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Chapter 7: Semantics and Lexicon

  • Elizabeth Closs Traugott
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Abstract

Selected topics in research on semantic change are discussed with focus on work based in Cognitive Linguistics and neo-Gricean pragmatics. Recent work on metaphor and metonymy, grammaticalization, subjectification, and collostructional analysis are highlighted and shown to provide theoretical underpinnings for some traditional taxonomies of semantic change. As the inventory of form-meaning pairs in a language, the historical lexicon reflects semantic change; it also reflects how vocabulary size has changed in English, and how borrowings have affected the typological ways in which meanings are packaged into words.

Abstract

Selected topics in research on semantic change are discussed with focus on work based in Cognitive Linguistics and neo-Gricean pragmatics. Recent work on metaphor and metonymy, grammaticalization, subjectification, and collostructional analysis are highlighted and shown to provide theoretical underpinnings for some traditional taxonomies of semantic change. As the inventory of form-meaning pairs in a language, the historical lexicon reflects semantic change; it also reflects how vocabulary size has changed in English, and how borrowings have affected the typological ways in which meanings are packaged into words.

Heruntergeladen am 4.12.2025 von https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110525281-007/html
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