homonymous word-forms as lexico-grammatical. Grammatical homonymy is the homonymy of different word-forms of one and the same word.

2. Polysemy and homonymy These two phenomena are closely interrelated due to opposite tendencies:

1) Homonymy may arise from polysemy – disintegration, or split of polysemy. The resulting meanings lose all their connections with the other meanings and start separate existence. E.g., flower and flour – originally they were two meanings of the same word.

2) Polysemy may arise from homonymy - ear (human organ) and ear (of corn)- now perceived as one word with metaphorically connected meanings, but used to be different Latin words.

There are several criteria of differentiating:

- etymology

- semantics

- spelling

- distribution

Only etymological criterion is diachronic, the rest are synchronic. And they all have their drawbacks:

etymological: words that differ in origin are homonyms. But this doesn’t work for homonyms arising from polysemy, because transition is very gradual.

semantic: words that aren’t related to each other semantically – homonyms. But this criterion is often criticized as being very subjective. Draw – to cause to move by pulling and to depict in lins, esp. with a pencil seem quite different in meaning but have the same origin, they are meanings of one word. Ear – vice versa.

spelling – if the words differ in graphic form they are homonyms. But it doesn’t work with homonyms having identical spelling (bow and bow, row and row)

distribution – if words are never found in identical distribution, they are homonyms. But it works only with different parts of speech. As to words belonging to the same part of speech, it doesn’t work. (race – One race is different from another – забег или раса). And the distribution of different meanings of a polysemantic word can also be different – green apple – green boy (inexperienced).

Some scholars such as V.I. Abayev think only words resulting from different sources etymologically can be considered homonyms. others disagree, taking into account structural and semantic criteria as well.