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Regular version of the site
2–8
September 2017

Important Dates 

Application & abstract submission opening: March 1

Application & abstract submission deadline (EXTENDED!): April 25

Notification of acceptance & registration opening: May 1

Early registration deadline: July 1 (fee: 400 euro*)

Registration deadline: July 30 (fee: 450 euro*)

Please note that the application deadline has been moved in order to accommodate the needs of participants applying for funding from their institutions.

* The fee covers all courses, accommodation, all meals.

Diachronic and synchronic dimensions of semantic shifts

Course authors

Anna Zalizniak

Leading researcher, Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences

 
 
Maria Bulakh

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.