Talk:Semantic change
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[edit] Punk
It may be a cultural issue, but in North America 'Punk' certainly doesn't mean someone who doesn't stand up for themselves and gets pushed around. This example should be cut or fixed.--142.25.33.159 23:56, 25 January 2006 (UTC) It does in certain socio-cultural North American contexts such as hip-hop, urban, and inner-city communities and among younger people. You are right that there is an omission of the more widespread use of "punk" to mean a rebellious or badly behaved (usually young male) person.
[edit] Gay
Interesting article. But what exactly is your source on this:
- it was picked up by homosexuals as an acronym for "Good As You
Do you have anything to support that the word was originally used among homosexuals as an acronym (which may be the case today), rather than as a euphemism? --JJay 22:19, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
- Is my teacher good enough? If not, David Crystal mentions it in his encyclopedia of the English Language, which I did cite. Sonic Mew | talk to me 11:46, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
Hi Sonic Mew and thanks for your response. I checked your cited source- (Crystal, David, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, Cambridge University Press; 2 edition, 2003). On page 134 he discusses the word “gay” but makes no mention of “good as you”. In fact this idea is examined at length on the Wikipedia Gay page (under folk etymologies), where “good as you'” is identified as a backronym (based on a fake etymology). I will therefore edit that part in your article. --JJay 14:35, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
- Okay. I didn't have the encyclopedia with me when I wrote the article because it was in my school library and my school had been IP-banned. Sonic Mew | talk to me 16:19, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Nationality
I think an example of a word changing right now is nationality. Philosophically it's a concept all it's own - but in legal documents it's much more akin to citizenship (not exactly citizenship, but much closer to that than the old concept of nationality). And in common use "What is your nationality" is akin to "What is your ethnicity?" I'll leave it to the more experienced to decide whether or not to include this, but I wanted to bring it up to discussion. 1 December 2005
[edit] Cliché-ification
Is there a linguistic term for a the phenomenon of a word losing linguistic intensity (such as "spill", which once meant "to destroy"?) Does the opposite ever occur? The Jade Knight 05:27, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
Yes, the term is "weakening," and it is much more common than the opposite phenomenon, "strengthening." An example of strengthening is the word "drown" which originally meant something along the lines of "to drink," or "to get wet" according to C.M. Millward's A Biography of the English Language.
- Dear friends, mechanisms of semantic change have received a large amount of attention in recent years. The most common term for the phenomenon of affaiblissement sémantique (a designation used by Michel Bréal back in 1899) is semantic bleaching, which has acquired a well-defined status in bibliography (especially within the framework of grammaticalisation and cognitive linguistics), although the term generalisation has also been used. If anyone is interested, I could cite relevant references to the above mentioned terminology. Thank you. Dr Moshe 08:48, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
- Absolutely! You don't need permission to put more sources and references in an article. Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 20:47, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
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- Many thanks! I have added a section on Limitations of historical semantics. Dr Moshe 11:19, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] A note to all editors
Please would editors not simply add sections on individual examples of semantic change, as the talk page suggests might happen. There few words in the Englush language (never mind others). If we are going to have examples, we should restrict them to clear examples which illustrate types of change, and we should include them within a section on the change, not separately. Controversial words like "gay" are more likely to be subjects of edit wars and/or vandalisation, so let's stick to things like notorious.--Nema Fakei 11:21, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
[edit] rv of 11/03/05
I decided to rv the page partly because the change of Aeusoes removed the distinctions between 2nd level headings and 3rd level headings, thus making two headings redundant (one of which empty). I'm also not convinced about making 'gay' a pejoration: it could equally be a euphemism or just an extension. Additionally, since homosexuality is received very differently across the English-speaking world, the effects on how the word is used varies. Encyclopaedic examples need to be clear-cut, to help users distinguish between different types of semantic change.--Nema Fakei 13:21, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
- I changed the headings stuff because it looked weird having headings looking exactly the same size as the text. I took out cliché because I've never heard that as a process of semantic change, there were no examples, and it doesn't seem like a process of semantic change in its own description.
- As I tried to explain it in the article, "gay" is not only avoided in common speech, but it's common for teenagers and young adults to use "gay" to mean lame or stupid. I've reverted your revert but edited the headers thing. I had put in a lot more than you added back in and I don't think a blind revert was necessary. AEuSoes1 00:42, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
- Apologies: in retrospect, I agree the revert was a little clumsy, and I hadn't readded as much of your extra as I'd liked.
- I'm going to have to think about the examples and sectioning: ideally, I don't want to be trying to exclude any material, so perhaps we could, say, create a new section for complex or compound examples, discussing common side-effects of semantic changes? --Nema Fakei 01:04, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
- It's quite all right. I like that idea. Jeffers and Lehiste cite the different forms of change as extension, reduction, or replacement from one set of contexts to another. They also point out that reinterpretation of the derivational morphemes can drive lexical change. Punk could probably go in the section on complex examples, seeing as how it looks like it's in the political correctness section right now. AEuSoes1 03:53, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Meillet on causes of semantic change
The page has Meillet identify 3 causes of semantic change, after which there are only two bullet points. Can anyone clarify Meillet's position in this article? Dsp13 00:14, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
[edit] bad means good
what class if any for this semantic reversal?--86.132.116.42 23:19, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
