Lexical and Semantic Change
How the words of a language and their meanings change over time, through processes such as broadening, narrowing, metaphor, and the loss and gain of vocabulary.
Definition
Lexical change is the gain, loss, or replacement of words in a language's vocabulary over time, while semantic change is the shift in the meanings associated with existing words.
Scope
This topic covers change in the lexicon (additions, losses, and replacements of words) and in word meaning (semantic change). It surveys recurrent types of semantic shift, including widening and narrowing, amelioration and pejoration, and metaphoric and metonymic extension, and considers whether such changes follow regular tendencies.
Core questions
- What are the principal types of semantic change?
- Why do word meanings broaden, narrow, or shift in evaluative tone?
- How do metaphor and metonymy drive meaning change?
- Are there regular, cross-linguistic tendencies in how meanings change over time?
- How does the lexicon gain and lose words, and how is this reconstructed?
Key theories
- Invited inferencing theory of semantic change
- Traugott and Dasher argue that meanings change in regular, largely directional ways as inferences invited in particular contexts become conventionalized, often moving from concrete or external meanings toward more subjective, speaker-based ones.
History
Systematic study of semantic change goes back to Michel Breal's Essai de semantique (1897), which named processes such as restriction and extension of meaning. Later work distinguished metaphoric and metonymic mechanisms, and Traugott and colleagues developed accounts of the regularity and directionality of semantic change within grammaticalization and pragmatic inference.
Debates
- Regularity of semantic change
- Whether semantic change exhibits the kind of regularity found in sound change is debated; Traugott and Dasher argue for strong directional tendencies, while others stress its comparatively unpredictable, context-bound nature.
Key figures
- Elizabeth Closs Traugott
- Michel Breal
- Philip Durkin
Related topics
Seminal works
- traugottDasher2002
- campbell2013
Frequently asked questions
- What is the difference between broadening and narrowing of meaning?
- Broadening (generalization) expands a word to cover more referents, as when 'dog' came to mean any canine; narrowing (specialization) restricts it, as when 'meat' shifted from any food to animal flesh.
- What is pejoration?
- Pejoration is a semantic change in which a word acquires a more negative connotation over time, such as 'silly,' which once meant 'blessed' or 'innocent.'