Semantic Change
- semantic shift: meanings / concepts change over time
- causes paucity
- change in the best example of what the label refers to / changes in conceptualization in concepts over generations
- key factors that cause shifting
- errors and misrepresentation: sometimes speakers are not familiar enough with the labels / words
- creative variation: humans are social and like to play with language
- social-historical factors: old words adapted to new purposes with innovations of tech, society, politics, and culture
- paucity of words: there's an infinite number of things to say and a finite number of words ➝ very likely you’ll use a common word in an uncommon way
- types of semantic change
- widening: the range of possible meanings of the word expands. aka generalization
- narrowing: range of possible meanings of the word contracts / gets smaller
- metaphor extension: meaning pattern of a word / phrase is extended to another context
- involves semantic extension across semantic domains
- metonymy: employing the meaning of a word to do service for a concept to which it is closely related
- extension within domains
- pejoration: a word changes from an innately positive meaning to a more innately negative meaning
- process takes a long time
- amelioration: neg ➝ pos meaning
- neutral / sideways shift. neg ➝ neg, pos ➝ pos