Microsoft Word umk 3-kurs leksikologiya kunduzgi

Lecture 8
Here we consider the extralinguistic factors and means of communication. These are all extra-linguistic features that, depending on the correctness of the application, can make the communication both successful and unsatisfactory.
Change of word meanings
Extralinguistic and linguistic reasons for the change of word
meanings
Extralinguistic causes of semantic change
Causes of semantic change
The factors accounting for semantic changes may be subdivided into two main groups: (1) extralinguistic causes and (2) linguistic cases.
The extralinguisticcauses are determined by the social nature of the language. They are observed in changes of meaning resulting from the development of the notion expressed and the thing named and by the appearance of new notions and things.
The history of the social, economic and political life of the people, the progress of culture and science bring about changes in notions and things influencing the semantic aspect of language. The changes of notions and things named go hand in hand. They are conditioned by the above-mentioned factors of social life, so that the extralinguistic causes of semantic change may be classified in accordance with these factors.
The word is a linguistic realization of notion. It changes with the progress of human consciousness. This process is reflected in the development of lexical meaning. For instance, the OE word eor^e ‘the earth’ meant ‘the soil’ and ‘the world of man’. With the progress of science the word earth came to mean the ‘planet’.
The constant development of all spheres of human life brings into being new objects and notions. Words to name them are either borrowed from foreign languages or created from the native language material. And it often happens that new meanings are thus acquired by old words. For example, economic causes are obviously at work in the semantic development of the word fee. The MnE fee means ‘the price paid for services’. It stems from the OE feoh which meant ‘cattle’ and ‘money’; likewise Goth faihu; cf. Lat pecus ‘cattle’ and pecunia ‘money’.
Although notions and things change in the course of time, in many cases the sound­form of the words denoting them is retained, but the meaning of these words is changed. For example, the word car borrowed from Latin carrus ‘a four-wheeled wagon’ now means ‘a motor-car’ and ‘a railway-carriage’.
The linguistic causes are factors acting within the language system. They deal with changes due to the constant interdependence of vocabulary units in language and speech, such as differentiation between synonyms, changes taking place in connection with ellipsis, and with fixed contexts, changes resulting from the ambiguity in certain contexts and some other cases.
Ellipsis as a linguistic cause of semantic change. Semantic changes due to ellipsis may be observed when the meaning of one word is transferred to another because they habitually occur together in speech. In a phrase made up of two words one of them is omitted and its meaning is transferred to its partner. For example, the verb to starve (in OE steorfan) had the meaning ‘to die’ and was habitually used in collocation with the word hunger (ME sterven of hunger). In the 16^th century the verb itself acquired the meaning ‘to die of hunger’.