2015-09-06
2729
Model: villain: 'a feudal serf, peasant cultivator in subjection to a lord' — 'a person guilty or capable of a crime or wickedness'
The result of the change of the connotational aspect of lexical meaning of the word villain is that the word acquired a derogatory emotive charge (deterioration of meaning).
1) cunning: 'possessing erudition or skill' — 'clever in deceiving';
2) knight: 'manservant' — 'noble courageous man';
3) fond: 'foolish, infatuated (лишившийся рассудка)' — 'loving, affectionate';
4) gang: 'a group of people going together' — 'an organized group of criminals';
5) marshal: 'manservant attending horses' — 'an officer of the highest rank in the armed forces';
6) coarse: 'ordinary, common' — 'rude or vulgar';
7) minister, 'a servant' — 'a head of a government department';
8) enthusiasm: 'a prophetic or poetic frenzy (безумие, бешенство)' — 'intense and eager enjoyment, interest, or approval';
9) violent: 'having a marked or powerful effect' — 'using or involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something';
10) gossip: 'a godparent, a person related to one in God' — 'the one who talks scandal; tells slanderous stories about other people'.
Ex.4 Establish the linguistic cause or causes of semantic development of the words:
a) ellipsis;
b) differentiation of synonyms;
c) fixed context;
d) linguistic analogy.
1. The noun knave suffered a striking change of meaning as a result of collision with its synonym boy. Now it has a pronounced negative evaluative connotation and means "a swindler, scoundrel".
2. Minerals came to be used for mineral waters.
3. In early New English the verb overlook was employed in the meaning "to look with an evil eye upon, to cast a spell over" from which there developed the meaning "to deceive" first recorded in 1596. Exactly half a century later we find the verb oversee - a synonym of overlook - used in the meaning "to deceive".
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4. The verb propose came to be used for propose marriage.
5. An interesting case concerns autumn and harvest. Harvest is the native Germanic word, cognate with the German Herbst "autumn". However, after the Norman Conquest, the upper classes adopted a great many French words, including autumn. This borrowing promoted a semantic shift: autumn became the normal word for the season, while harvest was reserved for the agricultural labour the peasantry performed at that time.
6. Snack came from the Middle Dutch snacken, which meant "to snap, to bite (especially of a dog)". In Old English bite (OE bitan) meant "to use one's teeth to cut a piece of something, to snap". Actually both words meant the same. Later they developed the meaning "to bite something to eat". Nowadays the nouns snack and bite mean "a light, quick meal".
7. The word beast was borrowed from French into Middle English. Before it appeared, the general word for animal was deer, which after the word beast was introduced, became narrowed to its present meaning "a hoofed animal of which the males have antlers". Somewhat later, the Latin word animal was also borrowed, then the word beast was restricted, and its meaning served to separate the four-footed kind from all the other members of the animal kingdom. Thus, beast displaced deer and was in its turn itself displaced by the generic animal.
8. The word-group a train of carriages had the meaning of "a row of carriages", later on of carriages was dropped and the noun train changed its meaning. It is used now in the function and with the meaning of the whole word-group.
9. The noun token originally had the broad meaning of "a sign". When brought into competition with the loan word sign, it became restricted in use to a number of set expressions as love token, token of respect and so became specialized in meaning.
10. The verb starve in Old English had the meaning "to die" and was used in combination with the word hunger (МБ sterven of hunger). When the verb die was borrowed from Scandinavian, these two words, which were very close in their meanings, collided and as a result starve gradually changed into its present meaning "to die (or suffer) from hunger".
Ex. 5 The simplified descriptions of the words in the above tasks, whose aim is to bring out the salient points in the words' development, may create a false impression that the lines of semantic development are always straight and clear. As often as not words undergo complicated semantic changes, for example the word's meaning may come to generalization through specialization or vice versa, or the processes in the connotative component of the lexical meaning may be accompanied by the alterations of the denotative component. Read the longer stories and identify the changes in each case:
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a) specialization; generalization;
b) generalization; specialization;
c) generalization + pejoration;
d) specialization + pejoration;
e) generalization + amelioration;
f) specialization + amelioration;
g) specialization + amelioration; generalization;
h) specialization; generalization + pejoration;
i) generalization + amelioration and generalization + pejoration.
1. The word flunky has come into Standard English from Scots, in which the word meant "a liveried manservant, a footman", coming at least by the 19th century to be a term of contempt. The word is first recorded and defined in a work about Scots published in 1782. The definition states that flunky is "literally a sidesman or attendant at your flank", which gives support to the suggestion that, flunky is a derivative and alteration of flanker "one who stands at a person's flank". The current meanings of flunky are labelled as derog ("a person of slavish or unquestioning obedience", "one who does menial or trivial work", "a male servant in ceremonial dress").
2. In Old English the word lady (OE hlæfǐdge ) denoted the mistress of the house, i.e. any married, woman. Later, a new meaning developed - "the wife or daughter of a baronet" (aristocratic title). In Modern English the word lady can be applied to any woman.
3. First recorded in English in 1784 with the sense "a lover, an admirer", amateur is found in 1786 with a meaning more familiar to us - "a person who engages in an art, for example, as a pastime rather than as a profession" - a sense that had already-, developed in French. Given the limitations of doing; something as an amateur, it is not surprising that the word is soon after recorded in the disparaging; sense used to refer to someone who lacks professional skill or ease in performance.
4. The word ketchup exemplifies the types of modifications that can take place in borrowing - both of words and substances. The source of the word kěchap may be the Malay word kechap, possibly, taken into Malay from the Cantonese dialect of, Chinese. Kechap, like ketchup, was a sauce, but one without tomatoes; rather, it contained fish brine, herbs, and spices. Sailors seem to have brought the sauce to Europe, where it was made with locally available ingredients such as the juice, mushrooms or walnuts. At some unknown point, when the juice of tomatoes was first used, ketchup as we know it was born. But it is important to realize that in the 18th and 19th centuries ketchup was a generic term for sauces whose only common ingredient was vinegar.
5. When, in the 7 century, Etheldreda, the queen of Northumbria, decided to renounce her husband and her royal position for the veil of a nun, she was almost straightway appointed abbess of a monastery in the Isle of Ely. She was renowned for her saintliness and is traditionally said to have died of a swelling in her throat, which she took as a judgment upon her fondness for wearing necklaces in her youth. Her shrine became one of the principal sites of pilgrimage in England. An annual fair was held in her honour on 17 October, and her name became simplified to St. Audrey. At these fairs various kinds of cheap knickknacks, toys, and jewelry were sold along with a type of necklace called St. Audrey's lace, which by the 17th century had become altered to tawdry lace. Eventually tawdry came to be applied to the various other cheap articles sold at these fairs and so developed its present sense of "cheap showy finery", as well as the adjectival use to mean "cheap and gaudy in appearance and quality".
6. "Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm," said Ralph Waldo Emerson, who also said, "Everywhere the history of religion betrays a tendency to enthusiasm." These two uses of the word enthusiasm - one positive and one negative - both derive from its source in Greek. Enthusiasm first appeared in English in 1603 with the meaning "possession by a god". The source of the word is the Greek enthousiasmos, which ultimately comes from the adjective entheos "having the god within", formed from en "in, within" and theos "god". Over time the meaning of enthusiasm became expanded to "rapturous inspiration like that caused by a god" to "an overly confident or delusory belief that one is inspired by God", to "ill-regulated religious fervour, religious extremism" and eventually to the familiar sense "craze, excitement, strong liking for something". Now one can have an enthusiasm for almost anything, from water skiing to fast food, without religion entering into it at all. The current negative meaning of this word is "any of various forms of extreme religious devotion, usually associated with intense emotionalism and a break with orthodoxy".
