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Volume 6, Issue 2
  • ISSN 2210-2116
  • E-ISSN: 2210-2124
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Abstract

This study aims to track diachronic semantic shift in a small set of monomorphemes collected from the (), carrying the initial - phonestheme, such as , etc. The purpose is to determine the semantic behavior of - monomorphemes by identifying key words, which are then classified into eleven conceptual categories of semantic features. Five features of the eleven are conjectured as major on the basis of frequency of occurrence and frequency of combination with other features. Features which share similar progression rates are hypothesized to be linked through the natural process of metonymy (MTA, SV, SBT). Early emergent features are viewed as primary (MTA and MTL). From there, directionality of shift is assessed by comparing co-emergent with post-attestation features. Although no general pattern is discernible on this scale, several case studies of unexpected semantic shift towards minor features as in and show promising results for the field of historical lexical semantics.

© 2016, John Benjamins Publishing Company
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/content/journals/10.1075/jhl.6.2.02smi
2017-02-13
2025-04-26

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/content/journals/10.1075/jhl.6.2.02smi
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Tracking semantic change in fl- monomorphemes in the Oxford English Dictionary
Journal of Historical Linguistics 6, 165 (2016); https://doi.org/10.1075/jhl.6.2.02smi
/content/journals/10.1075/jhl.6.2.02smi
/content/journals/10.1075/jhl.6.2.02smi
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  • Article Type: Research Article
Keyword(s): corpus linguistics; directionality of change; feature analysis; phonesthemes; semantic change; Sketch Engine

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