Change in Life, Change in Language: a Semantic Approach to the History
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Change in Life, Change in Language STUDIEs IN ENGLIsH MEDIEVAL LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE Edited by Jacek Fisiak Advisory Board: John Anderson (Methoni, Greece), Ulrich Busse (Halle), Olga Fischer (Amsterdam), Marcin Krygier (Poznan´), Roger Lass (Cape Town), Peter Lucas (Cambridge), Donka Minkova (Los Angeles), Akio Oizumi (Kyoto), Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe (UC Berkeley, USA), Matti Rissanen (Helsinki), Hans Sauer (Munich), Liliana Sikorska (Poznan´), Jeremy Smith (Glasgow), Jerzy Wełna (Warsaw) Vol. 37 Begoña Crespo Change in Life, Change in Language A Semantic Approach to the History of English Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. All the books published in the series are reviewed before publication. Typesetting by motivex. Cover Design: © Olaf Glöckler, Atelier Platen, Friedberg ISSN 1436-7521 ISBN 978-3-631-63453-0 © Peter Lang GmbH Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften Frankfurt am Main 2013 All rights reserved. Peter Lang Edition is an Imprint of Peter Lang GmbH All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems. www.peterlang.de Language is not an abstract construction of the learned, or of dictionary makers, but is something arising out of the work, needs, ties, joys, affections, tastes, of long generations of humanity, and has its bases broad and low, close to the ground. Noah Webster For my mother Table of contents List of abbreviations ..................................................................................................... 9 Prologue ...................................................................................................................... 11 Introduction ................................................................................................................. 13 Part I Socio-historical background of the English language (12th-17th centuries) ............. 17 1.1 Middle English in context ..................................................................................... 17 1.2 Towards the revival of English ............................................................................. 22 1.3 Late Medieval and Early Modern English ............................................................ 33 Part II Language change in Medieval and Renaissance England .......................................... 39 2.1 Theoretical approaches to linguistic change ......................................................... 39 2.2 Factors involved in language change .................................................................... 43 2.2.1 External factors ......................................................................................... 48 2.2.2 Internal factors .......................................................................................... 51 2.3 Language interference through contact ................................................................. 51 2.3.1 Interference ............................................................................................... 53 2.3.2 Other contact situations: bilingualism and diglossia ................................ 53 2.4 Changes in different levels of language ................................................................ 60 Part III Semantic change: a change ‘social and linguistic’ ..................................................... 63 3.1 The meaning of the word meaning ....................................................................... 65 3.1.1 Related assumptions: the concept of ‘semantic field’ and broad categorisations of reality. ........................................................................... 68 3.2 Changing the meaning .......................................................................................... 73 3.2.1 Definitions ................................................................................................. 73 3.2.2 Causes ....................................................................................................... 75 3.2.3 Models to classify changes in meaning ..................................................... 78 8 Table of contents 3.3 Corpus material and methodology ........................................................................ 88 3.4 Semantic changes in person-rank nouns ............................................................... 95 3.4.1 Meaning change in combination with other variables ............................. 112 Final remarks ............................................................................................................ 117 References ................................................................................................................. 121 List of abbreviations CA Componential analysis AF Anglo-French AL Anglo-Latin AR Arabian CAT Catalan CELT Celtic CF Central French DU Dutch EML East Midlands Linguistic Atlas EML/NL East Midlands / North Midlands Linguistic Atlas EMO East Midlands Other F French GMC Germanic GR Greek HC Helsinki Corpus HEB Hebrew ME Middle English EModE Early Modern English INDIC Indic IT Italian KL Kentish Linguistic Atlas KO Kentish Other L Latin L Linguistic Atlas LG Low German MDU Middle Dutch MED Middle English Dictionary MFLEM Middle Flemish MHG Middle High German ML Middle Latin MLG Middle Low German MNIR Modern Irish NL North Midlands Linguistic Atlas NO North MidlandsOther NO/EMO North Midlands / East Midlands Other O Other OE Old English OED Oxford English Dictionary OF Old French OHG Old High German OI Old Icelandic ON Old Norse 10 List of abbreviations ONF Old Norman French OSP Old Spanish SL South Midlands Linguistic Atlas SO South Midlands Other SP Spanish SW Swedish TOE A Thesaurus of Old English WML West Midlands Linguistic Atlas WMO West Midlands Other Prologue Within the field of diachronic linguistics, semantic change has not always received the same attention as syntax, phonology or morphology. This monograph is an attempt to demonstrate that it is possible to treat semantics as a discipline in its own right within a diachronic study. The survey of meaning-change in the content of lexical units that follows will be conducted from a socio-historical perspective: lexical units will be classified within a chronological framework that spans six centuries, taking into ac- count all those social, political, economic and cultural events (the Norman Conquest, the loss of Normandy in 1204, the growth of the nationalist phenomenon, the Hundred Years War, the Plague, the peasant revolts, etc.) which may have influenced the seman- tic development of a given term. We must also bear in mind, of course, that these ex- tra-systemic influences (influences of a non-linguistic nature) gave rise to unique lin- guistic situations as a result of contact, interference and contagion from other linguistic layers coexisting alongside the basic Anglo-Saxon substratum. By examining semantic change over the course of these six centuries (12th-17th) I will demonstrate the relationship between a term and the concept or external reality to which it makes reference, along with how a term’s meaning changes as society and indi- viduals themselves witness change in the prevailing culture. To this end, the present study is divided into three parts: the first introduces the reader into the linguistic and historical environment of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance; in the second part, the sociolinguistic situation of the period is presented in an analysis of the impact of certain social factors and the influence of foreign linguistic strata on the development of the English language. These two parts lay the groundwork for the subsequent survey in Part III which focuses on semantic change. Different possible approaches and models for a semantic survey of this type will be described, together with a discussion of causes, fac- tors and typologies, as a means of establishing an orientation which combines social and linguistic criteria for the classification and explanation of semantic changes. In the final sections of Part III this orientation will be applied to the analysis of person-rank nouns, taken as a representative subgroup of the lexical category of the noun. The treatment of data on semantic change within the historical sociolinguistic framework raises, among other issues, that of the significance of the kind of change known as specialisation, and indeed this will be dealt with towards the end of the study. Last but not least, I wish to thank my family, my mother, Roberto, Pablo, Sara and Clara, for all their help in the creation of this work. I would also like to express my sincere thanks for all the assistance I have received from librarians at the Faculty of Philology, University of A Coruña, at the Universitá degli Studi di Bergamo, and at the Senate House, London. I would also like to make a very special mention of Luis Igle- sias Rábade, who gave me a taste for the history of language and a love of my work. Finally, my deepest gratitude to Isabel Moskowich, a tireless, rigorous and methodical academic, for her constructive comments and for being an endless source of advice and wisdom. Most of all, though, I thank her for her friendship.