Лексикология английского языка

Lecture 9

Development of New Meanings

(pp. 147 – 160)

1. 
   Causes of development of new meanings.
   
2. 
   The process of development and change of meaning.
   
3. 
   Transference based on resemblance (similarity).
   
4. 
   Transference based on contiguity.
   
5. 
   Broadening (or Generalization) of meaning. Narrowing (or Specialization) of meaning.
   
6. 
   “Degeneration” (“Degradation”) and “Elevation” of meaning.
   

1. 
   Causes of development of new meanings
   

The systems of meanings of polysemantic words evolve gradually. The older a word is, the better developed is its semantic structure. The normal pattern of a word’s semantic development is from monosemy to a simple semantic structure encompassing only two or three meanings, with a further movement to an increasingly more complex semantic structure.

There are two aspects to this problem, which can be described in the following way: a) Why should new meanings appear at all? What circumstances cause and stimulate their development? b) How does it happen? What is the nature of the process of development of new meanings?

The first group of causes is traditionally termed historical or extra-linguistic.

Different kinds of changes in a nation’s social life, in its culture, knowledge, technology, arts lead to gaps appearing in the vocabulary. Newly created objects, new concepts and phenomena must be named. We know of two ways for providing new words (word-building) and borrowing foreign ones. One more way of filling such vocabulary gaps is by applying some old word to a new object or notion.

When the first textile factories appeared in England, the old word mill was applied to these early industrial enterprises. In this way, mill (a Latin borrowing of the first century B.C.) added a new meaning to its former meaning “a building in which corn is ground into flour”. The new meaning was “textile factory”.

The history of English nouns describing different parts of a theatre may also serve as a good illustration of how well-established words can be used to denote newly-created objects and phenomena. The words stalls (партер), box (ложа), pit (оркестровая яма), circle (бельэтаж) had existed for a long time before the first theatres appeared in England. With their appearance, the gaps in the vocabulary were filled by these widely used words which, as a result, developed new meanings.

New meanings can also be developed due to linguistic factors (the second group of causes).

The development of new meanings, and also a complete change of meaning, may be caused through the influence of other words, mostly of synonyms.

Let us consider the following example.

In Old English the noun deer had a general meaning denoting any beast. In that meaning it collided with the borrowed word animal and changed its meaning to the modern one (“a certain kind of beast”, R. олень).

2.