Semantics and Lexicology

1
Semantics and Lexicology

• Historical-philological semantics

2
Historical-comparative linguistics

• Discovery and questions
• Continuity and change
• Earlier traditions of language description
• Types of change of meaning
• Psychological and social perspectives

3
Discovery and questions

• Languages can be historically (genetically)
  related.
• Which are the sounds, and which are the roots,
  stems and endings?
• Which types of changes have occurred?

4
Continuity and change

• Minor changes in recognizable elements give
  discoverable continuity
• Life and growth of languages
• Sound laws
• Changes of meaning

5
Earlier traditions of language description

• Etymology speculation
• Lexicography polysemy
• Rhetoric metaphor, metonymy, euphemism
• Philology linguistic and world knowledge useful
  for interpretation of classical works

6
Types of change of meaning

• Change of denotation
• Change of connotation
• Transfer of lexical pattern
• Meaning and naming

7
Change of denotation

• Metaphor
• Metonymy
• Generalization
• Specialization

8
Change of connotation

• Pejorative and ameliorative
• Euphemism and dysphemism
• Hyperbole and litotes

9
Transfer of lexical pattern

• Between languages
• Within a language

10
Naming concepts and interpreting expressions

• Semasiological questions
• Which senses can an expression have?
• How does an expression acquire a new sense?
• Onomasiological questions
• How is a concept named or expressed?
• How and why are new expressions invented and used?

11
Carnoy and Stern

• Carnoy regular and singular meaning changes
• Stern changes due to linguistic or language
  external causes

12
How, why and where do changes occur?

• In the minds of people?
• In linguistic communities?
• In conversation?

13
Do those who speak a certain language also think
in a certain way, using the concepts of that
language?

• Herder
• Humboldt
• Wundt
• (Sapir, Whorf...)

14
Psychological and social perspectives

• Bréal psychological perspective, Essais de
  sémantique science des significations, 1897
• Paul usuelle und okkasionelle Bedeutung, meaning
  in norm for usage and in context of use
• Meillet sociological perspective
• Wegener pragmatic perspective