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Semantic Change, Semantic Theory and Linguistic Relativity Gábor Györi Semantic Change, Semantic Theory and Linguistic Relativity Series A: General & Theoretical Papers ISSN 1435-6473 Essen: LAUD 1998 (2., unveränderte Auflage 2006) Paper No. 444 Universität Duisburg-Essen Gábor Györi Jannus Pannonius University, Pecs (Hungary) Semantic Change, Semantic Theory and Linguistic Relativity Copyright by the author Reproduced by LAUD 1998 (2., unveränderte Auflage 2006) Linguistic Agency Series A University of Duisburg-Essen General and Theoretical FB Geisteswissenschaften Paper No. 444 Universitätsstr. 12 D- 45117 Essen Order LAUD-papers online: http://www.linse.uni-due.de/linse/laud/index.html Or contact: [email protected] Gábor Györi Semantic Change, Semantic Theory and Linguistic Relativity 0. Abstract The most general cause usually given for semantic and lexical change is the arising of new communicative needs in a speech community. However, communication is also a cognitive activity: we communicate our mental states, the contents of our minds, etc. Communicative needs must go hand in hand with cognitive needs, since there is no linguistic communication without the underlying mental representations. Because of this, semantic change can only be accounted for by a semantic theory which takes into account human conceptualization as a product of our understanding of bodily experience, as does cognitive semantics. Semantic change exploits and utilizes the common understanding and interpretation of experience which exists on the basis of conventionalized conceptual structures shared by the members of a speech community. However, while the semantic structure of a language is the product of conceptualization processes, it is also true that the input for these conceptualization processes is at least partly the semantic structure of that language. Language is capable of influencing conceptualization and cognitive processes because it is always already existing words and expressions that serve as the basis for changing meanings and creating new expressions in order to express new thoughts. From the above it follows that the analysis of semantic change and lexicalization processes can give us a clear view of the interaction between language and thought. A cognitive semantic analysis will tell us about how the original expressions influence and constrain the possible directions of conceptual and semantic development and thus the way of expressing new ideas. 1 1. Introduction At the basis of the relationship between language and thought is the fact that language is an instrument for human cognition -- the larger part of our knowledge about the world has been and is continually mediated to us through language. Many things we know about are things we have never experienced and never will, so our knowledge about them will always take some kind of linguistic form. One of the most important questions that we have to ask if we want to analyze this relationship is whether it entails any kind of influence in one direction or the other. That language is influenced by thought seems to be quite obvious. Cognition is primary to language both phylogenetically and ontogenetically, and also logically, in the sense that cognition can and does exist without language but there is no language that does not involve cognition. It is not just cognition but even thought processes that can exist without language when such pre-linguistic cognitive contents are processed. When cognitive processing takes on a linguistic form, thought becomes propositional thought. Cognition starts with the perception of reality which is not a purely objective amassing of information about the world but involves an interpretation of reality in terms of the perceiver's biology at the minimum in order to be able to interact with the environment in a functional way. The cognitive processes based on the information supplied by perception involve even more interpretation of the outside world since they create a mental model of reality for the beholder. If we now ask what influences the way language is, reality seems to be an obvious candidate since language is about reality and thus it is no wonder that the latter shapes the former. But this influence can only come indirectly through our interpretation of reality, that is, our cognitive processes will obviously have the biggest influence. This is of course not to deny any eventually arbitrary structural features of language, which also leave their mark on the way language is. Thus, the way we see the world and think about it in non-propositional ways clearly influences language. But does the relationship between language and thought entail also an influence in the opposite direction? Comparing the semantic structures of 2 different languages, it becomes immediately obvious that different languages impose different categorizations on the world. Since meanings provide us with mental categories for ordering our experience into, it is very likely that the effect of categorical perception also operates at levels of cognition higher than perception (Harnad 1987). In the case of linguistic categories this should mean that speakers perceive the world in terms of the categories supplied to them by their native language. The logical underpinning of this conclusion is the fact that the task of cognition in general is to give an interpretation of the world which is functional for the cognizer and this is how cognition can become the basis for an appropriate interaction with the environment. Since language is an instrument for cognition for humans, the fact that each language involves a particular interpretation of the world in the form of different categorizations will acquire special relevance in the light of the above. Linguistic cognition appears thus to have the same general task, namely to provide the kind of interpretation of the environment that will be most useful for the interaction with it, which means that linguistic forms will necessarily influence the speakers' perception and thinking about the world. Just as the general aim of cognition is to adjust an organism's behavior to expected situations in the environment (but also to be capable of a certain degree of modifications of behavior in case of environmental changes), the interpretation of reality inherent in language reflects a speech communities cognitive adaptation to situations its members might encounter in their environment and which they have to handle by thinking, reasoning and communicating about them. This role of language is also suggested by the cognitive process that operates in semantic change. It is the analysis of this phenomenon that the paper will deal with. How the different semantic structures (or category systems) of different languages arose can well be seen when studying semantic change, but it is not in the origin of meanings (i.e. the etymology of words) that linguistic relativity shows itself because the origins get obscured with time anyway. Thus, any influence of this kind on the thought processes of speakers is blocked by the fact that speakers' semantic knowledge contains no information on how particular meanings emerged in their native language. The fact that for instance the English word cloud has its origin in the PIE root *gel- 'to form into a 3 ball' does not mean that English native speakers today conceptualize a cloud as something similar to or having been made into a ball. What is interesting and telling in semantic change from the point of view of linguistic relativity is not the results of semantic change but the process of emergence and development of meanings (including grammaticalization), a process which involves speakers' semantic knowledge and cognitive processes at the time of the ongoing changes. When analyzing semantic change from the point of view of linguistic relativity at least two of the three approaches to linguistic relativity that Lucy (1997) has described must be involved in our considerations. We take a structure-centered approach when examining how semantic change and its underlying cognitive processes contribute to the differences in the semantic structure of different languages. In line with the domain-centered approach it must also be considered how and why semantic change has caused the same reality to be encoded differently in different languages or even within one language in the case of synonyms. It can be claimed with confidence that in the vast majority of the cases semantic change cannot be adequately explained without reference to cognitive processes and to human cognition in general, that is, most changes clearly show some kind of cognitive motivation (Anttila 1992). Although semantic change takes place over long periods of historical time in the language system, the process cannot be separated from the cognitive mechanisms that operate in individual speakers' minds. Also many recent works on semantic change suggest its analysis as a cognitive phenomenon (e.g. Geeraerts 1985, Lichtenberk 1991, Sweetser 1990, Traugott 1985). It is trivial (if not tautological) to state that change of meaning occurs on the basis of the meanings that are already present in the language at a certain point in time. But it is important to emphasize this fact in order to show how linguistic relativity presents itself in semantic change. It is not by chance that a certain existent meaning is selected to be modified to convey a new sense. This seems to imply that the perception of something new is guided by the existent category system, which is materialized through the lexicon of a language. When the interaction with the environment requires the recognition of a new phenomenon or some kind of reinterpretation of an already familiar 4 one, it still must be recognized as belonging to a given category in the established system. Thus, the fact that the word hawk derives from PIE *kap- 'to grasp' suggests that referents of hawk were referred to and must also have been conceptualized initially as instances of something grasping. It is, among others, the role of the fuzzy boundaries of categories to make this kind of flexible categorization possible but then again categories have fuzzy boundaries because this is how human cognition works.
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