Spatial operations in deixis, cognition, and culture: where to orient oneself in Belhare, in Language and Conceptualization, eds J. Nuyts and E. Pederson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 4683. I am grateful to Don Kilian for helpful suggestions and discussions of elevational demonstratives and advice with respect to the data. Amelioration is also known as semantic elevation. Z. Interkulturellen Fremdsprachenunterricht 8, 226239. The sense of the word 'terrific' that we still use now - meaning 'excellent' - began to be used later in the 19th century. Therefore, my preliminary conclusion is to agree with Holton (2019) by suggesting that geography is less relevant than language structure and genealogy when it comes to elevational demonstratives. In order to obtain elevation semantic, we propose a process in two steps that takes advantage of the geometric abstraction: (1) . MacDonald, G. E. (1976). Let's learn about the causes of semantic change, the different types of semantic change, and look at some examples. The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01712/full#supplementary-material. Which word is NOT an example of amelioration? A synonym for broadening is semantic generalisation. Broadening is the opposite. In purely distance-based systems, the deictic center is the speaker (i.e., egocentric system) and thus identical for all demonstratives. Distance contrasts in demonstratives, in The World Atlas of Language Structures Online, eds M. S. Dryer and M. Haspelmath (Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology). Fortescue, M. (1984). In a number of languages, the elevational demonstratives are clearly diachronically complex, but synchronically the elevational part cannot be separated or is not treated as a bound root, affix, or clitic. Thank you for being so nice to my brother! Synthetic: A synthetic sentence is one which is not analytic or contradictory, but which may be true or false depending on the way the world is. Eipo (Mek, Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea) has two subsets of demonstratives (Table 2). They are also used as independent demonstrative pronouns. This study therefore goes beyond general cross-linguistic studies of demonstratives, which devote only a few sentences to demonstratives with elevational meaning. However, here are a few more interesting examples that show the change of the English language over time! All 38 remaining languages are spoken in mountainous locations mostly between 1,000 and 3,000 m (see Supplementary Appendix Table A12 for more details). Deixis, in The Handbook of Pragmatics, ed. In the context of this sentence, the word 'sick' means 'corrupt, troubled'. Utrecht: LOT. A word that previously had a negative meaning develops a positive one. The hypothesis has been supported by data from atoll-based languages (Palmer, 2015; Palmer et al., 2017), and two languages spoken in the Hindu Kush mountain range (Heegrd and Liljegren, 2018). Kratchovil, F. (2007). Dixon further adds that river is the more specific meaning and the other terms translated by hill rather mean not river and can also refer to locations such as cliffs or trees. Therefore, an object is, for example, located upriver when its location is referred to with topographic demonstratives. Out of six demonstrative forms (with anaphoric and deictic variants), only one (tatu) co-expresses the elevational meaning UP and the deictic meaning distal. There are two types of semantics: logical and lexical. Semantic change - Wikipedia A grammar sketch of Sougb, in Languages of the Eastern Birds Head, ed. 3:212. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00212, Bryant, F. J., Tversky, B., and Franklin, N. (1992). 15 Articles, This article is part of the Research Topic, https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01712/full#supplementary-material, Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), Department of Caucasus Studies, Friedrich-Schiller University of Jena, Jena, Germany. Doctoral dissertation, Australian National University, Canberra. Recalling the type of food people in ancient Egypt used to eat. However, by Middle English, the main meaning of the word 'dizzy' had become 'to suffer from vertigo' which is the meaning we associate with the word nowadays. Items expressing elevational meaning can combine with deictics, in particular with demonstratives. Pejoration involves the process of degenerating meaning over time so that a word takes on more negative connotations. Oxford: Oxford University Press. The same applies to many other animals and plants with an upright position (e.g., trees).17. According to the survey in Diessel (2013), which included 234 languages, demonstratives are distance-neutral or express up to five distance contrasts (i.e., five positions that differ in terms of distance from the deictic center). Blagar, in Papuan Languages of Timor-Alor-Pantar: Sketch Grammars, Vol. 404419). Grammaire de la Langue Avar (Langue du Caucase Nord-Est). In linguistics, amelioration is the upgrading or elevation of a word's meaning, as when a word with a negative sense develops a positive one. Vignettes of Cora locatives. Brown, P. (2012). Yu, N. (1998). Elevation in the spatial deictic systems of Alor-Pantar languages, in The Alor- Pantar Languages: History and Typology, ed. Based on the descriptions that I consulted it is not always possible to determine if an elevational system falls into the one or the other category. Schapper, A. In their demonstrative systems, languages repeatedly combine elevation with distance. An example in point comes from Yakkha, which has two types of topographic elevational adverbials of which elevational demonstratives are formed (see Table 11 for the first type). Mapping spatial frames of reference onto time: a review of theoretical accounts and empirical findings. For example, imagine if, in 200 years, the word 'stupid' changes its meaning and refers to someone or something good or even clever. The identificational context of use has been and/or is also called predicative use (e.g., in the first typological paper on this topic written by Killian, unpublished.). A Grammar of Tulil. Most of the elevational demonstratives take further optional or obligatory derivational and/or inflectional suffixes (most commonly gender, number, case, nominalizers or adverbializers). In Daga, there seems to exist a correlation such that FUTURE/PAST = UP because yampoa utu-pa (third up.there-out.of.sight) means next Wednesday and wataget utu-p (before up.there-out.of.sight) means long ago (Murane, 1974, pp. Over time, as jazz music grew in popularity, the word started to be used in other contexts. Instead, they co-occur with determiners. 188189). This can be taken as another way of the default co-expression of elevation with further distance as opposed to proximity or middle distance. For instance, the speaker who uttered (19) is located in a village at around 100 m above sea level and Itanagar, where he would like to go, is situated at around 440 m and thus higher, and to the south but not visible from his village. Friederici, A. D., and Levelt, W. J. M. (1990). Semantics - Definitions and Examples - ThoughtCo The four basic verticality values expressed by elevational demonstratives are UP, DOWN, LEVEL, and ACROSS. This means that among the languages studied for this paper there might be languages that are actually not extremely different from English, but for which the author of the grammar has reasons to assume that a morphologically and semantically complex expression translates with, e.g., up-there or upthere, constitutes a single lexical item. Omotic, in The Afroasiatic Languages, eds Z. Frajzyngier and E. Shay (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 423504. A phrase such as 'he has a bad attitude' can become shortened to 'he has an attitude', showing that the word has gained a negative meaning. Have a look at the table below to see some examples of extralinguistic and linguistic causes of semantic change. 12, 99142. I had to rely on the often implicit assumptions of the linguists whose descriptions I consulted that the items classified as elevational demonstratives represent single lexical units. Holton, G. (2000). Am. The Fore Language of Papua New Guinea. Nie wieder prokastinieren mit unseren Lernerinnerungen. 47, 253266. The first semantic network model was hierarchical, meaning that they thought concepts were organized from higher order categories down to lower order categories and their exemplars. The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The elevational demonstratives of Baskeet, Tauya, Galo, and Kurtp seem to pattern alike. (2014). The term 'gay' has undergone a process of semantic reclamation by LGBTQIA people. This kind of projection happens at least in Sanzhi Dargwa (Forker, 2019), Tulil (Meng, 2018, p. 266), Nungon (Sarvasy, 2014, p. 413) and Belhare (Bickel, 1997), and has been called person-morphic mapping by Bickel (1997, pp. Table 10. Dadibi Grammar: Morpheme to Sentence. Locations in front of X or left of X are potentially ambiguous because they can depend on the relative viewpoint: By contrast, normally we unambiguously understand above/over X or below/under X if we know the position of X. The word has been ameliorated over time and nowadays we use 'nice' in a positive sense - meaning someone or something that is good and pleasant. Psychophys. (2015). (b) Occurrence of elevational morphemes outside these forms. By registering you get free access to our website and app (available on desktop AND mobile) which will help you to super-charge your learning process. Definition and Usage of the French Word 'Enchant', Definition and Examples of Word Boundaries, 6 Common Myths About Language and Grammar, Word Play: Having Fun With the Sounds and Meanings of Words, Five Words That May Not Mean What You Think They Mean, Ph.D., Rhetoric and English, University of Georgia, M.A., Modern English and American Literature, University of Leicester, B.A., English, State University of New York. This can be gender marking as in the pronominal demonstratives in Baskeet (8) or in Khasi. They can also be general as in Usan and applied in the local domain (14). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. There are a few languages in which elevational demonstratives with the meaning UP express the temporal meaning future, whereas the DOWN demonstratives encode past. Bachelors thesis, Australian National University, Canberra. Extralinguistic causes in semantic change are mainly to do with the social or historical causes of semantic change. Semantic Narrowing (Specialization). Kewapi (Enga-Kewa-Huli, Southern Highlands of Papua New Guinea) has a rich set of 13 demonstratives of which nine co-express elevational meanings, and relative distance and at the same time additional distance from the speaker (away from the speaker) (Table 10; Yarapea, 2006, pp. Time and space in Tzeltal: is the future uphill? Moscow: Izdatelstvo Akademii Nauk SSSR. If languages have elevationals and person-based deictics, these meanings are more commonly separately expressed as, for instance, in Muna, Daga (Table 9) or Sanzhi Dargwa. If a word's original meaning is unclear, it is given new meaning. Sci. In this language, uphill location is at the same time away from the river, and upriver (upstream) is along the river and thus orthogonal to uphill. Stop procrastinating with our smart planner features. However, at the scale of the main modern settlement, which is located in the lowland coastal area close to the Caspian Sea with virtually no differences in height, there is an upper part of the village located closer to the hills and a lower part located closer to the sea coast. The handling editor declared a shared affiliation, though no other collaboration, with the author DF at the time of the review. Because of this (usual) unambiguity of locations along the vertical axis, the anchor point of an observer can shift without difficulty (we will see below what repercussions this has for elevational demonstratives). How can psychological factors influence semantic narrowing? Semantic reclamation occurs when a group of people who have been oppressed reclaim (or take back) a word that has been used in the past to disparage them. Create the most beautiful study materials using our templates. Narrowing can also be referred to as semantic specialisation or semantic restriction. doi: 10.1017/9781108333818.002. The term spatial deixis refers to the localization of a figure relative to a ground (object) in terms of (radial) distance categories by means of language (e.g., here vs. there), or in combination with a pointing gesture (Levinson, 2003, p. 65). Think of the word 'nice' as an example of amelioration. Int. Formal Semantics - SlideShare A Grammar of Moskona: An East Birds Head Language of West Papua, Indonesia. The structure of Yakkha demonstratives,/u/-forms (Schackow, 2015, pp. Semantics Examples A classic example of this specialization of meaning is the word doctor. The term semantic change refers to how the meaning of words changes over time. "Such specialization is slow and need not be complete," notes linguist Tom McArthur. Zurich: ASAS. The basic semantic values that elevational demonstratives encode can be ordered along a hierarchy (UP/DOWN > LEVEL/ACROSS) that reflects cross-linguistic tendencies in the frequency of the respective elevational values. Elevation and degradation of meaning of a word - studopedia.su These values can be ordered along the elevational hierarchy that reflects cross-linguistic frequency of occurrence (23): Elevational demonstratives with the meanings UP and DOWN are more commonly found than those with the meanings LEVEL or ACROSS (Table 7). They are narrowing, broadening, amelioration, pejoration, and semantic reclamation. . 3, eds C. Maienborn, K. von Heusinger, and P. Portner (Berlin: de Gruyter), 24072431. 7579). In Iaai (Oceanic, Loyalty Islands) the deictic particle jii down (and toward the sea) can express the meaning past (32), and also serves to introduce relative clauses with past time reference. The word knight is a good example of this semantic phenomenon. Which best describes the meaning of amelioration? For instance, Tanacross has nine items (Table 4), and Movima even has 14 basic demonstratives occurring in paradigmatic relationship. There are two different causes of semantic change. Broadening: Meaning & Examples | StudySmarter Structure of Manambu demonstratives (Aikhenvald, 2015). Doctoral dissertation, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. Table 1. True or False - Meat is an example of semantic narrowing. Dallas, TX: SIL. Since general elevationals can normally be used both in the local domain and in the larger domain (and sometimes even at the global scale), they have to be carefully distinguished from topographic elevationals that are projected into the minimal local domain. Semantics is the term given to the study of the meaning of words, Semantic change, is the term given to how the meanings of words can change over time. . Sanzhi Dargwa and other East Caucasian languages formally distinguish elevational demonstrative adverbials (with spatial and manner semantics) from nominal demonstratives by means of derivational suffixes, and also has a separate class of copular demonstratives. 9193). For example, in everyday use, a child might make use of semantics to understand a mom's directive to "do your chores" as, "do your chores whenever you feel like it." Semantic change can be caused by extralinguistic or linguistic causes. SIL Mexico Workpap. This proves Holton (2019) remark that elevation does not require mountains. The definitions of the general elevational demonstratives given in (6) do not refer to salient landmarks. van Staden, M. (2018). On the expression of spatio-temporal relations in language, in Universals of Human Language, Vol. 'Sick' derives from the Old English word 'seoc' and from the Proto-Germanic word 'seuka' which meant 'ill, diseased, feeble, weak; corrupt; sad, troubled, deeply affected'. West Greenlandic. Formerly the word meant learned men in theology, law, and in many other fields besides medicine, but nowadays it is applied only to the practitioner of the healing art, whether having a University degree or not. (2012). The demonstrative system of Makalero (Huber, 2011, p. 232). On the horizontal plane, the genuinely vertical dimension can, in principle, be translated into FURTHER/NEARER (or FRONT/BACK) along the sagittal axis (Bender and Beller, 2014). Does language shape thought? Test your knowledge with gamified quizzes. With time, the negative meaning of the word weakened, and it changed from 'frightful' to 'severe'. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.89.1.1. Have all your study materials in one place. My sample is a convenience sample because elevational demonstratives are not particularly frequent in the worlds languages. doi: 10.1017/upo9788175968875.011. What are Intensifiers in English Grammar? "Amelioration (word meanings)." Haspelmath, M. (1997). Is control really UP? . Similarly, by means of the second topographic system of Yakkha the uphill and downhill elevationals can be mapped onto the human body and teeth are then referred to as uphill, i.e., upper teeth and downhill lower teeth irrespectively of their actual position (even when a person is not in the canonical upright position). Tidore: non-contrastive demonstratives, in Demonstratives in Cross- Linguistic Perspective, eds S. Levinson, S. Cutfield, M. Dunn, N. Enfield, and S. Meira (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 343360. Logical semantics is the study of reference (the symbolic relationship between language and real-world objects) and implication (the relationship between two sentences). The frequency of elevational systems classified according to basic elevational meanings1. The term, 'cool', was popular within the language of jazz musicians, as it referred to a specific style of music ('cool jazz')! According to Ozanne-Rivierre (2004, p. 135), there are other Austronesian languages such as Taba with the same temporal extension DOWN = PAST. Amelioration - Key takeaways. Also known as specializationor restriction. Ngiyambaa. The original meaning of 'attitude' was 'position, pose'. From Space to Time: Temporal Adverbials in the Worlds Languages. 30, 37) suggests that in some languages invisibility might in fact better be analyzed as indirect evidentiality or simply audibility. The first type (general) corresponds to Burenhults verticality proper and global elevation, and the second term (topographic) to his geophysical elevation. General elevationals are used in accordance with the gravitational axis. A minimal system of elevational demonstratives consists of one item for UP or one item for DOWN, but far more common is to have one term for each of the values UP and DOWN. Will you pass the quiz? Percept. The correlation between the UP-elevational and the conventional position of a powerful person represents an example of the metaphor CONTROL/POWER IS UP, for which cognitive evidence has been found by psychologists and psycholinguists (Schubert, 2005; Valenzuela and Soriano, 2009). I then propose the elevational hierarchy along which the basic elevational meaning categories can be ordered. Several languages have been claimed to possess topographic elevationals that employ an absolute frame of reference, but these claims are normally not proven by a comprehensive argumentation and detailed data.
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