Regularity in Semantic Change
Author: Elizabeth Closs Traugott
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2005-03-24
Total Pages: 364
ISBN-13: 9780521617918
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis new and important study of semantic change examines the various ways in which new meanings arise through language use, especially the ways in which speakers and writers experiment with uses of words and constructions. Drawing on extensive research from over a thousand years of English and Japanese textual history, Traugott and Dasher show that most changes in meaning originate in and are motivated by the associative flow of speech and conceptual metonymy.