LINGUIST List 12.1982

Wed Aug 8 2001

Books: Semantic Change

Editor for this issue: Jody Huellmantel <jodylinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Joyce Reid, Regularity in Semantic Change

Regularity in Semantic Change

Elizabeth Close Traugott, Stanford University, CA
Richard B. Dasher, Stanford University, CA

This 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.


Contents:
1. The framework; 2. Prior and current work on semantic change; 3. The
development of modal verbs; 4. The development of adverbials with discourse
marker function; 5. The development of performative verbs and 
constructions; 6. The development of social deictics; 7. Conclusion.

Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 96

2001/c. 400 pp./41 figures
0-521-58378-0/Hb/List: $64.95*