Learning a language can be quite troublesome for a novice, however with time and practice the fluency and sentence construction comes automatically without making a conscious effort. A small mispronunciation or a fuzzy structure of the sentence can lead to a complete change of meaning of the entire sentence and therefore it is important to maintain current collaboration of words, grammar and sentence structure. It may be easy to interpret the meaning just by knowing the words however the actual sentence is constructed only once all the words and related grammar falls into place. For example, the words ‘Sun, ‘Rises’ and ‘East’, may be able to give a slight hint of what is being said however the actual sentence would make sense when it would be said that “The Sun rises in the east”. Similarly, a normal vocabulary may be enough to make common sentences however there is a huge of lexical vocabulary which may be required in order to construct specialized sentences.
It important to understand that on account of the massive lexicon within the language, the fuzziness can be explained and therefore in order to maintain a probable interpretation, it exists and is commonly used. Polysemy, Semantic overlap and metaphor are used in order to derive meanings on various occasions. If we look into the example “Sarah reads very well”, it may be related to reading of a poem, reading out the written characters allowed or even comprehending the meaning of written symbols. This type of polysemy is explained to be a model of over extended meanings. We may also associate the various meanings of reading along with recitation and therefore there would be an overlap of the meanings which could be noticed over here and there is comes under the criteria off semantic overlap. Another common example can be of metaphors that are used in language construction and are quite similar to polysemy and semantic overlap.
A particular word may also be able to cover various other words related to it like animal represents fish, human being, insects, tiger and many more, hence this type of representation is known as a semantic range with prototypical centre plus more peripheral meanings.
Synonymy and Homonymy
Although, there are possible efforts in thesauruses to avoid situations where exactly matching synonyms are available however various semantic overlaps are available in the language which are commonly used across the same range of meanings, it is important to create an adequate distinction and avoid to the norms within the thesauruses, and therefore the semantic changes will primarily introduced. The overlaps can be subconscious and unconscious, which means that these may have slight representation or a complete representation of the meaning depending on the type of overlap of the words that take place.
In order to ensure that the two words have completely individual identity and meanings homonymy is also to be avoided and an example of such a situation can be given by saying “the disease made the dear weak in a week”, and although the word ‘weak’ and ‘week’, as pronounced in the same way however their meanings are quite different. Similarly the concept of synonymy also is supposed to be avoided in order to have a classical linguistic structure, an example of this can be the word ‘dear’, which is used in two contexts, the first one is an animal and the other one means a person who is close to heart .
Sound and Meaning: The relationship analysis
The interrelation between sound and meaning in various languages is usually arbitrary and there is a possibility that similar sounding words may have different meanings in different languages, this section will discuss the semantic changes related to the sounds and meanings which were introduced in order to avoid any kind of misinterpretation. On one hand where the meanings can be different for similar sounding words in various languages, the words that that they sound are usually closely associated like the sounds of animals.
There are lots of words with metaphorical meanings that are generally into existence and are normally used in linguistics, usually these words ensure that the meaning remains the same or at times they can impact the linguistics to exaggeration or they may also impact the structure by converting it through an understatement. These type of metaphorical uses can be Hyperbole and Litotes. For example, if someone says that “I am extremely sorry”, it would mean the same if any of these sentences are used “I am terribly sorry “, “I am awfully sorry “and “I am frightfully sorry”. Other similar examples of metaphors usually used within sentences can be euphemism and Paronomasia. Euphemism are notorious adaption of meanings which are inverse to the actual interpretation of the words depicted. An example of this would be joycamp, which seems to be a place for enjoyment however actually it is a forced-labour camp.
There are also situations where, a proactive effort is placed in order to substitute the word since it gets considered as a ‘Taboo’, and a common example of this would be the word ‘Bloody’, which is considered to be inappropriate according to British English however does not have any direct objectionable meaning.
Avoidance of Synonymy (Semantic differentiation) and Reinterpretation
There are lots of efforts in place in order to avoid synonymy and there are old forms and new forms of words which are introduced to reduce synonymy in the language. This can be understood by the set of words, ‘elder’ and ‘older’, which are two forms of the different words, old and new, and are used for two different meanings. Similarly, there are many words that have undergone reinterpretation in order to get differentiated according to the requirement of the meanings that can be inferred from the world. A common example would be the world ‘Asian’, which represents the people from the Asian continent however it is further reinterpreted to describe the people that are ‘East Asians’, in order to delve down further, and provide a better clarification.
Conclusion: The Effects of semantic change . . .
The semantic changes that we have discussed above, added multiple changes to the language and these changes were not only related to the language as such however according to the cultural features and even connotations made a difference to the language. Any example of such connotations can be understood by the fact that, ‘peasant’, which initially meant a rude person, was later on added to the local language as a person who is a petty worker.
The changes that have been brought by semantic differentiations can be divided into sporadic and systematic. The sporadic changes are usually the ones that we have discussed in this paper, including the additions due to taboos or euphemism, however systematic changes were basically bought during the mediaeval period where logical contexts where applicable behind introducing every new world to the Lexicon.
Works Cited
Hock, Henrich and Brian D. Joseph. Language history, language change, and language relationship. Brunswick, 1996.
