§ 19. Semantic Motivation

The term motivation is also used by a number of linguists to denote the relationship between the central and the coexisting meaning or meanings of a word which are understood as a metaphorical extension of the central meaning. Metaphorical extension may be viewed as generalisation of the denotational meaning of a word permitting it to include new referents which are in some way like the original class of referents. Similarity of various aspects and/or functions of different classes of referents may account for the semantic motivation of a number of minor meanings. For example, a woman who has given birth is called a mother; by extension, any act that gives birth is associated with being a mother, e.g. in Necessity is the mother of invention. The same principle can be observed in other meanings: a mother looks after a child, so that we can say She became a mother to her orphan nephew, or Romulus and Remus were supposedly mothered by a wolf. Cf. also mother country, a mother’s mark (=a birthmark), mother tongue, etc. Such metaphoric extension may be observed in the so-called trite metaphors, such as burn with anger, break smb’s heart, jump at a chance, etc.

If metaphorical extension is observed in the relationship of the central and a minor word meaning it is often observed in the relationship between its synonymic or antonymic meanings. Thus, a few years ago the phrases a meeting at the summit, a summit meeting appeared in the newspapers.

Cartoonists portrayed the participants of such summit meetings sitting on mountain tops. Now when lesser diplomats confer the talks are called foothill meetings. In this way both summit and its antonym foothill undergo the process of metaphorical extension.

§ 20. Summary and Conclusions

1. Lexical meaning with its denotational and connotational components may be found in morphemes of different types. The denotational meaning in affixal morphemes may be rather vague and abstract, the lexical meaning and the part-of-speech meaning tending to blend.

2. It is suggested that in addition to lexical meaning morphemes may contain specific types of meaning: differential, functional and distributional.

2. Differential meaning in morphemes is the semantic component

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which serves to distinguish one word from other words of similar morphemic structure. Differential and denotational meanings are not mutually exclusive.

4. Functional meaning is the semantic component that serves primarily to refer the word to a certain part of speech.

5. Distributional meaning is the meaning of the pattern of the arrangement of the morphemes making up the word. Distributional meaning is to be found in all words composed of more than one morpheme. It may be the dominant semantic component in words containing morphemes deprived of denotational meaning.

6. Morphological motivation implies a direct connection between the lexical meaning of the component morphemes, the pattern of their arrangement and the meaning of the word. The degree of morphological motivation may be different varying from the extreme of complete motivation to lack of motivation.

7. Phonetical motivation implies a direct connection between the phonetic structure of the word and its meaning. Phonetical motivation is not universally recognised in modern linguistic science.

8. Semantic motivation implies a direct connection between the central and marginal meanings of the word. This connection may be regarded as a metaphoric extension of the central meaning based on the similarity of different classes of referents denoted by the word.

CHANGE Of MEANING

Word-meaning is liable to change in the course of the historical development of language. Changes of lexical meaning may be illustrated by a diachronic semantic analysis of many commonly used English words. The word fond (OE. fond) used to mean ‘foolish’, ‘foolishly credulous’; glad (OE, glaed) had the meaning of ‘bright’, ’shining’ and so on.

Change of meaning has been thoroughly studied and as a matter of fact monopolised the attention of all semanticists whose work up to the early 1930’s was centered almost exclusively on the description and classification of various changes of meaning. Abundant language data can be found in almost all the books dealing with semantics. Here we shall confine the discussion to a brief outline of the problem as it is viewed in modern linguistic science.

To avoid the ensuing confusion of terms and concepts it is necessary to discriminate between the causes of semantic change, the results and the nature of the process of change of meaning.¹ These are three closely bound up, but essentially different aspects of one and the same problem.

Discussing the causes of semantic change we concentrate on the factors bringing about -this change and attempt to find out why the word changed its meaning. Analysing the nature of semantic change we seek

iSeeSt. Ullmann. The Principles of Semantics. Chapter 8, Oxford, 1963. 28

to clarify the process of this change and describe how various changes of meaning were brought about. Our aim in investigating the results of semantic change is to find out what was changed, i.e. we compare the resultant and the original meanings and describe the difference between them mainly in terms of the changes of the denotational components.