Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Semantic change (also semantic shift, semantic progression, semantic development, or semantic drift) is a form of language change regarding the evolution of word usage —usually to the point that the modern meaning is radically different from the original usage. In diachronic (or historical) linguistics, semantic change is a change in one of ...
Words' meanings may also change in terms of the breadth of their semantic domain. Narrowing a word limits its alternative meanings, whereas broadening associates new meanings with it. For example, "hound" (Old English hund) once referred to any dog, whereas in modern English it denotes only a particular type of dog. On the other hand, the word ...
Linguistics. Lexical semantics (also known as lexicosemantics), as a subfield of linguistic semantics, is the study of word meanings. [1][2] It includes the study of how words structure their meaning, how they act in grammar and compositionality, [1] and the relationships between the distinct senses and uses of a word.
Semantics studies meaning in language, which is limited to the meaning of linguistic expressions. It concerns how signs are interpreted and what information they contain. An example is the meaning of words provided in dictionary definitions by giving synonymous expressions or paraphrases, like defining the meaning of the term ram as adult male sheep. [22]
Semantic satiation. Semantic satiation is a psychological phenomenon in which repetition causes a word or phrase to temporarily lose meaning for the listener, [1] who then perceives the speech as repeated meaningless sounds. Extended inspection or analysis (staring at the word or phrase for a long time) in place of repetition also produces the ...
Grammaticalization. In historical linguistics, grammaticalization (also known as grammatization or grammaticization) is a process of language change by which words representing objects and actions (i.e. nouns and verbs) become grammatical markers (such as affixes or prepositions). Thus it creates new function words from content words, rather ...
Over time, though, and through processes of semantic change, such a domain can emerge. In response to work by Levinson and Lyons, Kay dubs this perspective the Emergence Hypothesis (EH). (See Levinson's article for a discussion on the co-existing evolutionary tracks for color words if one accepts both B&K's position and the Emergence Hypothesis.)
An extension of the sense of one word narrows the meaning of neighboring words, with the words in a field fitting neatly together like a mosaic. If a single word undergoes a semantic change, then the whole structure of the lexical field changes. The lexical field is often used in English to describe terms further with use of different words.