5.7 Semantics and Change of Meaning

The meaning of a lexeme is what we understand and intend when we use it. The way our language formulates the meaning influences the manner we respond to the world and perceive it. Language clearly affects our daily activities and habits of thought. The meanings of lexemes vary with place, time, and situation or circumstance. Moreover, in the course of language development the meanings of the lexemes change. With the expansion and development of computer technology, lexemes may acquire new meanings, e.g., bookmark, boot, floppy, mail, mouse, notebook, save, server, spam, surf, virtual, virus, wall-paper, web, window, zip, and others. Sometimes it is difficult to predict how lexemes will change, but it is not a chaotic process—it follows certain paths. If we mention winter, connotation creates a set of associations such as snow, white, bitter cold and frozen cheeks. These associations create the connotation of the lexeme, but they cannot be its meaning. Lexemes change in both their senses and their associations. John Algeo claims that the following changes are possible within denotation:

A sense may expand to include more referents than it formerly had (generalization), contract to include fewer referents (specialization), or shift to include a quite different set of referents (transfer of meaning). The associations of a word may become worse (pejoration) or better (amelioration) and stronger or weaker than they formerly were. (p.210).

Under generalization he understands that the meaning can be generalized (broadened, widened, and extended). When the scope of a lexeme is increased, the number of features in its definition is reduced. For example, the lexeme barn is a compound of Old English bere (barley) and ern (storage), which originally was a place to store barley. Eventually, the lexeme barn broadened its meaning, thus becoming more generalized, and now we have car barns, furniture barns, and antique barns. A very interesting explanation of the lexeme corn is given in the Encyclopedia. The Old Teutonic kurnom eventually became Old Saxon korn and then corn in Old English, which is maize for the British and any grain for the Americans. When in Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale” a homesick Ruth stands “in tears amid the alien corn,” she is standing in a field of wheat or rye, any grain but New World corn (Hendrickson, 1997, p.170).

The opposite of generalization is specialization, “a process in which, by adding to the features of meaning, the referential scope of a word is reduced” (Algeo, 2011, p. 210). This process indicates that a lexeme’s meaning becomes less general and more specialized. The lexeme deer originated from Old English deуr which meant any wild animal. In King Lear Shakespeare writes, “But mice and rats and such small deer have been in Tom's food for seven long year” (3.4.151). Only in relatively modern times have deer come to mean only the species we identify with the term today. The lexeme girl came to English from German gore (a young person). In some Scottish dialects, girl still means either a young male or female. Meat in Middle English meant food in general. The word became confined to the flesh of animals when there was a large increase in flesh eating, and meat lost its generalized meaning for any kind of food by the 17^th century (Hendrickson, 1997, p. 446).

There are many ways to transfer a lexeme’s or a phrase’s meaning. Transfers of meaning are linguistic mechanisms when we use the same lexeme or same expression to refer to disjointed sorts of things.

Metaphor

A metaphor is in Greek for "transfer" (meta and trans meaning "across"; phor and fer meaning "carry"): to carry something across. Hence, a metaphor treats something as if it were something else. To grasp an idea is radically different from grasping an object. Money becomes a nest egg; a sandwich, a submarine. A metaphor is a transfer of name based on the association of similarity, suggesting a likeness or analogy between them. It is an implicit comparison or identification of one thing with another unlike itself without the use of a verbal signal. A cunning person, for instance, is referred to a fox. Thus one of the connotations of fox is cleverness. Some metaphors involve the use of words which are primarily associated with spatial orientation when we talk about physical and psychological states. These metaphors are called spatial metaphors. Being on one’s back (physically down) indicates that a person is either unhappy or sick; however, if someone is happy and in good health, then this involves being on one’s feet (physically up). Kristin Denham and Anne Lobeck classify metaphors variously as dead metaphors, mixed metaphors, personification, and synesthesia. Dead metaphors are those that are so “conventionalized in everyday speech that we do not even realize they are metaphors” (p. 306), e.g. He is blind to new ideas. I see your point. I will take a look at your essay for you. Blind, see, and take a look have nothing to do with visual perception. They are so common in the language that we do not even think that they are metaphors. Mixed metaphors consist of “parts of different metaphors [that] are telescoped into one utterance” (p. 306). The examples of mixed metaphors are the following: to get into hot water skating on thin ice; to zip one's lips and throw away the key, and others. In personification, human attributes are given to inanimate objects. William Blake’s poem “Ah! Sunflower” is based on personification:

"Ah, William, we're weary of weather," said the sunflowers, shining with dew. "Our traveling habits have tired us. Can you give us a room with a view?"

They arranged themselves at the window and counted the steps of the sun, and they both took root in the carpet where the topaz tortoises run.

Synesthesia is “a type of metaphorical language in which one kind of sensation is described in terms of another” (p.307). Color may be attributed to sounds, odor to color, sound to odor, etc.). The meaning may be transferred from one sensory faculty to another, as when we use clear for what we can hear rather than see, as in clear sound. Loud may be transferred from hearing to sight, when we speak of loud colors. Sweet primarily refers to taste, and it may be extended to hearing, as in sweet music, and others.

Change of meaning is often due to association of ideas, whether by metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, or others. In metonymy, an associated idea stands in for the actual item. For example, “The pen is mightier than the sword” is an elegant way of saying, “Literature and propaganda accomplish more and survive longer than warfare.” Another example would be the phrase, “The White House announced.” What this means is “The President announced.”

The understanding of one thing by another—a kind of metaphor in which a part stands for the whole, or the whole for a part, is called synecdoche: a hired hand means “a laborer.” Silver has come to be used for eating utensils made of silver— an instance of synecdoche— and sometimes, by association, for flatware made of other substances, so that we may speak of stainless steel or even plastic silverware.

In addition to a change in its sense or literal meaning, a lexeme may also undergo change in its associations, especially of value. A lexeme may go downhill, or it may rise in the world; there is no way of predicting what will happen to a lexeme. Politician has had a downhill development, or pejoration (from Latin pejor ‘ worse’): Politicians, whores, and buildings all get respectable after they get old (from the movie Chinatown, 1974). Lewd, beginning with its original meaning ‘lay, as in layman, has had seven different meanings through the years: unlettered, low, bungling, vile, lawless, licentious, and finally ‘obscene,’ which is the only meaning that survives.

The opposite of pejoration is amelioration, the improvement in value of a lexeme. The lexeme “praise started out indifferently— it is simply appraise, ‘put a value on,’ with loss of its initial unstressed syllable (aphesis)” (Angeo, p.214), and later praise acquired a new meaning: ‘to express a favorable judgment’ or ‘to glorify, especially by the attribution of perfections.’ Nice has undergone a complete change in meaning since it came into English late in the 13^th century. Deriving from Latin nescius (ignorant), nice originally meant ‘foolish’ or ‘simple-minded’ and later came to mean ‘wanton’ or ‘ill-mannered’ before another century passed. By the early 1400s nice was used for ‘extravagant dress’ which later changed its meaning to ‘fashionable dress,’ and by Shakespeare’s time nice was used for ‘fastidious’ or ‘refined.’

As we have seen in this chapter, the meaning of every lexeme is susceptible to change, and some lexemes have changed their meanings radically in the course of their history.