Lexical change and Semantic changes

Lexical change and Semantic changes

Lexical change

• Invention (coinage) (发明法)

• Blending （混成法）

• Abbreviation (clipping)（缩写词）

• Acronym （缩略语）

• Back-formation（逆构词法）

• Analogical creation（类推构词）

Borrowing（借词）

1、Invention

To satisfy the new situation in modern human life, many new lexical items come directly from various fields, especially from technological and economical activities. For example,

(a) Discoman ,MP4, PSP

(b) Brands of camera: Kodak, SONY, NIKON

(c) Brands of cars: BMW, Ford, Benz, Toyota

2、Blending混成法

A relatively complex复数 form of compounding, in which two words are blended by joining the initial part of the first word and the final part of the second word, or by joining the initial parts of the two words.

Examples: (i) air+ hotel → airtel机场旅馆

(ii) channel + tunnel → chunnel水底隧道

(iii) modulator + demodulator → modem

Fusion (溶合法): Stample (trample +stamp on);

crackdown(crackup+breakdown)

3、Abbreviation缩写

A shortened form of a word or phrase which represents the complete form.

e.g. TV(television) ,Dr(doctor) ,hr(hour), ft(foot or feet)

Clippling(截断法)：a kind of abbreviation of longer words or phrases.

(i) Cutting the final part (or with a slight variationa ) pop;taxi ; kilo ; telly ; expo ;wi-fi

(ii) Cutting the initial part phone, bus, copter, plane, chute

(iii) Cutting both the initial and final parts accordingly

refrigerator(fridge) ,prescription→script

4、Acronym缩略词

A word created by combining the initial letters of a number of words. (VOA ;BBC;UFO ; GNP; GRE;VIP,FOB.)

5、Back-formation逆构法:

a process by which new words are formed by taking away the imagined suffix

of

an

existing

word.

E.g.

donation→donate;

orator→orate;

gloomy→gloom; helicopt

6、Analogical creation类比构词

7、Borrowing : the taking over of words from other languages

A. loanword(外来词): a process in which both form and meaning are borrowed with only a slight adaptation, in some cases, to the phonological system of the

new language that they enter .e.g. kionomo(日)；kowtow(汉)；solo（意）；skoal(丹麦)；coup de main(法)

B. .loanblend(混合借词): a process in which part of the form is native and part is borrowed, but the meaning is fully borrowed .

C. loanshift(转移借词): a process in which the meaning is borrowed, but the form is native .

D. Loan translation(翻译借词): a special type of borrowing, in which each morphemer词素 word is translated in the equivalent morpheme or word in another language .(Calque仿造词)

Semantic changes

• Broadening (词义扩大）

• Narrowing （词义缩小）

• Meaning shift（词义转移）

• Class shift （词性转换）

. Folk etymology（俗词源）

Broadening:A process to extend or elevate the meaning from its originally

specific sense to a relatively general one.

1) The word business, which originally meant 'the state of being busy, careworn, or anxious,' and was broadened to encompass all kinds of work or occupations.\"

2)The slang word cool was originally part of the professional jargon of jazz musicians and referred to a specific artistic style of jazz (a use that was itself an extension). With the passage of time, the word has come to be applied to almost anything conceivable, not just music; and it no longer refers just to a certain genre or style, but is a general term indicating approval of the thing in question.\"

3)The modern English word dog, for example, which was originally a particularly powerful breed of dog that originated in England.

4)Thing used to refer to an assembly or council, but in time came to refer to anything.

5)aunt: old meaning: father’s sisters. Now: father mother’s sisters.

6)barn: old meaning: place to store barley. Now: farm building for storage and shelter.

Narrowing: Narrowing is contrary to broadening: the original meaning of a word can be narrowed or restricted to a specific sense.

1) The word litter, meant originally (before 1300) 'a bed,' then gradually narrowed down to 'bedding,' then to 'animals on a bedding of straw,' and finally to things scattered about, odds and ends. . . .

2) meat, whose original meaning was 'food.'\"

3)the word indigenous, which when applied to people means especially the inhabitants of a country which has been colonized, not 'original inhabitants' more generally.\"

4.Engine was formerly used in a general sense of ‘mechanical contrivance’

(especially of war and torture), but since the Industrial Revolution it has come to mean ‘mechanical sense of power.’

5) Art originally had some very general meanings, mostly connected to

'skill'; today, it refers just to certain kinds of skill, chiefly in relation to aesthetic skill--'the arts.'

6) Accident means an unintended injurious or disastrous event. Its original

meaning was just any event, especially one that was unforeseen

7) Fowl in Old English referred to any bird. Subsequently, the meaning of this

word was narrowed to a bird raised for food, or a wild bird hunted for 'sport.

8) Disease: old meaning: any unfavorable state. Now: all illness.

Meaning shift :The change of meaning has nothing to do with generalization or restriction as mentioned above.

1)Immoral: old meaning: not customary. Now: unethical.

2)Broadcast originally meant \"to cast seeds out\"; with the advent of radio and

television, the word was extended to indicate the transmission of audio and video signals. Outside of agricultural circles, very few people use broadcast in the earlier sense.

3)bug： old meaning: an insect or similar small creature. Now: refer to errors

as vulnerabilities in operating systems. dictograph

4)Mouse: old meaning: ----- now: ubiquitous computer input device (so

named because the cord connecting it to the computer made it resemble that cutest of rodents).

5)The crane at a construction site was given its name by comparison to the long-necked bird of the same name.

6)the daisy was in Old English originally a compound meaning \"day's eye\from its yellow similarity to the sun.

7)A word like paternoster, discussed earlier, with senses ranging from the \"Lord's Prayer\" to \"a magic spell\" to \"a large bead\" to \"a weighted fishing line\"

Class shift：By shifting the word class one can change the meaning of a word from a concrete entity or notion to a process or attribution. This process of word formation is also known as Zero-derivation, or Conversion.

1. The word engineer as a noun means “a person trained in a branch of engineering”, but it means “to act as an engineer”or“to plan; to maneuver” when used as a verb.

2. The word stump as a noun means “the part of a tree trunk left protruding from the ground”, but it means “to challenge” when used as a verb.

3. The word hog as a noun means “a pig”, but it means “to take and keep (all of something) for oneself” when used as a verb.

4. The word right as a noun means “something have nothing wrong”, but it also used as a verb which means “make something correct”.

Folk etymology: It refers to the change of the form of a word or phrase, resulting from an incorrect popular notion of the origin or meaning of the term or from the influence of more familiar terms mistakenly taken to be analogous

1)Bridegroom is from Old English bryd-guma \"bride-man\after the Old English word guma \"man\" (cognate with Latin homo) fell out of use.

2) Island was respelled from iland (although without any pronunciation

change), from Old English ī(e)gland after ī(e)g \"island\" became obsolete. The new spelling was evidently based on an analysis of island as isle-land, from isle (an Old French word, going back to Latin insula).

• Sand-blind (as if \"blinded by the sand\") from Old English sam-blind \"half-blind\" (sam- is a once-common prefix cognate with \"semi-\").

• Shamefaced from shamefast 'caught in shame'. In this case, the original meaning of fast — \"fixed in place\" — is not completely obsolete, but is restricted mostly to frozen expressions such as \"stuck fast\".

• Wormwoodhreplaced Old English wermod (cf. vermout, a borrowing through French of the equivalent German term Wermuth).