A catalogue of semantic shifts: Towards a typology of semantic derivation

Abstract

A formalized catalogue comprising the facts of the similar semantic shift, both synchronic and diachronic, which occurs independently in different languages and epochs, would reveal the most frequent, prominent and significant samples of semantic derivation. It might be used: (1) as a semantic plausibility criterion inlinguistic reconstruction; (2) as a basis for the semantic typology; (3) as a linguistic evidence for cognitive processes. The paper deals with the formal structure of the lexicographic entry of the Catalogue of semantic shifts (see Zalizniak 2001). Some examples of parallel semantic shifts in several groups of Indo-European languages are discussed in more detail.

Sources of BET

“…The basic premise -to be qualified below -is that where a polysemous word has BET as one of its senses, the other senses will be earlier senses, and it is these that we seek to establish. A similar approach is taken by Zalizniak, whose view of semantic shifts "is based on synchronie polysemy, which is more certain, than the reconstructed semantic evolution; meanwhile the resulting generalizations should be basically the same" (Zalizniak 2008:219).…”

“…In the present article we are concerned mainly with sources and targets (the target always BET) that are both lexical, rather than grammatical. Zalizniak's 'Catalogue of Semantic Shifts' (Zalizniak 2008) is closer to our concern in this respect. Zalizniak and colleagues have collected a large number of pairs of source and target concepts (i.e.…”

“…Zalizniak (2008) uses the term semantic shift to cover both diachronic extension to new senses (including in cases where there is formal change) and polysemy:B y semantic shift I understand any variation of meaning of a given word, be it synchronie or diachronic, i.e., the relation between two different meanings of a polysemous word or the relation between two meanings of a word in the course of semantic evolution. Synchronie and diachronic semantic shifts are indeed two different sides of the same phenomenon.…”

On Colexification among Basic Vocabulary

“…e.g., the collection of papers in Vanhove 2008, Falkum & Vicente (eds. ) 2015; also Zalizniak 2008, Urban 2012, Zalizniak et al 2012, List et al 2014.…”

“…There are some related efforts in the literature. E.g., Zalizniak (2008) and Zalizniak et al (2012) describe crosslinguistically recurring semantic shifts (=polysemies) in 319 of the languages of the world and manually implement a catalogue in the form of a manually searchable computer database, while List et al (2014) have automatically built an on-line database of colexifications, based on the Intercontinental Dictionary Series (IDS, Key & Comrie 2007) featuring lexical data for 233 world languages. In the first two papers, however, the authors concentrate on polysemy (relevant for semantic change) rather than more generally on colexification and use no automation either for database construction or subsequent search.…”