英语词汇学论文---词义的变化

The Causes of Changes in Word Meaning Abstract:

Key words: historical; social; psychological; linguistic; semantic

Do you know when Juliet tells Romeo, “I am too fond”, she is not claiming she likes Romeo too much? She means “I am too foolish” Do you know when Horatio says to Hamlet, “Season your admiration for a while…”, he is not telling Hamlet “to increase his respect( the current meaning of admiration) for something”? In fact, he means “ to moderate his astonishment.”

Don’t be surprised, because, as Quirk asserts, almost every word we use today has slightly different meaning from the one is had a century ago; and a century ago it had a slight different meaning from the one it had a century before that. When a word loses its old meaning and comes to refer to something altogether different, the result is a change of word meaning.

As nonnative English learners, learning the causes of changes in word meaning can help us deepen the understanding of the meaning of lexicology, vocabulary, semantic field and culture background. By learning this, we can use vocabulary in a more precise way and avoid mistake or embarrassment when communicating with native speakers.

The causes of changes in word meaning can be divided into linguistic cause and extra-linguistic cause. Extra-linguistic cause can also divide into historical cause, social cause and psychology cause.

Linguistic cause

Change of meaning is frequently brought about by two tendencies in a linguistic system: towards ellipsis and towards analogy. Some linguists think foreign influence should subordinate linguistic cause.

Ellipsis occurs when a phrase is shortened to one word which retains the meaning of the whole, so it often occurs in habitual collocations, such as adjective + noun or attributive noun + noun. Private, daily, duplicate are all adjectives, but they are used as nouns. Private means a soldier of the lowest rank, daily means daily newspaper, and duplicate means duplicate copy. Under such circumstances, whatever is left, whether a noun or an adjective, is all used as a noun assuming the original meaning. Naturally, the association became so close that the first element could alone carry the meaning of the whole phrase.

Besides, there is a change of grammatical function as well, as when adjectives assume

the roles of nouns. Unlike the above examples, whose sense of one word has been transferred to another simple because the two occur together habitually, in some cases, it is the second or “headword”of the phrase that remains. For example, (stream) engine, (coal) gas and (light) bulb.

The analogical tendency means new meanings developed in one part of speech are passed on to other parts of speech from the same lexical base. Fortuitous formerly denoted ‘happening by chance’, ‘accidental’, and later took on the meaning ‘fortunate’probably by analogy because the two words look similar in shape. Another interesting example is fruition, originally from a Latin word fruitio meaning enjoyment. But now, its meaning is given as “fulfillment of (plans, desired results, aims, etc.),”possibly from connection with the word fruit.

Foreign influences

A particularly important cause of change of meaning in words has been the influence of foreign words. For example, the native word stool originally meant any kind of seat for one person, and could even be used for a king’s seat. It got its humble meaning because the French word chair was adopted to denote a more comfortable piece of furniture. Other example is dream. Dream meant “joy” in OE; it gets its modern sense from the related Scandinavian word draumr.

Historical cause

It often happens that though a word retains its original form, its meaning has changed because the object which it denotes has changed. This is the historical cause of semantic change.

The well-known semanticist Ullmann notes, “It often happens that language is more conservative than civilization, material as well as moral. Objects, institutions, ideas, scientific concepts change in the course of time; yet in many cases the name is retained and thus helps to ensure a sense of tradition and continuity.”(Ullmann 1997:198)

Indeed, it often happens that a word is retained for a name though the meaning has changed because the referent has changed. Take pen for example, it donated ‘feather’, which was used in the West as pen in old times. Now, the time when ‘feather’ served as pen is long gone, and people are using hall-point pens and fountain pens, yet the name is still kept. This change has also occurred to computer, which designated a ‘person who computes’ in the past. At present, when we talk about computer, people, people would think of an ‘electronic machine’ rather than a person.

There are also many scientific concepts which have retained their original forms, although their meanings have changed as a result of new scientific discoveries and increased knowledge. For instance, before Copernicus, the sun was thought to be ‘the