I also want to thank two reviewers, my colleagues Gary Holton and Diana Schackow who answered my questions on their languages of expertise and the audience at the LingConLab (Linguistic Convergence Laboratory) seminar of the HSE Moscow on May 12, 2020, in particular Michael Daniel, for many questions and suggestions. How many types of semantic changes are there? Items expressing elevational meaning can combine with deictics, in particular with demonstratives. According to the survey in Diessel (2013), which included 234 languages, demonstratives are distance-neutral or express up to five distance contrasts (i.e., five positions that differ in terms of distance from the deictic center). of the users don't pass the Amelioration quiz! Stud. What is the difference between amelioration and semantic reclamation? Structure of Manambu demonstratives (Aikhenvald, 2015). Whitby, C. (1990). True or False: Amelioration is more common than pejoration. Blagar, Galo (26) and all East Caucasian languages in my sample (Avar, Lak, Andi, and Sanzhi Dargwa) have not only spatial elevational demonstratives, but also a further class of elevational demonstratives that function as manner adverbs, e.g., Blagar do-la (up.there-as) like that/those up there (not necessarily visible) (Steinhauer, 2014, p. 159). For instance, Dyirbal has an elaborated set of twelve so-called spatial indicators that are added to demonstratives or other noun markers and express topographic elevation, e.g., downhill, uphill, downriver, upriver, and across river (Dixon, 1972, p. 48; Dixon, 2003, p. 98). Zhirkov, L. I. Semantic widening | Etymologies at CTY Bristol Wiki | Fandom Another example of semantic change is the word 'nice'. Epps, P. (2008). Sarvasy, H. S. (2014). Perhaps surprisingly, it does not seem to be common to employ elevational demonstratives for the expression of social deixis, at least not in the languages surveyed for this study. 6061). When the referent is not potentially visible and also not located on the path of a nearby river, but is separate from the speaker by at least a mountain range (i.e., global scale), then the same items function as labels for cardinal directions (19), and elevational differences are ignored. Demonstrative verbs: a typology of verbal manner deixis. (1990). This proves Holton (2019) remark that elevation does not require mountains. The definitions of the general elevational demonstratives given in (6) do not refer to salient landmarks. This can be because of cultural changes that lead to a change in how the word is categorised (causing a semantic change). Definition and Examples of Pejoration in Language - ThoughtCo The word 'knight' comes from the Old English word 'cniht' which meant 'boy, youth, servant, attendant.' Locations in front of X or left of X are potentially ambiguous because they can depend on the relative viewpoint: By contrast, normally we unambiguously understand above/over X or below/under X if we know the position of X. In practice, locations above the speaker and above the addressee during a conversation largely coincide. The meaning of a word may also become taboo or is used as a euphemism, eg. Definition and Usage of the French Word 'Enchant', Definition and Examples of Word Boundaries, 6 Common Myths About Language and Grammar, Word Play: Having Fun With the Sounds and Meanings of Words, Five Words That May Not Mean What You Think They Mean, Ph.D., Rhetoric and English, University of Georgia, M.A., Modern English and American Literature, University of Leicester, B.A., English, State University of New York. Holton, G. (2018). In Usan and Eipo, elevational demonstratives can be used as modifiers within a noun phrase (i.e., adnominal use), but not in the syntactic function of determiners. We will cover five types of semantic change: narrowing, broadening, amelioration, pejoration, and semantic reclamation. 3, eds C. Maienborn, K. von Heusinger, and P. Portner (Berlin: de Gruyter), 24072431. Pejoration: I must tell you that your kid has been misbehaving - he's got an attitude problem. StudySmarter is commited to creating, free, high quality explainations, opening education to all. Burenhult, N. (2008). The word 'nice' is possibly the most well-known example of amelioration. All languages expect for Tanacross and Maale employ elevational demonstratives in the adnominal context, and this is therefore the second most commonly attested type of usage. Diessel (1999, p. 57) distinguishes four syntactic contexts in which demonstratives occur. Formerly the word meant learned men in theology, law, and in many other fields besides medicine, but nowadays it is applied only to the practitioner of the healing art, whether having a University degree or not. Nez, R., Cooperrider, K., Doan, D., and Wassmann, J. Learning about which words have been elevated and taken on a positive meaning shows us how societal perceptions of language have changed over time. An example of alinguistic cause would be linguistic analogy - a process where when a word gets a new meaning, so does its synonyms. *Correspondence: Diana Forker, diana.forker@uni-jena.de, Demonstratives, Deictic Pointing and the Conceptualization of Space, View all Lang. The topographic and elevational morphemes express also directional and locational meanings (e.g., allative). Elevation and degradation of meaning of a word - studopedia.su A grammar sketch of Sougb, in Languages of the Eastern Birds Head, ed. The correlation between the UP-elevational and the conventional position of a powerful person represents an example of the metaphor CONTROL/POWER IS UP, for which cognitive evidence has been found by psychologists and psycholinguists (Schubert, 2005; Valenzuela and Soriano, 2009). Hayward, R. J. Towards a descriptive framework for spatial deixis, in Speech, Place, and Action, eds R. J. Jarvella and W. Klein (Chichester: John Wiley), 3159. In Sougb, the pronominal and/or identificational use requires additional morphology (2), but adnominal and adverbial uses are identically and unmarked (1), (3). Only in the latter case the meaning would truly entail an absolute frame. Semantic Narrowing (Specialization). Based on the descriptions it is not always possible to distinguish between the subtypes (ii) and (iii) because not all grammars explicitly state whether the elevational morpheme also occurs in some other parts of speech (e.g., as preverb or spatial case affix). doi: 10.1353/anl.2015.0003. Sentence (34) is the only example that she cites for this use and it shows the elevational UP-directional da up (without a preceding pronoun, deictic or anaphoric suffix). 1 - 'Dizzy' is an example of amelioration. As said in the introduction, elevation refers to the expression of a location of a figure with respect to the ground on the vertical axis.1 The three axes and planes through the human body provide the ground for three pairs of (linguistic) concepts, namely UP/DOWN, BACK/FRONT, and LEFT/RIGHT (Figure 1). 6. salary In Old English, the word dizzy meant what? . The term spatial deixis refers to the localization of a figure relative to a ground (object) in terms of (radial) distance categories by means of language (e.g., here vs. there), or in combination with a pointing gesture (Levinson, 2003, p. 65). Berlin: de Gruyter. Lerne mit deinen Freunden und bleibe auf dem richtigen Kurs mit deinen persnlichen Lernstatistiken. (2008). Create beautiful notes faster than ever before. Languages with elevational demonstratives are found in flat, hilly, and mountainous regions, and they are a characteristic feature of a few language families worldwide (East Caucasian, Eskimo-Aleut, Sino-Tibetan, Timor-Alor-Pantar, Nuclear Trans New Guinea, and Omotic). Cora Locationals and Structured Imagery. . Cora, in Studies in Uto-Aztecan Grammar 4: Southern Uto-Aztecan Grammatical Sketches, ed. This means that in terms of cardinal directions and gravity (i.e., location above sea level) uphill and upstream differ (Gary Holton, p.c.). The structure of Daga demonstratives (Murane, 1974, p. 38). You're sick! Set individual study goals and earn points reaching them. Doctoral dissertation, James Cook University, Cairns. TEST IV: 1. is about the meaning of syntactically complex expressions. Makalero and Tidore do not have genuine elevational adverbial demonstratives, and the adverbial function is fulfilled by demonstrative verbs (5). Have you seen my grandmother? The description of object B as over the head entails a relative (to an external upright observer) or absolute frame of reference as determined by gravity.3 We make use of an intrinsic frame of reference when we refer to object A, which is located at the same elevation of the head of the person and aligned with it along the same horizontal axis, as over the head. The Language of the Wangaaybuwan. However, many languages do not have words referring to the sagittal (back/front) or transverse (left/right) axes or do not employ them regularly and in the same fashion as familiar European languages (Levinson, 2003, p. 46). Today 'pretty' refers to someone or something that is beautiful. Amsterdam: Benjamins. A common synonym of narrowing is specialisation. Among the languages examined in this paper, Movima is particularly rich in demonstratives with unusual meanings such as temporary possession or standing position (Haude, 2006, pp. The sense of the word 'terrific' that we still use now - meaning 'excellent' - began to be used later in the 19th century. Copyright 2020 Forker. By the 13th century, the meaning of the word had changed to 'a woman of superior position in society'. (2019). Frontiers | Elevation as a Grammatical and Semantic Category of 30, 37) suggests that in some languages invisibility might in fact better be analyzed as indirect evidentiality or simply audibility. I suspect that these claims are probably sometimes wrong or at least misleading because, first, the authors do not provide unambiguous evidence that the relevant items refer on the basis of the geophysical environment and not simply to the vertical dimension. Commonly distinguished categories of deixis are person, place, time, discourse, and social deixis (Diessel, 2012, p. 2414), and demonstratives usually express place deixis/spatial deixis (Diessel, 1999, p. 36). doi: 10.1017/upo9788175968875.011, Post, M. W. (2017). doi: 10.1086/465747. Doctoral dissertation, James Cook University, Cairns. Analysis of English Semantic Change - CSCanada Ngiyambaa. Which best describes the meaning of amelioration? One example of semantic change would be the word 'hound'. A Grammar of Moskona: An East Birds Head Language of West Papua, Indonesia. The identificational context of use has been and/or is also called predicative use (e.g., in the first typological paper on this topic written by Killian, unpublished.). Huber, J. What did the word `` knight '' mean in Old English? In Daga, there seems to exist a correlation such that FUTURE/PAST = UP because yampoa utu-pa (third up.there-out.of.sight) means next Wednesday and wataget utu-p (before up.there-out.of.sight) means long ago (Murane, 1974, pp. Dr. Richard Nordquist is professor emeritus of rhetoric and English at Georgia Southern University and the author of several university-level grammar and composition textbooks. Hyslop, C. (1993). However, since we know that other elevational terms such as ABOVE or BELOW can, in principle, be employed within intrinsic and relative frames of reference, it is desirable in future research on elevational demonstratives to systematically test if there are any elevational demonstratives that can also be used in that way. Both of these contemporary uses of 'sick' have negative connotations. G. P. Reesink (Canberra: Australian National University), 181275. Cogn. This type of co-expression or combination of distance and elevation in demonstratives is not obligatory because there are languages such as Makalero (Table 3), Hatam, Iaai, Hua, Tidore, and Baskeet (8), in which elevational demonstratives are unmarked for distance and cannot be co-expressed with distance. You can find out more about our use, change your default settings, and withdraw your consent at any time with effect for the future by visiting Cookies Settings, which can also be found in the footer of the site. However, only on the island of New Guinea and immediately adjacent islands, in particular in the New Guinea Highlands, elevational demonstratives are found across a large range of different language families. Upload unlimited documents and save them online. A Grammar of Bantawa. But what connects rivers with what was said before about the vertical axis is the fact that gravity causes the flow of the water in a certain direction and the direction is absolute and independent of an anchoring point. Nevertheless, terms expressing verticality can be relational and they can be used with relation to the speaker, which then may lead to the impression that the verticality component in elevational demonstratives is, by itself, deictic.11 For instance, Kurtp elevational demonstratives have been glossed as deictic with the speaker as deictic center. Definition and Examples of the Amelioration of Words - ThoughtCo In this paper, I have examined elevational demonstratives, mainly focusing on their semantic and pragmatic properties. In Tidore, the elevational deictic verbs ine upward and tora downward are used in two temporal expressions, namely mulamula ine early morning, at sunrise (morning + upward) and lobino tora early evening, shortly after the sunset prayer (lit. The more specific value ACROSS (8 languages) occurs only around half as often as LEVEL (19 languages). Distance contrasts in demonstratives, in The World Atlas of Language Structures Online, eds M. S. Dryer and M. Haspelmath (Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology). We've discussed examples of the different types of semantic change. Demonstratives in Zilo Andi, in Paper Presented at Linguistic Convergence Laboratory, Moscow. 57, 145. These findings are particularly interesting in view of the widely debated use of Mandarin Chinese spatial terms shang upper, up, over, above for past events and xia lower, down, below, under, for future events, which show the opposite metaphorical extension (e.g., Yu, 1998, pp. The first type (general) corresponds to Burenhults verticality proper and global elevation, and the second term (topographic) to his geophysical elevation. General elevationals are used in accordance with the gravitational axis. Eipo (Mek, Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea) has two subsets of demonstratives (Table 2). Semantics Meaning & Examples | What is Semantics? - Video & Lesson
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