Diachronic and synchronic dimensions of semantic shifts
Course authors
Leading researcher, Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences
Senior research fellow & Assistant professor, Russian State University for the Humanities
Course materials
Diachronic and synchronic dimensions of semantic shifts - presentation
Course annotation
The "Semantic Shifts" approach provides a semantic dimension to the typological study of language changes. We understand a semantic shift as cognitive proximity of two meanings A and B which may reveal itself in synchronic polysemy and in diachronic semantic change, as well as in morphological derivation, cognates and borrowings. Further, we regard grammaticalization as a specific case of it.
Some examples of semantic shifts include the semantic change TO STAND → TO COST manifested in Russian derivation stojat' ‘to stand’ — stoit' ‘to cost’, and Russian "vo chto by to ni stalo" ‘at all accounts’ and "eto tebe dorogo stanet" ‘that will cost you a lot’; Latin stare ‘to stand’, constare ‘to cost’ and Classical Arabic ḳāma ‘to stand (up)’ — ‘to cost’, or CATTLE → PROPERTY, POSSESSIONS (cf. the evolution Old Sweden boskap ‘household, household goods, property’ → Swedish boskap ‘cattle’, and the instances of polysemy such as Old East Slavic skot (скотъ) ‘cattle’ — ‘possessions, money’; Tigrinya ṭərit ‘livestock’ — ‘riches, wealth, goods, property, possessions, estate’), etc.
Within this course, we will discuss various kinds of semantic shifts as well as investigate the capacities of global catalogue DatSemShift.