Semantic

Euphemism is the substitution of an agreeable or inoffensive expression for one that may offend or suggest something unpleasant to the listener; or in the case of doublespeak, to make it less troublesome for the speaker.

A euphemism is a word or phrase that is used in place of a disagreeable or offensive term. When a phrase becomes a euphemism, its literal meaning is often pushed aside. In linguistics, the process of coining euphemisms is called taboo deformation. The methods of historical linguistics can reveal traces of taboo deformations. Several are known to have occurred in Indo-European. Examples include the original IndoEuropean words for bear (*rktos), wolf (*wlkwos), and deer (originally, hart). In different Indo-European languages, each of these words have difficult etymologies because of taboo deformations--a euphemism was substituted for the original, and the a form of original word no longer occurs in the language. The Germanic word "bear" means "brown guy;" the Slavic root (*medu-ed-) means "honey eater." Euphemisms can eventually become taboo words themselves through a process for which the linguist Steven Pinker has coined the term euphemism treadmill, which is comparable to Gresham's Law in economics. In this process, over the course of time, a word that was originally adopted as a euphemism acquires all the negative connotations of its referent, and has to be replaced by a substitute. In extreme cases, the process can happen many times, and indeed may still be happening. Euphemism A euphemism is the use of a substitute word in an attempt to replace or mask the negative connotations of the normal word for a certain object or action. The substitute word undergoes an extension, while the word replaced may suffer pejoration by dissimilation.

For example, snogging was once an alternative word for sex, though it has now been ameliorated in most registers to mean a french kiss.

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restroom for toilet room (the word toilet was itself originally a euphemism). This is an Americanism. acting like rabbits, making love to, getting it on, doing it, or sleeping with for having sex with sanitary landfill for garbage dump (and a temporary garbage dump is a transfer station), also often called a Civil Amenity in the UK third-party unauthorized use for cracking ill-advised for very poor or bad pre-owned vehicles for used cars A student being held back a grade level for having failed the grade level correctional facility for prison an athlete favoring a particular (body part) for injuring another corresponding body part -for example, putting more weight on one's right leg because of an injury to one's left leg the big C for cancer (in addition, some people whisper the word when they say it in public, and doctors have euphemisms to use in front of patients, e.g. "c.a." or "mitosis") bathroom tissue, t.p., or bath tissue for toilet paper (Usually used by toilet paper manufacturers) custodian or caretaker for janitor (also originally a euphemism — in Latin, it means doorman.) sanitation worker (or, sarcastically, sanitation engineer) for "garbage man"

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(Also known as dustman in the UK) collateral damage for "civilian casualties" downsizing for making redundant, itself a euphemism for layoffs, a euphemism for mass firing of employees. unplanned landing for "plane crash" spontaneous energetic disassembly for explosion protective custody for imprisonment without judicial proceedings bathroom for toilet room motion discomfort bag for barfbag

Semantic change In diachronic (or historical) linguistics, semantic change is a change in one of the meanings of a word. Every word has a variety of senses and connotations which can be added, removed, or altered over time, often to the extent that words of one time period mean quite different things to the same words as spoken in a previous time. Moreover, two words derived from the same original word may develop in very distinct ways: cognates across languages often look very similar but mean entirely different things. Semantic change is not to be confused with etymology, another field in diachronic linguistics; etymology is the scientific study of word origin, while semantic change deals with the development of sense. In fact, semantic change is one of the factors that need to be taken under consideration, in order to evaluate a proposed etymology. Limitations of historical semantics In recent years semantic change has received a large amount of attention, especially within the framework of pragmatics and cognitive linguistics. Nevertheless, the quest for a standard taxonomy of semantic changes, which would adequately account for all attested mechanisms, is still in doubt. Many linguists (chiefly comparatists) would agree with R.S.P. Beekes' assertion, that "studies on change of meaning do not offer satisfactory results" and no-one has so far presented

a full-scale method for interpretation and classification of the data.

(nuclear) meaning of a word and of marginal or peripheral senses, that form a radial network. In fact, change of meaning has been sometimes defined as drift or shift of semantic load from a nuclear meaning to a peripheral one. Unfortunately, texts and inscriptions tend to be silent on the prototypicality of the nuclear meaning and on the relevant semantic force of one synonym over another.

There are certain linguistic causes behind this deficiency, related to inherent limitations of historical semantics: •

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By contrast with the limited number of phonemes and morphemes in a linguistic system, the number of senses is unlimited. This bipolar position has been described as resulting from the coexistence of a closed phonetic/morphological system and an open semantic system. There are no semantic rules or principles that may exclude a certain change of meaning (according to Antoine Meillet's ascertainment). Therefore, historical grammars and handbooks, after dealing with the development of phonetic and morphological system of the language, tend to proceed with the study of lexical change or origin (loanwords, lexical diffusion, dialectic split etc.), setting aside any need for a logical classification of semantic changes. Information on the circumstances that contributed to an alteration are rare and scarce. A linguist cannot retrieve (or verify) valuable evidence concerning style, intonation (the suprasegmental parts of language) and the relevant position of synonyms in a lexical field. Accordingly, he is not able to define and evaluate the sociolinguistic background which may have favoured a certain change or a degree of intentionality that lead to the entrenchment of the new meaning. Polysemy, which constitutes a prerequisite for semantic change, is based upon the construction of a central

Causes of semantic change A major contribution to the theory of semantic change has been Antoine Meillet's 1905 article 'Comment les mots changent de sens'. This article has influenced many later essays, as it addresses the most important aspects of meaning change. Meillet discusses the causes of semantic change: •

Structural (structurelles): This category refers to the linguistic structure of lexical items. The limited number of phonemes / morphemes reduces, as such, the possible contexts for these elements. By striking contrast with the morphophonemic part, there are no a priori context limits related to the meaning of a word, concerning its possible connotations and positions in a sentence. In addition, lexical fields allow for powerful semantic interaction among their members, though the results are usually visible only after the conclusion of the process. Two noteworthy structural mechanisms that affect semantic change are grammaticalisation and reanalysis.

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Referential (referentielles): This category includes changes affecting the referent, i.e. the object or thing that a linguistic unit stands for. Normally, progress in technology and

culture goes along with changes in items, materials, tools and concepts. Nevertheless, since language abides to the principle of economy (old means - new usages), a certain delay in following that progress is certainly expectable. The system of any given language will most likely extend the semantic field of an existing word in order to cover the new usage rather than create ex nihilo a new lexeme. The importance of the simultaneous function of lexical items and referents had been the object of a linguistic and ethnographic field back in 1910, which was named Wörter und Sachen (“Words and Things”). Though not reflecting mature linguistic analysis, this field focused on producing a descriptive pattern to account for both the word and its cultural background or, briefly, to connect the history of a word to the history of its referent. Types of change The four most widely recognised types of semantic change are extension, narrowing, amelioration, and pejoration. The first two represent changes in a word's scope, while the second pair can also cover changes in a word's individual meanings. • Generalization Also known as extension, generalization is the use of a word in a broader realm of meaning than it originally possessed, often referring to all items in a class, rather than one specific item. For instance, place derives from Latin platea, "broad street", but its meaning grew broader than the street, to include "a particular city", "a business office", "an area dedicated to a specific purpose" before broadening even wider to mean "area". In the process, the word place displaced (!) the Old English word stow and became used instead of the Old English word stede (which survives in stead, steadfast, steady and -- of course -- instead). Generalization is a natural process, especially in situations of "language on a shoestring", where the

speaker has a limited vocabulary at her disposal, either because she is young and just acquiring language or because she is not fluent in a second language. A first-year Spanish student on her first vacation in Spain might find herself using the word coche, "car", for cars, trucks, jeeps, buses, and so on. When my son Alexander was two, he used the word oinju (from orange juice) to refer to any type of juice, including grape juice and apple juice; wawa (from water) referred to water and hoses, among other things. Extension is the widening of a word's range of meanings, often by analogy or simplification. For example, virtue was initially a quality that could only be applied to men, like our modern word manliness, but in contemporary society, it can equally be applied to women as well. Maverick used to be a rancher's term for an unbranded cow but can now mean a person who doesn't conform to the conventions of a group (Jeffers & Lehiste). Meanings can be borrowed from other languages (semantic loans). Narrowing Narrowing is the reduction in a word's range of meanings, often limiting a generic word to a more specialised or technical use. For example, broadcast originally meant "to cast seeds out"; with the advent of radio and television, the word was extended to indicate the transmission of audio and video signals. Today, because of narrowing, very few people outside of agricultural circles use broadcast in the earlier sense (Jeffers & Lehiste).

Word

Old Meaning

pants

"men's wide breeches extending from waist to ankle"

place

"broad street"

Amelioration Amelioration occurs as a word loses negative connotations or gains positive ones. For example, mischievous used to mean "disastrous", where it now only means "playfully annoying". This is often a result of semantic bleaching. Pejoration Pejoration occurs as a word develops negative connotations or loses positive ones. For example, notorious initially meant "widely known". Yet it has gone through the process of extension to now mean "widely and unfavourably known". Awful originally had a meaning closer to the modern meaning of awesome, yet it now means the opposite. A famous example is of the word gay, which can mean happy or colorful and was used commonly until it became a reference to homosexuals. While this may or may not have been a euphemisation in itself, the word in the original sense is avoided. Gay is also extended in certain slang vocabularies as a pejorative adjective. See also euphemism treadmill. Pejoration is the process by which a word's meaning worsens or degenerates, coming to represent something less favorable than it originally did. Most of the words in Suffield's poem have undergone pejoration.

For instance, the word silly begins Suffield's poem and meant in Old English times "blessed", which is why Suffield calls his poem a beatitude (Christ's beatitudes begin with "blessed are the..."). How did a word meaning "blessed" come to mean "silly"? Well, since people who are blessed are often innocent and guileless, the word gradually came to mean "innocent". And some of those who are innocent might be innocent because they haven't the brains to be anything else. And some of those who are innocent might be innocent because they knowingly reject opportunities for temptation. In either case, since the more worldly-wise would take advantage of their opportunities, the innocents must therefore be foolish, which of course is the current primary meaning of the word silly. The word goddy in the poem is a metaplasmus (artful misspelling) of gaudy. The word gaudy was derived from the Latin word gaudium, "joy", which was applied to praying (as a type of rejoicing). Because the most common prayers in Middle English times were the prayers of the rosary, Middle English gaude came to be associated with the rosary and came to mean "an ornamental rosary bead". Unfortunately, not all who prayed with the rosary were genuinely pious; many were like the Pharisees of old and just wanted to be seen praying -- religion for them was decorative (ornamental) rather than functional. As a result, modern English gaudy gradually acquired its current meaning of tasteless

or ostentatious ornamentation. A related word to gaudy, which is not explicitly referenced in Suffield's poem but is implied, is bead (in the poem, bedead is probably an anagrammatic play on beaded). In Middle English times, bead (then spelled 'bede') referred only to a rosary bead. Middle English bede was itself descended from Old English gebed, prayer. The phrase telling one's beads was literally "saying one's prayers", with each rosary bead used to keep count of the number of prayers said. In the days when all Englishspeaking Christians were Catholics, using the rosary was such a common practice that it was only natural for the word for prayer to become the word for the bead used to say a prayer. In this way, Suffield is arguing, deep spiritual communication has been trivialized into a trinket. Modern English bead has come so far from its original center that its sphere of meaning no longer includes prayer -- but does include other small round objects, such as beads of sweat. The word rosary, incidentally, originally was Latin for "a rose garden", which was applied as a metaphorical description of the prayer cycle, which was "a rose garden of prayers", with the rose garden symbolizing both the Garden of Eden (or paradise, which originally meant, well we could go on forever...) and the rose of the Virgin Mary. A word that has shown similar semantic degeneration to gaudy is tawdry. In the eighth century, AEthelthy/rth, Queen of Northumbria, abdicated her office and renounced the pleasures of the flesh, having her marriage to the King of Northumbria

annulled to become abbess of a monastery on the Isle of Ely. This act of sacrifice and her subsequent holiness prompted others to revere her as a saint. Legend has it that she died of a disease of the throat, a disease that she regarded as judgment upon the vanity of her youth, when she loved to wear beautiful necklaces in court. Eventually, AEthelthy/rth was beatified, and -- as by this time phonetic change had simplified her name to Audrey -- she was known as St. Audrey. An annual fair was held in her memory each October 17th, and at the fair were sold cheap souvenirs, including a neck lace called St. Audrey's lace. In England, the initial [s] of saints' names is often elided (for instance, the town of St. Albans in Hertfordshire is locally pronounced as [talbans] by some). As a result of this process, by the 1800s, the necklaces were called tawdry laces. It wasn't long before tawdry was applied to the other cheap souvenirs sold at the annual fair, with the result that tawdry became a general adjective meaning "gaudy and cheap in appearance". The word tawdry is not the only eponymous word to degenerate: the last word in Suffield's first stanza, maudlin, is short for Magdalene. Mary Magdalene was the reformed prostitute who wept at Christ's tomb that first Easter morning; this weeping has been memorialized in innumerable medieval paintings and stainglass windows. As a result, her name came to be used to describe anyone who was weeping, and from there the meaning radiated out to "excessively sentimental." Magdalene came to be pronounced maudlin through gradual phonetic change; in fact, Magdalen College at Oxford University is locally known as Maudlin. Silly are the goddy tawdry maudlin.

Moving on to the next line of Suffield's poem (for they shall christgeewhiz bow down before him), we find another religious figure, of greater stature than Mary Magdalene or St. Audrey, who has had his name spawn many new words. Of course, this is Jesus Christ, whose name has become an oath. Because swearing is considered inappropriate in polite society, people slightly changed the sound of the invective. Damn it! became darn it!, shit! became shoot!, Jesus! became gee, gee whiz and geez and Jesus Christ! became Jiminy Crickets, among others. These euphemistic changes are called minced oaths. The final word in Suffield's poem to undergo pejoration is paternoster, which is descended from the Latin pater noster, which represents "Our Father", the first words of the Lord's Prayer. As a result of this relationship, the words came to be known as another name for the Lord's Prayer and came to mean one of the large beads on a rosary on which the Paternoster was recited (those beads again!). As its meaning radiated outward from "large bead", it even came to mean "a weighted fishing line with hooks connected by bead-like swivels". The word paternoster also came to mean any wordformula spoken as a prayer or magic spell. Since the Paternoster was in Latin, and in Medieval times Latin was no longer the native language of any of the reciters, the prayer was often recited quickly and with little regard for the sense of the words. Because of this, paternoster came to mean meaningless chatter, words empty of meaning -- this sense of the word gave rise to the form patter. (The word pitterpatter, though used by Suffield in his poem, is actually etymologically unrelated to the word patter with this meaning.) Patter has the sense of meaningless words, and sharp words can become rounded and dull. But although Suffield

laments that no word is still the Word [of God], some words do assume a dignity they had not before possessed. Word

Old Meaning

crafty

"strong"

cunning

"knowing"

egregious

"distinguished, standing out from the herd"

harlot

"a boy"

notorious

"famous"

obsequious "flexible" vulgar

"popular"

Semantic shift Semantic shift occurs as a word moves from one set of circumstances to another, resulting in an extension of the range of meanings. An example of this is navigator, which once applied only to ships but, with the development of planes and cars, now applies to multiple forms of travel. Another example is Old English, meat, (or rather mete), which referred to all forms of solid food while flesh (flæsc) referred to animal tissue, and food (foda) referred to animal fodder. Meat was eventually restricted to flesh of animals, then flesh restricted to the tissue of humans and food was generalized to refer to all forms of solid food (Jeffers & Lehiste).

"be cold" (since it evolved through the meaning "to die of cold"). Though both words arose from a common West Germanic root *sterb-a- ("to die"), and their meanings are still somewhat related, semantic drift has caused their specific meanings to differ. The same may occur language-internally, especially when one form is specifically agglutinated. For example, English to hurdle is cognate to hard and is agglutinated with the -le frequentative suffix. A more extreme example is with the English word black, which is cognate with Slavic words for white (Russian белый); the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European root for both is *bhel. English black derives from Germanic *blakaz, a past participle of a verb meaning "to blaze." As an adjective, the word would indicate something that has burned and since what is burnt is generally black, the shift in meaning makes more sense.

French word pas, which literally means "step" but is also used with ne in forming negating statements like je ne pense pas ("I don't think so") as well as by itself: ma voiture a un toit ouvrant, la leur pas ("my car is convertible, theirs isn't").

Figurative use

Political correctness is a real or perceived attempt to refine or restrict language and terms used in public discussion to those deemed acceptable or appropriate. For example, in the United Kingdom in the early 1990s the term "blackboard" became perceived by some as being "politically incorrect", and so some schools instructed teachers to refer to it as a "chalkboard"

Figurative use is a change in meaning that is based on an analogy or likeness between things. For example, a crane is a bird with a long neck, but the word can now also mean a piece of equipment for lifting weights. The earlier examples of maverick and broadcast are also examples of figurative use.

Semantic drift

Grammaticalisation

Semantic drift is the movement of the entire meaning of a lexeme to a new meaning, and is particularly evidenced by semantic differences between cognates. For instance, the English word to starve is cognate with the German sterben ("to die") and in some parts of England, the word can mean

Grammaticalisation is the development of function words and grammatical affixes from content words. It often begins with extension of a word to include a grammatical function, and the subsequent narrowing of the word (usually after the word has suffered morphological changes) to a solely or predominantly grammatical use. An example of this is the

Metonymy A type of extension, metonymy or synecdoche is the use of a part of an object to refer to a whole. In many languages, the word for head can be used as a substitute for the word for person. In English, we have the phrase "a head", resembling the Latin phrase "per capita", which we also use. The word "poll", originally meaning the top of the head, can refer to the whole head, and a "poll tax" is a fixed tax applied to each person. The convention of using capital cities to represent countries or their governments is another example of metonymy. Political correctness

PREPARED BY: GERALDINE C. AÑASCO I-BSPT PROF. TIAMSON