LIN101H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Semantic Change, Ditransitive Verb, Komnenos
Document Summary
Some syntactic structures seem to have meaning in themselves: the caused - motion construction, np, v, np, pp, russel tossed a fish into the bucket. It can be used for emphasis: lambkin killed the aliens dead. Meanings, like everything else in language, can drift over time. One of the most common ways this happens is metaphorical extension, which we"ve already looked at: that"s a heavy issue (= important", he"s a lightweight (= incompetent") Broadening: the meaning of a word comes to cover closely related concepts as well, the meaning expanded. Latin passer sparrow" -> spanish p jaro bird". Narrowing: the meaning of a word becomes restricted to a subset of its original meaning. Old english meat food" -> modern english meat. Synecdoche: the word for a part of something becomes the word for the whole. Metonymy: a word"s meaning is extended to cover something that is close in space or time. Latin cathedra chair" -> spanish cadera hips".
