 Hello. In the following I will inform you about some basic principles of historical semantics. As you know, languages are always in a state of flux. All living languages undergo constant changes in which all aspects of language structure are affected. The most obvious changes affect the vocabulary of a language. People wonder why words change their meaning so fast, why some words are lost and many others enter the language almost on a daily basis. Quite a number even find such changes alarming and seek to protect the purity of their language. In the following we will discuss the main aspects of change in meaning and vocabulary. That is, we will look at the main principles of historical semantics. We will deal with etymology, that is the history of individual words. We will define processes of semantic and lexical change. And last but not least, we will look at the explanations that are given for these changes. So let's start with etymology. Etymology is the study of the origins and histories of individual words and also the name given to the history of a particular word. Such information, for example, the information about the etymology of a word such as table, is recorded and presented in standard dictionaries but also in specialized etymological dictionaries. The first part of the term etymology comes from Greek etymon, which means the true sense of a word and which makes the search for the true, that is the original forms of words a major concern of etymological studies. Other points of interest include the sources of words and the resources for word formation in languages, the factors responsible for the ultimate shape and meaning of words, the semantic paths words have taken in their development through time, and the origin of phrases and expressions, for example the origin of idiomatic expressions. Here is an example. As we can see, and as I will show in a second, etymology is often full of surprises. The etymologies of apparently related words may turn out to be different, whereas seemingly unrelated words may come from a common ancestor. Let's look at two items in the following. The present-day English word cook and the present-day English word cookie. These two words look as if they were related, but from an etymological point of view, one has nothing to do with the other. Cook, for example, has the following sources. By the way, cook can be used as a noun or as a verb in present-day English. The noun is someone who cooks, of course. You all know that. Well, the sources that have been recorded are from Old English cook, late Latin cookus, classical Latin cookwus, and Latin in general, there is a verb cookquere. And then we have sources from phases prior to Latin, a source such as cuoku or cuoku, and from proto-Indo-European peku, which means cook or ripen. Note that the last two sources involve so-called proto-words, words that had to be reconstructed because no evidence, no written or spoken, let alone spoken evidence, can be found about or as far as these words are concerned. And reconstructed words are normally marked with an asterisk in historical linguistics. Cookie, by contrast, comes from Dutch keukje, which means small cake and is the diminutive of keuk, which means cake. And this can be reconstructed as kak, another proto-word in proto-Germanic, meaning round thing. And some people even say, well, the whole thing is, O-O-O is of obscure origin. So, you see, etymologists deal with both fact and hypothesis. Sometimes there may be documentary evidence for earlier words and forms, but quite often there is not, making it necessary to fill in the gaps as well as possible. This requires not only knowledge of the relevant language or languages, but also some talent for detective work. While etymology is commonly assigned only a peripheral position in the study of language change, it is in fact fundamental in historical semantics because establishing the development of individual words is the basis for identifying more general patterns and principles of semantic and lexical change. Let us look at semantic change first. Semantic change is concerned with change in the meanings of words, especially with the passage of time understood to be a change in the concepts associated with the word. So here we have three possibilities. There can be a one-to-one relationship, there can be a split where the meaning of a lexeme split into two concepts, or there can be a merger where the meaning of a lexeme merged of two lexemes or more lexemes merged into one. This kind of change has nothing to do with the change in the phonetic form of a word. Furthermore, it is distinct from lexical change, which adds items to the vocabulary of a language or removes items from it. Traditionally, those studying semantic change have given little consideration to general semantic theory. Most work is concerned with change in the meaning of individual lexical items, whereas semantic theory mostly involves relations among items in larger units. Various classifications of semantic change have been proposed. However, a number of common processes can be identified, which have been grouped as follows. There is, for example, the phenomenon of widening or the opposite, narrowing. It takes place when a word acquires additional meaning or narrowing is the opposite where it loses particular meanings. Here are two examples. You all know that today we have an item bird, which today includes fowl of any age, but this was not so in Old English where we had the item brid, which meant young bird, and the general term for bird was fowl, which is fowl. And narrowing, well, the original meaning of present-day English meat, which in the past was food in general, this meaning has been narrowed to a specific kind of food, as you all know. Or take figurative use or figurative meaning. Now, figurative uses of language are a rich source of new word meanings. There are two large subsets. Metaphore and metonymy. Metaphore, well, here's an example. The English item field, which originally meant an enclosed piece of land, is today also used metaphorically for a well-defined area of, let's say, scientific activity. And for example, linguistics is a field. Well, metonymy, you know, perhaps the example of the English tea, the word tea, the drink, which can now be used for the afternoon meal. There are positive and negative connotations. For example, in present-day English, cunning has now a very negative connotation, and in the Middle English period, it meant learned, skillful expert. So this is then today a negative connotation given to a formerly neutral item. Or take exaggeration over an understatement. Speakers may deliberately exaggerate their claims for emotional effect or choose to mitigate their force through understatement. These strategies may affect the meanings of words over time. Well, and the last example I would like to give is taboo replacement. There are some subjects that speakers avoid discussing with complete frankness in some, most or all forms or contexts of speech. In English, such taboo subjects include sex, reproduction, death, excretion, and the human body. Since taboos prohibit the use of plain language, speakers must find a way around them and thus create new meanings. Let's now look at lexical change. Now, while semantic change by large affects the meanings of existing words, processes of lexical change are responsible for the appearance of new words, technical term neologisms in a language. Some of these processes are exceedingly common, others are rather unusual. The various processes of lexical change are discussed under the following headings. For example, under the heading of borrowing. When languages come into contact, they tend to take words from one another and make them part of their own vocabulary. These words are known as loan words and the process is referred to as linguistic borrowing. Borrowing is not a precise term here because borrowing normally includes that we give something back. But this is not the case in languages. They don't give back their words to the language from where they came. Anyway, borrowing is the technical term. A well-known example is the influence of the French vocabulary on the English vocabulary after the Norman conquests in 1066. Then we can find the phenomenon of analogy. A vast number of changes in language have been attributed to a linguistic process called analogy. To give a precise definition of analogical change is difficult, but it involves the change or creation of a form A in such a way that its relation to another form B is like or analogous to that. And this may happen in relationships that are similar in meaning. For example, take the English word hamburger, which originally comes from a combination of the Germantown Hamburg and the addition of the affix er, someone or something from the city of Hamburg. But speakers have reanalyzed this word as consisting of ham plus burger. And on this basis, they have created new words by analogy like cheeseburger, chili burger, fish burger, to name a few. Perhaps you can invent more burgers. Well, and then there's the last group of miscellaneous processes. Apart from borrowing and processes based on analogy, there are various other sources of new words in a language. These miscellaneous lexical processes include creations from all areas of word formation. For example, just to name two of them acronyms, such as radar or blends, such as brunch. And how can we explain all that? Well, generally it is enormously difficult to be precise about the reasons and the origins of change in language. This is true in particular of semantic and lexical changes, which with some rare exceptions are patternless and unpredictable. Nevertheless, a number of factors and general principles or tendencies have been proposed to account for semantic and lexical change. These range from psychological factors to sociocultural and technical changes in the real world. For example, a word disappears from common talk because the thing it denotes has disappeared from society. This is what happened to many words for institutions, technologies, weapons and so on of the Middle Ages, which were used in the Middle Ages and in later periods and then simply disappeared. Well, and then factors of prestige may also play a role. For example, the prestige associated with another language. In the 20th century, English rose to the most prestigious language on Earth. And just as words once put into English from French in their thousands, now English words are imported into French, into German, into Japanese and into many other languages in vast numbers. Well, there is a lot more to say about the reasons for lexical and semantic change. In fact, you can find more information about it in the virtual session Historical Semantics on the Virtual Linguistics Campus. So let's stop here hoping that you have some idea about historical semantics in general and about the various types of meaning change in particular. Thank you very much for your attention.