自考论文—论英语词义的变化.doc

毕业论文题目：论英语词义的变化准考证号： 学生姓名： 指导老师： 武汉大学外语学院制 On the Meaning Change of English Words 论文摘要 语义学是关于意义的学问，它旨在研究语言单位，特别是单词和句子的意义。词是语言中具有意义的，最小的能够独立运用的单位，所以关于词的意义（即词汇语义学）在语言学中占用重要的位置。单词一直处在不断的变化过程当中，形式上的或是内容上的，常常是后者发生变化。正像Quirk在1963年指出的那样，“几乎我们现在使用的每一个词与其在一个世纪以前的意义稍有不同,而一个世纪以前的单词又和它在一个世纪之前的意义稍有差别” 。宽泛的讲，意义的变化指的是现行词义的变化，或是对现行词语添加新的义项。这种变化随着时间的流逝而产生。本论文探究了英语词义变化的方式、类型及原因。希望本论文可以帮助英语专业的学生更好地学习英语词义。关键词：词义; 变化; 方式; 类型; 原因 iiAbstractThe subject concerning the study of meaning is called semantics, which targets at the study of the meanings of linguistics units, such as words and sentences. A word is the minimum free form with certain meaning, thus the study of word meaning (lexical semantics) occupies an important position in linguistics study. Word has been constantly undergoing the process of changes，either in forms or in meanings, with the latter being more frequent. Just as Quirk said in 1963, “ almost every word we use today has a different meaning from the one it had a century ago, and a century ago it had a slight different meaning from the one it had a century before that”. Broadly speaking, meaning change refers to the alternation of the meaning of existing words, as well as the addition of new meaning to established words. This change occurs along with time. This thesis explores the approaches, modes, causes of word meaning change. Hopefully, it may help us English majors study English word meaning better. Keywords: meaning；change；approach; mode; causeContentsI. Introduction1II. Approaches to meaning change of English words22.1 extension approach22.2 figurative approach32.3 merger approach3III. Modes of meaning change of English words43.1 generalization53.2 specialization63.3 elevation73.4 degradation7IV. Causes of meaning change of English words84.1 extra linguistics factors84.2 linguistics factors10V. Conclusion11Bibliography1212On the Meaning Change of English Words I. IntroductionAs a branch of semantic study, the lexical semantics has been long regarded as the focal point. And the question as to what is the meaning of word becomes the first inquiry for language leaners. The objective matters, which exclude human mind, including all the living creatures, unanimated objects, events and their behavior, state and characteristics, etc. are reflected, thus sensation, perception, representation are produced first. Human mind then will generate the abstract preliminary products into concepts. Then man fixes the concepts in the vehicle of language, enabling us human beings to exchange our thoughts through these signs with certain meaning individually. Thus, words come into being. In other words, the meaning of words is endowed by men. As British linguist Eric Partridge once pointed out, “words have no meanings, people have meaning for them”. This process is generally agreed upon by all linguists. However, different people may hold different opinions on the sub-structure of word meaning. One difficulty in the study of meaning is that the word “meaning” itself has different meanings. In their book The meaning of meaning written in 1923, C.K Odgen and I.A Richards presented “a representative list of the main definition which reputable students of meaning have favored” (Odgen & Richards, 2003: 186). There are 16 major categories of them, with sub-categories totaling up to 22.The edifice of any language could be observed as a grand project composed of three elements: sound, lexicon, and grammar, among which sound is the physical shell of a language; lexicon serves as the “brick” and “concrete”; while grammar functions as the ways and principles by which linguistic elements are organized and oprate. So word meaning above all can be divided into two big categories: grammatical meaning and lexical meaning.Grammatical meaning corresponding with grammar signifies the grammatical aspect of a word. For example, “girl” is a single form, while “girls” represents the plural form in meaning.Lexical meaning, on the other hand, is the study of word meaning at its content level. For example, in the group of words “go, goes, gone, went, going”, each word has different grammatical meaning obviously, but their lexical meaning is the same, namely “to move or travel from one place to another” (Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, 1998:746). Foreign linguists have different classifications on word meaning. Geoffrey Leech, a world famous British linguist, categorizes seven types of meaning, as follows: conceptual meaning, connotative meaning, social meaning, affective meaning, reflected meaning, collocative meaning, thematic meaning, with conceptual meaning being the center of word meaning. And connotative meaning, social meaning, affective meaning, reflected meaning, and collocative meaning and thematic meaning can be brought together under the heading associative meaning(Leech.,1981).In the following sections, we are going to explore the approaches to meaning change, the modes of meaning change and the causes accounting for the meaning change. And with some basic knowledge of word meaning change in the thesis, it may cast light on how to gasp word meaning and help us English majors study English language better.II. Approaches to meaning change of English words The change of word meaning refers to the process in which the existing word has some changes either in number of its meaning items or its content in its application or development. In this section we will take a glimpse at the trace of changes in word meaning. There are mainly three types as follows：2.1 Extension approach Extension refers to a way a word derived from a new through certain connections based on its original meaning, or its existing meaning items. For example, the word “hoe”（noun）meant “ a garden tool with a handle and a blade ,used for breaking up soil and removing weds” and then a related meaning was produced , “to break up soil, remove plants, etc, with a hoe”, such as in the phrase “ to hoe a flowers”(Oxford Advanced Learner s English-Chinese Dictionary, 1997: 838), so “hoe” here is used as a verb. However, we can easily see the close connection in meaning between the noun “hoe” and the verb “hoe”. Some words can create new meaning through extending or narrowing the scope of reference, which is also very common. For example, the word “journal” originally meant “a written record that you make of the things that happen to you each day (diary) (Oxford Advanced Learners English-Chinese Dictionary, 1997: 775). Let us look at another example, the word “wedge” (noun) originally meant “a piece of wood, robber, metal, etc, with one thick end and a thin pointed end that you use to keep a door open, to keep two things apart, or to split wood or rock”, then its verbal meaning came into being, namely “ to put or squeeze something tightly into a narrow space, so that it can not move easily”(ibid).2.2 Figurative approach Whether the scope of reference extends or narrows, the type of object a word denotes has not changed. However, when a word has changed its literal meaning to its figurative meaning, the type of object is utterly different, and then semantic shift has occurred in word meaning. This is also a very important style of meaning changes.Abundant examples can serve as the illustrations of the figurative approach. For example, the word “burden” originally meant “a heavy load that is difficult to carry” and then people tended to use it for referring to “ a duty ,responsibility ,etc, that causes worry, difficulty or hard work”, for example, in the sentence “The main burden of caring for old people falls on the state”. This abstract sense of “burden” is very vivid and concise in the effect of expression, which will certainly leave a deep impression on the listeners mind.2.3 Merger approachThis way of change in word meaning refers to another way of change in word meaning, reflecting the relationship between two words under certain circumstances. When one words scope of reference expands into that of another related word, meaning may then be annexed, making the latter one lose its status of independence. Comparatively speaking, this approach is less in frequency in word meaning change than the previous two approaches, which however should not be ignored by us English learners. In the study of antonyms, we come to know the concept of “gradable antonyms” first, the commonest type of antonyms. That is, the members of a pair differ in terms of degree. The denial of one is not necessarily the assertion of the other, and there is no absolute criterion of judgments by which we may say something is good or bad, long or short, big or small. Usually, the term of the higher degree serves as the “cover term”. For example, we ask somebody “how old are you?” and the person asked may not be old in any sense. He may be as young as twenty or three. The word “old” is used here to cover both old and young. The sentence above means the same as “what is your age?”. Technically, the “cover term” is called “unmarked”, i.e. usual; and the covered “marked”, or unusual. That means, in general, it is the “cover term” that is more often used. If the covered is used, then it suggests that is something odd, unusual here. The speaker may already know that something or somebody is young, small, near, and he wants to know the extent in greater detail. This characteristic is also reflected in the corresponding nouns, such as length, height, width, and depth.Because of the differences, a lot of word meanings are different. For example, in Cambridge International Dictionary of English, the word individual is defined as the idea that freedom of thought and action for each person is the most important quality of a society, rather than shared effort and responsibility. It is positive. However, in The English-Chinese Dictionary, there is a sentence These poets were individualists, wanting to explore their own thoughts and feelings, not content with the general truth. Obviously, the meaning of individualists is negative.III. Modes of meaning change of English words Generally speaking, the development and change of word meaning is ever-increasing in number of meaning items almost in every language system, due to social development and word meaning development itself. However it becomes complicated as each individual word is concerned. For some, the number of meaning item may increase, and for others, just the reverse. And some words meaning may disappear, or reduce to morphemic meaning, etc. 3.1 Generalization The generalization of meaning is a process by which a word originally having a specialized meaning has now extended to cover a broader and often less definite concept.A large proportion of polysemic words of modern English have their meaning extended sometime in the course of development. Let us refer to some example as illustrations. The word “manuscript” today means “an authors writing whether by hand or typed with a type writer or a word-procession”. But its old meaning referred to “handwriting”(written by hand)only. The word “fabulous” originally meant “resembling a fable” or “based on a fable”, but then it meant “incredible” or “marvelous”, since as we all knew that something incredible or marvelous often only existsd in fables, not in reality. Another example is the word “barn”. It meant “a place for storing only barley”, but now its meaning extends to “storeroom”. More examples are available here to cast light on the generalization of meaning.Word Old meaning Extended meaningbutcher one who kills goats one who kills animals bonfire fire on bones a fire in the open made by burning anythingWhat is more, “thing” is often associated with “any”, “some”, and “no”, namely “anything”, “something”, and “nothing” respectively. The frequency of these three words is high in both written and spoken form, the latter one especially. I have once counted and amazed at the high frequency one tend to employ “something” when he or she tries to introduce or explain a certain object, event, idea, etc. Other words like business, concern, matter, article, and circumstance have undergone similar process of meaning generalization.3.2 SpecializationSpecialization of language is a process by which a word which is used to have a more general sense becomes restricted in its application and conveys a special concept in present-day English. A typical example is the word “ deer”, which was used to refer to all kinds of animals, for example in Shakespeares sentence “ rats and mice and such small dear”; in British English, “corn” was once used as “grain”, but in present-day American English, it only refers to “maize”; when “garage” was first borrowed from French, it meant more other than “any safe place”, but at present “garage” narrows down to “ a place for storing cars”a shelter for cars only. Here are more examples: Word Old meaning Specialized meaning girl young person of either sex female young personwife woman married woman accident event unfortunate eventChange of meaning is frequently brought about by two tendencies in a language system: toward ellipsis and toward analogy. Ellipse as a cause of semantic change often occurs in habitual collocations, such as adj + n. or attributive + n, in which the noun is often deleted and only the first element(the attributive) is left, but retaining the sense of the whole phrase. For example, “a general” comes from “ a general officer”, “bugle” from “ bugle horn”, “gold” from “gold metal”, “uniform” from “uniform dress”, “ transistor” from “transistor radio”, “daily” from “ daily newspaper”, etc.Another case of specialization occurs when a common noun changes into a proper one, and its meaning specializes correspondingly. For example, the City refers to “London business center”; The Peninsula refers to “Iberian Peninsula” only; and the word “Prophet” refers to Muhammad, who founded the religion of Islam.3.3 Elevation Elevation of meaning is a process by which words rise from humble beginning to a position of importance. In other words, some words in their early history signified something low or humble, but as time goes by, the meaning changed to designate something agreeable or pleasant. A typical case in point is the word “nice”. It originally meant “ignorant”, then “foolish”, but later it was dramatically elevated to“delightful, pleasant”; Marshal(highranking army officer) and Constable(policeman) were both once referred to “keeper of horses”. More relevant examples are also provided here： Word Old meaning Elevated meaning knight servant rank below baronet angel messenger messenger of God minister servant head of ministryNobody nowadays is reluctant to be described as “shrewd” perhaps, or “nimble”. However, for some time these two words are rather derogatory in meaning. A shrewd man was once often associated with “evil” or “wickedness”, while a nimble man is considered as someone taking something without certain permission; and the word “success”, a desirable destination for anyone to reach, was once only a simply neutral “result”.3.4 DegradationContrary to elevation, degradation of word meaning is a process whereby words of good origin or affective neutrality fall into ill reputation or come to be used in a derogatory sense. An interesting fact is that many addresses for common people have taken on derogatory color. For example, “churl” which used to refer to “peasant” or “free man” has changed into “uncultivated or mean person”; “wench” once referred to “country girl”, but now it has degraded into “prostitute”; “villain” once referring to “person who worked in a villa” has now changed into “evil or wicked person or scoundrel”. The following words have also undergone similar changes: Word Old meaning Degraded meaning knave boy dishonest personlust pleasure sexual desire lewd ignorant lecherousAs statistics shows that it is much more common for word meaning to change in denotation from neutral to pejorative than it is for them to go to the other way.The above-mentioned four types are the main types of word meaning changes, excluding transference, comparatively taking a small percentage in word meaning change, which thus is not within the framework of the present thesis discussion.IV. Causes of meaning change of English words With the ever-changing human society, language as the vehicle of communication is also in the process of change and development. Both linguistic and extra-linguistic factors are exerting influence on word meaning changes. We can find out certain rules beneath the surface of meaning variations, which will deeper our understanding of word meaning.4.1 Extra-linguistic factors Meaning has always been a centre topic in human scholarship, though the term “semantics” has only a history of a little over a hundred years, let alone lexical semantics. There were discussions of meaning in the works of the Greek philosopher Plato as early as in the fifth century before Christ. In China, Lao Zi had discussed similar question even earlier. The fact that over the years numerous dictionaries have been produced with a view to explaining the meaning of words also bears witness to its long tradition. The research on word m