semantic elevation examples

Create and find flashcards in record time. In many other languages there are some restrictions. Spatial reference in weightlessness: perceptual factors and mental representations. Nordquist, Richard. Consider these two examples that reveal the two different meanings we associate the word 'lady' with: Of course she only drinks champagne and wears silk - she is a proper lady! Keywords: elevation, vertical axis, space, deixis, time, demonstrative pronouns, Citation: Forker D (2020) Elevation as a Grammatical and Semantic Category of Demonstratives. Literally means "using formal methods for the study of meaning." 2.Semantic change, also known as semantic shift or semantic progression) that describes the . Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press. As explained in the Section Materials and Methods, the sample is a convenience sample, but based on a rather systematic and comprehensive survey of all areas of the world and more than half of the language families (Killian, unpublished). Cats are fish. 7579). The division of the areas within a house are even used within modern houses that do not always face the water. My sample is a convenience sample because elevational demonstratives are not particularly frequent in the worlds languages. Post, M. W. (2011). What does it now refer to? The word 'nice', which used to be negative a long time ago, now clearly has a positive meaning. Linguistic semantics has been defined as the study of how languages organize and express meanings. I have proposed that the metaphor can be explained by the direction of the biological growing process of humans, many animals and plants. Semantic change is the process in which the meaning of a word changes over time. Table 1 shows the demonstrative system of Muna (Malayo-Polynesian, Sulawesi). Through the process of amelioration a word that used to have a negative meaning develops a positive one. *Correspondence: Diana Forker, diana.forker@uni-jena.de, Demonstratives, Deictic Pointing and the Conceptualization of Space, View all Kratchovil, F. (2007). Following Schapper (2014), I distinguish four basic concepts for verticality values and will employ them in the glosses of examples in order to facilitate understanding and comparison (6) (even though individual authors may use alternative terms, e.g., higher, upward, or above instead of UP).8 The term LEVEL includes a more specific term ACROSS: I further adopt and simplify the classification of Burenhult (2008) and differentiate between two basic types of elevational systems: (i) General elevational demonstrative systems: The location is determined according to an imagined vertical (longitudinal) axis that runs through the ground (e.g., human body). Later, the sense of the word shifted and it was associated with 'mental state, mode of thinking' until its meaning took on more negative connotations and it began to be associated with what we understand by 'attitude' today - 'confronting, uncooperative manner'. M. Klamer (Berlin: Language Science Press), 247284. Thank you for being so nice to my brother! A Grammar of Aguaruna. EXAMPLES: My oldest cousin is female. I first lay out the conceptional and notional background for verticality and its relation to deixis, and describe morphological, syntactic and semantic properties of elevational demonstratives. This means that FURTHER is equated with UP and NEARER with DOWN. Fig. doi: 10.1017/upo9788175968875.011, Post, M. W. (2017). This example sentence uses the word 'sick' in the sense of 'mentally unwell, ill'. Which is not an example of a potential socio-cultural factor? However, in (22) the UP-demonstrative occurs together with the hearsay evidential, which means that the speaker has acquired her/his information from the speech of others. Following Diessel (1999, p. 2; see also Dixon, 2003), demonstratives are deictic expressions serving specific syntactic and pragmatic functions. Elevational values are frequently co-expressed with distance-based meanings of demonstratives, and it is almost always distal demonstratives that express elevation, whereas medial or proximal demonstratives can lack elevational distinctions. The term 'semantic shift' can also be used to refer to the changing meanings of words. These factors refer to the cultural reasons why a word's meaning may change. Which word is NOT an example of amelioration? Narrowing is when the meaning of a word becomes more specialized whereas broadening happens when a word's meaning changes to be more generalized. A Reference Grammar of Southeastern Tepehuan. With time, the negative meaning of the word weakened, and it changed from 'frightful' to 'severe'. Pejoration is a type of semantic change that is more common than amelioration. Ozanne-Rivierre, F. (2004). Sougb, in Studies in Irian Languages: Part II, ed. In this paper, I have largely ignored the morphological and syntactic properties of elevational demonstratives as well as their use in discourse (e.g., as anaphors or cataphors). 94, 187). There are 5 main types of semantic change. Received: 03 March 2020; Accepted: 22 June 2020;Published: 30 July 2020. Originally meaning "lighthearted", "joyous" or "happy", the word has undergone a complete shift in meaning to now refer to a homosexual person. Out-of-field (Eastern Canadian Inuktitut). This means that in terms of cardinal directions and gravity (i.e., location above sea level) uphill and upstream differ (Gary Holton, p.c.). The degree to which the syntactic contexts are expressed by specialized, formally distinct elevational demonstratives varies. Amelioration - Key takeaways. The position of a figure above or over a ground object is usually defined by gravity and thus in most instances in practice absolute (see also Clark, 1973). 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. Table 3. It has been hypothesized several times that there is a correlation between the presence of elevational demonstratives and the location of the speech community, more specifically, that the respective languages are spoken in hilly or mountainous areas (e.g., Imai, 2003, pp. Difference Between "Quote" and "Quotation": What Is the Right Word? Let's learn about the causes of semantic change, the different types of semantic change, and look at some examples. For instance, terms that express ACROSS can be topographic and refer to locations across a valley at the same altitude of the opposite mountain as in Yakkha (12), or across the river as in Tanacross (13). However, here are a few more interesting examples that show the change of the English language over time! 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. 3:212. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00212, Bryant, F. J., Tversky, B., and Franklin, N. (1992). Canberra: Australian National University. Berlin: de Gruyter. The demonstratives in the East Caucasian language Andi (Zilo dialect, Caucasus, Russia) are particularly transparent and consist of stems that express distance- and person-based deixis, followed by a range of further optional suffixes such as an emphatic marker, the elevational morphemes and gender suffixes (and/or oblique stem markers and case suffixes not displayed in Table 5). By contrast, in a relative frame of reference there is a ternary relation because in addition to the figure and the ground (relatum or ground object) there is an anchoring point (=the origin of the coordinate system). Amelioration is a term that refers to when a word acquires a more positive meaning over time. 9091; Levinson, 2018, p. 30), but also terminological confusion (Breunesse, 2019, pp. Hafniensia 50, 129160. Yu, N. (1998). Brown, P. (2012). Holton (2019), who discusses the Eskimo-Aleut and Na-Den languages spoken in the Artic, which is generally rather flat, notes that even though the Alaska territory includes some of the highest mountains in North America, the speakers of Na-Den languages, which have elevational demonstrative, do not live in the mountains. With respect to the languages of this paper, this claim is only partially confirmed. The Language of the Wangaaybuwan. Munich: Lincom. No language has been reported so far to have demonstratives for the other two axes.2. However, research on the spatial category of elevation is just at the beginning and typological studies are lacking so far. Radden (2003) hypothesizes that the cultural importance of the Yangtze River may have also played a role: the river flows downward and any objects moving on it would be located higher at an earlier period of the journey and lower at a later period [(see also Bender and Beller, 2014, p. 369), who call this the river model of time]. Rabel, L. (1961). In the Caucasus, only East Caucasian languages, and in Ethiopian Highlands only some Omotic languages possess elevational demonstratives. In such a context, the anchor point can be the actual location of the speaker, or her/his home village can serve as conventionalized anchor point (similar to the conventionalized use of Sanzhi Dargwa demonstratives mentioned above). Other examples of specialization are deer, which originally had the general meaning 'animal,' girl, which meant originally 'a young person,' and meat, whose original meaning was 'food.'" (Sol Steinmetz, Semantic Antics: How and Why Words Change Meanings. "Oddly," says R.L. 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. Lang. Widening/Extension => range of meanings of a word increases so that the word can be used in more contexts than were appropriate before the change -dog =>1) specific powerful breed of dog => all breeds or races of dog Spatial deixis in Muna (Sulawesi), in Studies in Austronesian and Papuan Languages, ed. 2461). 3, eds C. Maienborn, K. von Heusinger, and P. Portner (Berlin: de Gruyter), 24072431. doi: 10.1017/9781108333818.002. A Grammar of Moskona: An East Birds Head Language of West Papua, Indonesia. Extralinguistic causes in semantic change are mainly to do with the social or historical causes of semantic change. The other American languages in my sample that have elevational demonstratives are spoken in rather flat areas (Movima in the Bolivian plains, Eskimo-Aleut and Na-Den languages in Alaska and Greenland). Table 6. However, many languages do not have words referring to the sagittal (back/front) or transverse (left/right) axes or do not employ them regularly and in the same fashion as familiar European languages (Levinson, 2003, p. 46). HUA: A Papuan Language of the Eastern Highlands of New Guinea. Some cats eat wool. Which best describes the meaning of amelioration? 36, 38; Post, 2011, p. 152; Breunesse, 2019, p. 90; Ratliff, 2019). The word 'pretty' comes from West Saxon ('prttig'), Kentish ('pretti'), and Mercian ('prettig'). For example, a typical model of a city quarter as used by Farenc can contain several thousands of primitives of many types (such as polygons modeling sidewalk pieces, benches, trees, bus stops, etc.). To put it simply, pejoration is the opposite of amelioration. In order words, the word can be used in more contexts than it could originally. It is well known that words for front and back are commonly used as temporal metaphors in a wide range of different languages and cultures (e.g., Traugott, 1978; Haspelmath, 1997, pp. Second, in two of the major mountain areas with elevationals, the elevationals are restricted to only one or two families. Sign up to highlight and take notes. Yarapea, A. M. (2006). StudySmarter is commited to creating, free, high quality explainations, opening education to all. an inaccurate name). Utrecht: LOT. One example of semantic change would be the word 'hound . I will discuss the interaction of deixis with elevation in the Section The vertical dimension and its relation to deixis after having described in more detail elevational meanings. So far, I encountered only two languages that are spoken in the Melanesia/West Papua area and have this type of semantic extension. What is an example of a linguistic cause? Steinhauer, H. (1990). doi: 10.1111/cogs.12357, Coventry, K. R., Griffiths, D., and Hamilton, C. J. Nordquist, Richard. Stop procrastinating with our smart planner features. Huber, J. Stop procrastinating with our smart planner features. In their demonstrative systems, languages repeatedly combine elevation with distance. Lexical semantics is the analysis of word meaning. Metaphor, Metonymy, Synecdoche, Meiosis, Hyperbole, Degeneration, Elevation. Casad, E. H. (1982). Typically this process occurs due to different extralinguistic reasons, such as cultural and worldview changes occurring. Makalero and Tidore do not have genuine elevational adverbial demonstratives, and the adverbial function is fulfilled by demonstrative verbs (5). R. W. Langacker (Dallas, TX: SIL), 152459. 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.). 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. In the proximal domain, fine grained semantic distinctions such as those encoded by elevational demonstratives are superfluous since this domain is accessible to the interlocutors who in the default case of a normal conversation are located in close proximity to each other. A Grammar of Bantawa. Upload unlimited documents and save them online. Above I explained that gravity is the natural source for the direction of elevationals and thus for the determination of what counts as UP and what as DOWN independently of an observer or an intrinsic orientation of the ground. 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. Here are some more amelioration examples: terrific and sick. T. Moore (New York, NY: Academic Press), 2763. What concerns the distribution of elevational demonstratives of the language sample used for this paper, they do not show evidence of topographical correspondence. By the 13th century, the meaning of the word had changed to 'a woman of superior position in society'. 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).

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