Semantic change

Change in meaning is next word formation and borrowing one of the three main methods of name change, the subject of the historical onomasiology. The change in meaning can go up to the importance of repentance.

Causes and spread

Reasons for the change of meaning are many. Among other causes may be:

• Need for euphemism way
• Pursuit of pictorial expression
• Need for a new term for something hitherto unknown
• Disappearance of certain objects or activities of daily life
• Elimination of the originally designated existing objects or actions by the development of society
• Advancement of the science that leads to the elimination of part meanings
• Psychological characteristics of the word (for example, can cause decrease in the level of style in a range in the disappearance of the word in a different area. )
• Change by phonetic changes

A new meaning often occurs initially in a particular group of speakers and spreads gradually. The old meaning is often repressed, but it can also exist in parallel on.

Important semantic change types are described below.

Metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche

Metaphor is semantic change, which is based on similarity. Example: mouse " rodent " → mouse " computer accessories"

Metonymy is semantic change, which is based on " contact ". Two things come into the world, typically at the same time, and the name of the one carries over to the other thing. For example, " material " → "Product " (from the glass as a raw material to the prepared therefrom drinking vessel ).

Some sit next to the metonymy as a separate type of semantic change synecdoche, which is based on a " part-whole relationship."

Significance and meaning narrowing extension

Meaning narrowing (after Leonard Bloomfield, Andreas Blank and Joachim Grzega ) a change of meaning, in which the preamble to the lower term. Say, the scope of meaning is smaller, in that another, spezialisierende features have been added to the original content.

Meaning extension ( amplification) is the reverse process.

For example Germanic * deuzan originally designated, wild animal '. In English, the word was later used only for a certain type of wild animal, namely deer, fallow deer and roe deer ( deer engl. ) (meaning narrowing), while was used in German the word for any kind of animal, not just wild animals (German animal ) (meaning extension).

Importance of improvement or deterioration

Meaningful improvement or deterioration resulting in a change of the language ( stylistic ) level. For example, a word used euphemistically take on the original "bad" properties of the represented word and thus one step lower fall (meaning deterioration - see also euphemism treadmill ). But also the reverse, meaning improvement is possible. Recent approaches (eg that of Andreas Blank ) see significant improvement and deterioration as a separate type of semantic change from because the question by " better" and "worse" can not be answered neutral; it is assumed that all cases can be classified into the categories mentioned above. The importance of deterioration is also called Pejoration, the importance improvement melioration.

Change in meaning and use rule

In the tradition of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, the meaning of a word is understood as the rule of word usage. Such an instrumentalist conception importance has the advantage that the meaning ( philosophy of language ) of a word is closely related to the communicative intentions of the speaker. Unlike other theories of meaning importance is placed in a ready- theoretical point of view in a direct relationship with linguistic activity. Changes the meaning of words go accordingly accompanied by a change in the rule of use.

Terms involving only purely truth-conditions that meet a true statement about the world values ​​, a number of other conditions of use, which ensure that a word semantically differentiated. The attempt at a significance description of the semantic structure of the rule of use is an innovation in the linguistic research undertaken so far and still rare. First approaches to a theory to explain the meaning changes based on usage rule changes, there are at Petra Radtke and Rudi Keller. In a dissertation Sascha Bechmann has shown this connection based on the part of speech verbs and determines the semantic conditions of use there as a parameter of the rule of use. The stated hypothesis there is: Varies by deliberate use of words, the internal structure of the rule of use, then changed primarily the dominance of the so-called importance parameters. The changes at the level of significance insofar parameters are decisive for the changing meaning of the word.

In principle, the concept of a parameter use usually follows a instrumentalist importance model, which takes the place of representations use rules. The theory of the parameters of the rule of use refined this approach and indicates which specific use conditions may be included in the meaning of a word description. So you answered the question about the specific communicative function or after the specific possibility to use a word that is so action- centered. In the linguistic research such Bedeutungsausdifferenzierung using parameters of the rule of use is not very common, although it can plausibly explain what actually happens on the structure level of word meaning. After Sascha Bechmann there is a taxonomy for parameters of the rule of use, which is as follows:

• Parameters from the external world
• Parameters from the inner world

• Parameters from the world of social
• Parameters from the world of discourse
• Parameters from the linguistic world

Parameters of the external world are semantically more effective if should be referenced to a fact in the world, so when the speaker intends the mere statement of fact (eg, walking, sitting, tree, sun). Parameters from the inner world are involved in many ways in the construction of meaning of a word and then coming to the fore when should be referenced on feelings, attitudes or thoughts (eg, love, pain, nice). Social parameters are such as to in words like intervention or judge. Discursive parameters can be seen in words such as see ( I see it differently ) or not (is not that a nice car ) to prove they are purely the discourse. Linguistic parameters play for the changing meaning hardly any role and manifest themselves often grammatical- syntactical.

Change in meaning can be detected at the level of use usually based on the model of the importance parameter in the form of changes in the parameters dominance. Thus, for example, the changing meaning of the verb read by changing the parameters used to explain: Originally meant to read anything other than select, read ( cf. vintage). The original meaning of the word was determined by parameters of the external world. Today the word is read almost exclusively to the expression of a mental processing process used and is therefore - the Bechmannschen following taxonomy - determined by parameters from the world of thoughts and cognitions semantically. The intent of the speaker today is the expression of a cognitive representation.

Using the model of the importance of parameters, almost all semantic changes can ( meaning change ) represent structurally and explain so that this model is innovative for newer and emerging semantic approaches.