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Chapter 7: Semantics and Lexicon

  • Elizabeth Closs Traugott
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Volume 1 Historical Outlines from Sound to Text
This chapter is in the book Volume 1 Historical Outlines from Sound to Text

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.

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Table of Contents V
  3. Abbreviations VII
  4. Chapter 1: Introduction 1
  5. Chapter 2: Periodization in the History of the English Language 8
  6. Chapter 3: Phonology 36
  7. Chapter 4: Prosody 57
  8. Chapter 5: Morphology 77
  9. Chapter 6: Syntax 102
  10. Chapter 7: Semantics and Lexicon 123
  11. Chapter 8: Idioms and Fixed Expressions 140
  12. Chapter 9: Pragmatics and Discourse 165
  13. Chapter 10: Onomastics 185
  14. Chapter 11: Orthography 200
  15. Chapter 12: Styles, Registers, Genres, Text Types 218
  16. Chapter 13: Standards in the History of English 238
  17. Index 253
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110525281-007

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Table of Contents V
  3. Abbreviations VII
  4. Chapter 1: Introduction 1
  5. Chapter 2: Periodization in the History of the English Language 8
  6. Chapter 3: Phonology 36
  7. Chapter 4: Prosody 57
  8. Chapter 5: Morphology 77
  9. Chapter 6: Syntax 102
  10. Chapter 7: Semantics and Lexicon 123
  11. Chapter 8: Idioms and Fixed Expressions 140
  12. Chapter 9: Pragmatics and Discourse 165
  13. Chapter 10: Onomastics 185
  14. Chapter 11: Orthography 200
  15. Chapter 12: Styles, Registers, Genres, Text Types 218
  16. Chapter 13: Standards in the History of English 238
  17. Index 253
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