Diachronic Prototype Semantics A Contribution to Historical Lexicology

by Geeraerts, Dirk

• ISBN13: 9780198236528
• ISBN10: 0198236522
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1997-05-29
• Publisher: Clarendon Press

Summary

Prototype theory makes a crucial distinction between the central and peripheral sense of words. Geeraerts explores the implications of this model for a theory of semantic change, in the first full-scale treatment of the impact of the most recent developments in lexicological theory on thestudy of meaning change. He identifies structural features of the development of word meanings which follow from a prototype-theoretical model of semantic structure, and incorporates these diachronic prototypicality effects into a theory of meaning change. The author strikes a balance between theoretical exploration and diachronic description, supporting each step in the argumentation with detailed case studies which chart the semantic development of particular words, or illustrate specific mechanisms of semantic change. Thus the book provides both atheoretical model for diachronic semantics and a number of methodological strategies and representational formats that exemplify how changes of word meaning can be studied in practice.

Table of Contents

Introduction	1
1 Cognitive Semantics and Prototype Theory	6	(26)
1.1 Introducing cognitive linguistics	7	(3)
1.2 Characteristics of prototypicality	10	(13)
1.3 Hypotheses about Semasiological change	23	(9)
2 The Prototypical Characteristics of Semasiological Change	32	(52)
2.1 Modulations of core cases	32	(15)
2.2 Radial sets through time	47	(15)
2.3 Semantic polygensis	62	(6)
2.4 Semantic change from subsets	68	(16)
3 Prototypicality in a Classification of Lexical Change	84	(39)
3.1 Functional classifications in diachronic semantics	85	(8)
3.2 The mechanisms of lexical change	93	(9)
3.3 The causes of lexical change	102	(10)
3.4 Prototypicality as an efficiency principle	112	(11)
4 Prototypicality Polysemization and the Isomorphic Principle	123	(34)
4.1 Polysemiophobia and Semantic reorganization	125	(5)
4.2 Homonymiphobia and Conceptual merger	130	(20)
4.3 Predicatability and teleology	150	(7)
5 Prototype Theory as a Scientific Paradigm	157	(34)
5.1 Knowledge from uncertainty	157	(18)
5.2 Lexical semantics as a Geisteswissenschaft	175	(16)
References	191	(12)
Index	203