15.2770, Review: Semantics/Historical Ling: Eckardt et al. (2003)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-15-2770. Mon Oct 04 2004. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 15.2770, Review: Semantics/Historical Ling: Eckardt et al. (2003)                                                                                                                                                        

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1)
Date: 04-Oct-2004
From: Niladri Dash < niladri at isical.ac.in >
Subject: Words in Time: Diachronic Semantics from Different Points of View 
 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Mon, 04 Oct 2004 16:29:33
From: Niladri Dash < niladri at isical.ac.in >
Subject: Words in Time: Diachronic Semantics from Different Points of View 
 
EDITORS: Eckardt, Ergine; von Heusinger, Klaus; Schwarze, Christoph
TITLE: Words in Time 
SUBTITLE: Diachronic Semantics from Different Points of View. 
PUBLISHER: Mouton de Gruyter 
YEAR: 2003
Announced at http://test.linguistlist.org/issues/14/14-3472.html


Niladri Sekhar Dash, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, India 

PURPOSE AND CONTENT OF THE BOOK 

The plan for the present volume originated in the context of the
Sonderfor-schungsbereich (collaborative research centre) 471 "Variation and
Evolution in the Lexicon", funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
(German Research Foundation). This umbrella project was funded in the year
1997 with an aim for better understanding of innovation and diversification
as processes inherent in language learning and use. The lexicon is
perceived as one major locus of mental representation and of variation as a
cause of change. The proposed project investigates language variation from
the perspective of neighboring disciplines, in particular history, literary
studies, psychology and sociology.

A substantial part of the contributions to this anthology was first
presented in the International Colloquium on "Methodology for the
interdisciplinary investigation of the lexicon" held at the Konstanz
University, Germany in 1998 and in the workshop on "Meaning Change --
Meaning Variation'" held at the XXI Annual Meeting of the Deutsche
Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft in 1999. Additional scholars were
invited to contribute, with the aim to strengthen the interdisciplinary
profile of the volume.

The volume contains a number of significant articles related to the fields
of lexical semantics, and lexicology with a wide range of interests and
approaches to the historical analysis of lexicon. Based on the synthesis of
different tendencies and main approaches discussed here, the volume is
divided into 3 broad sections.

Section A (Changing believes, diversifying words, and flexible meanings)
contains four papers dealing with diachronic cognitive onomasiology,
variation and change in lexical fields, semantic change of words through
time, and words within the changing frame of discourse. Section B (The
meaning of meaning change) includes three papers devoted to the analysis of
theories and concepts of lexical meaning, courses in meaning change, and
the notions of Montague semantics. Section C (The force of Grammar)
contains four papers, which focus on the grammatical as well as
sociolinguistic aspects of some individual languages (e.g. Greek, Urdu,
Molise and German) related with the reconstruction of meaning and meaning
change. 

CRITICAL SYNOPSIS 

In "Introduction: Historical linguistics as a transdisciplinary field of
research" (pp. 1-33) Regine Eckardt, Klaus von Heusinger and Christoph
Schwarze present a global introductory description about the present
theories and analyses on word meaning along with a brief a reference to the
content of the papers included in the volume. In the course of their
discussion they weave an interface of word meaning with cultural,
psychological, sociological, historical and philosophical aspects of human
life and society. Next, they refer to the theories of language change and
meaning change, and project on the colorful prism of diachronic semantics
from different points of view.

In "Words and concepts in time: Towards diachronic cognitive onomasiology"
(pp. 37-65) Andreas Blank aims to discuss the potentials of modern
onomasiology in the light of cognitive linguistics. With an aim to develop
a framework of diachronic cognitive onomasiology, he shows how both
onomasiology and cognitive linguistics reveal their full explanatory power
in a diachronic perspective. In general, diachronic cognitive onomasiology
investigates the main strategies that exist in a language sample for
conceptualizing and verbalizing a given concept. It also tries to explain
these against a cognitive background in terms of salient perceptions,
prominence, convincing similarities, etc. It looks for source concepts that
seem to be universally recurrent, reveals the associative relations
underlying source and target concepts, and describes the lexical processes
used by the speakers. It thus fabricates a double framework of associative
relations, which can combine with virtually any process of lexical
innovation. This theoretical foundation allows the description and
explanation of lexical changes towards a cognitively more prominent
strategy as well as of reorganizations of conceptual structures.
Furthermore, to a certain extent it is possible to predict which strategy
speakers will most probably take when they produce lexical innovations. In
this sense, a history of concepts that integrates semasiological change on
the level of the individual designation contributes to a better
understanding of how reality (or what people hold it to be) is perceived
and interpreted. Thus its serves as a modest linguistic contribution
towards the better understanding of human mind.

In "The Semantic structure of lexical fields: Variation and change" (pp.
67-114) David Kronenfeld and Gabriella Rundblad use the lexical field 'a
natural watercourse' as their base to present a description of the
interrelation between the synchronic state of language and the diachronic
changes ever evident in it. They show how the lexical field was structured
in the earlier periods of English, and how and (possibly) why it has come
to take on its current shape. To achieve their goal, they use an
anthropological approach, whereby the cultural influence on language is
used to help delineate the semantic and lexical changes and the reasons
behind them. The study of a semantic domain (including its paradigmatic
structure, its relationship to the pragmatic and communicative experience
of the language's speakers, speakers' cultural ambience, frequency of use
of the terms, etc.) derives in a large part, though not exclusively, from
the works of ethnoscience and cognitive anthropology.

In "Khalifa -- A word study" (pp. 115-133) David Wasserstein trails through
the long history of origin, development, orthographic modification, and
semantic change of the Arabic word khalifa 'caliph'. After a short
description on the etymology and meanings in section 2, the author presents
a moderately lengthy description about the origin of the use of the title
'khalifa' both in Arabic as well as in English and other languages,
eventually to end up with a line of parallelism with 'papacy'. In essence,
the author tries to establish the fact that the term has acquired a wider
semantic dimension over the centuries because of its religious element that
plays an important, or even, a decisive role it its development.
Strikingly, the purely semantic, lexicographical aspect of the term, shorn
of the religious element, has remained impressively durable -- a quality
that controls the basic nature of lexico-semantic changes of the term.

In "Words in discourse -- On the diachronic lexical semantics of
'discours'" (pp. 135-171) Judith Meinschaefer presents a lexical semantic
investigation of the French noun 'discours', one of the most important
cultural keywords in the twentieth century, on the basis of its usage in
historical literary texts. First, the paper draws a brief sketch on the
semantic evolution of the term in the preceding five centuries. Next, it
analyses the usage of the term in the writing of two French authors: Michel
de Montaigne (1533-1592) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). Here the
emphasis is on the analysis of the combinatorial properties of the word in
question, of its position within a network of lexicosemantic relations, its
relation to semantic frames of complex situations, and its use for
reference to linguistic representations of a discourse in the text, with
the aim of developing a methodology for the linguistic analysis of
different uses of a word in historical texts. The results of this study are
discussed in the light of Putnam's (1975) conception of the 'division of
linguistic labor' to show how the semantic evolution of the term is
characterized by decreasing polysemy and increasing specialization.

In "Theoretical concepts in flux: Conceptual knowledge and theory change"
(pp. 175-205) Hans Rott considers theoretical terms, terms that come from
the theory in the sense that their correct application or determination of
their values is not possible independently of the theory they are part of.
In the following, he uses the term 'theory' also, but not exclusively, to
refer to theories as produced by an established science; his considerations
are also meant to apply to belief systems that might be termed 'naive' or
'folk theories'. In essence, he puts forward for discussion a way of making
philosophical sense of the meaning of theoretical terms and of the changes
thereof. The proposal is based on an explication of analytic judgements
that is in turn inspired by Quinean ideas without, however, subscribing to
his skepticism about meaning. Inspiration from Quine is drawn in three
respects: the use of the revisability of sentences as a vehicle for the
explication of 'analyticity'; the acknowledgement of substantial
difficulties in drawing a line between knowledge of facts (beliefs,
theories) and knowledge of language (meaning); and the recommendation of a
pragmatic solution to these difficulties that refers to speakers and
communities of speakers. Finally, he argues that making a sense of the
difference between substantial changes of theories and mere changes of ways
of speaking is crucial if we want to understand how theoretical concepts
can be in flux.

In "Meaning change as character change" (pp. 207-224) Ulrike Haas-Spohn
offers a reconstruction of Putnam's (1975) account of natural-kind terms
and theoretical terms with David Kaplan's (1989) context theory. This
allows the author to represent epistemic as well as metaphysical aspects of
the determination of reference within single notion of meaning, namely, the
Kaplanian 'character'. It also entails an account of meaning change, which
confirms the familiar doctrine of the theory of dependence of meaning and
at the same time retains Putnam's insight that the reference of natural
kind terms remains constant across theoretical change. The author starts
with an informal sketch of Putnam's theory of natural-kind terms,
emphasizing its motivation from philosophy of science. Next, he proposes a
format for the meaning of natural-kind terms in terms of Kaplanian
characters, a task that crucially relies on an explication of the notion of
usage of words. Finally, he reconstructs meaning change within the account
presented to distinguish three kinds of meaning change (normally understood
as character change) and demonstrates the utility of this approach with
some central examples.

In "Meaning change in conceptual Montague semantics" (pp. 225-247) Regine
Eckardt aims to extend the Montague theory of meaning (1974) by a
diachronic dimension in a meaningful way. The author intends to proceed in
two distinct and sequential steps. First, she proposes a theory of how a
new word and its meaning are introduced into language. The proposal is
nominalistic in spirit and replaces the currently favored causal theory of
reference. Second, she shows how context of language use can, in
retrospect, be interpreted as hypothetical contexts of meaning
introduction, and thus gives rise to new meanings of an old word --
depending on the historical, cultural, and social circumstances -- in a
systematic fashion. Finally, she discusses how the resulting account for
word meaning in Montague grammar integrates notions like 'stereotype' and
'default knowledge', notions that capture indispensable aspects of our
semantic competence and yet often are treated in a way strangely
independent of the core semantic theory.

In "Tense in time: The Greek perfect" (pp. 251-293) Eva-Carin Gerö and
Armin von Stechow deal with the diachronic development of the form and
meaning of the Greek perfect. The reason for focusing on this language is
two fold: first, it has often been neglected in the modern linguistic
literature about tense; second, in Greek, it is possible to observe (even
without taking into account the form and meaning of the Perfect in Modern
Greek) a very interesting diachronic behavior of the Perfect which may have
a great deal to tell about the 'tense' more generally. After re-examining
the diachronic development of the data in the light of older as well as
more recent theories of the perfect tense, the investigators find that the
Archaic (Homeric) Perfect displays properties most typical of an
intensifier or an aspect (result). The two meanings connected with the
Perfect of this time are, however, too different to allow serious
assumptions as to their (historical) common denominator. The investigation
ends with the claim that the Greek Perfect up to the Byzantine period, with
the exception of Archaic Greek, should be understood in terms of an
'Extended Now' model (cf. McCoard 1978). Thus Greek Perfect shows much
similarity with the English and Swedish Perfect.

In "Light verbs in Urdu and grammaticalization" (pp. 295-349) Miriam Butt
and Wilhelm Geuder take up the issue of light verbs as grammaticalized
elements, and present a synopsis of the historical development and the
synchronic status of light verbs in Indo-Aryan, with special reference to
Urdu. While the explanation in terms of grammaticalization is intuitively
appealing at first glance, several observable properties of the light verbs
in Urdu do not quite submit to the proposed model. Therefore, the present
authors put forth an alternative account that stresses the lexical, as
opposed to grammatical, nature of light verbs. Their main claim is that the
pairing of light and full verb readings of the same item constitutes a case
of lexical polysemy, but not of grammaticalization. To substantiate their
claim they present a faithful sketch of a lexicosemantic account of light
verbs that reconciles the semantic intuitions and the observed data with
the lack of grammaticalization effects. Overall, their findings show that
light verbs do not fit in with the usual model of grammaticalization from
full verbs to auxiliaries and further on to morphological markers for
grammatical categories.

In "Bilingualism and linguistic interface in the Slavic-Romance contact
area of Molise (Southern Italy)" (pp. 351-373) Walter Breu presents the
outcome of his work on a dictionary of the linguistic interface of the
Slavic minority language in the southern Italian region of Molise. The aim
of this dictionary is to describe not only the actual state of the
vocabulary but also the origin of the single lexicon entries, as well as
phonetic, semantic and grammatical changes in a situation of total language
contact.  The main emphasis of the present article is on language change in
the lexicosemantic and grammatico-functional areas. I doing so, the present
author shows that his data support the hypothesis that bilingual speakers
do not strictly separate the vocabulary and grammar of two or more
languages. Instead, they combine them with each other in the most
economical manner available under their disposal. Special attention is paid
to the questions, to which extent language change through contact leads to
the adaptation of different language systems, which pathways of development
are chosen in this process, but also which areas resist adaptation and
possibly may even shows signs of independent developments distinct from the
contact language.

In "Lexical-grammatical variation and development: The use of conjunctions
as discourse markers in everyday spoken German" (pp. 375-403) Susanne
Günthner presents the study that projects at the interface of lexicon and
grammar. Based on conversational data from colloquial German collected from
1983 to 1999, the study aims at uncovering how 'new' uses for 'old' words
have developed in spoken colloquial German. The analysis focuses on the
growing tendency over the last 20 to 25 years to use the traditionally
subordinating conjunctions 'weil' (because) and 'obwohl' (although) with
main-clause syntax. The conjunction 'weil' no longer provides a reason for
the preceding proposition, conclusion, or speech-act; instead it has mainly
discourse-organizational functions. It is used to introduce additional
explanatory information, to initiate a topical change, and to function as a
conversational 'continuation marker' signaling that the present speaker
does want to continue talking. On the other hand, German speakers
reinterpret the traditional concessive conjunction 'obwohl' as a correction
marker to limit or correct the validity of the preceding utterance. As with
'weil' it has structural and functional distinctions between its use at
verb-final and verb-second positions. Thus, the author observes a
functional change from meaning based on the referential/propositional level
to meaning based on the discourse level; or from sentence grammar to
discourse grammar. 

DISCUSSION

This volume is worthy addition to the recent trend of lexical analysis in
the field of historical lexicology, lexical semantics, and lexicography
following the line of contribution of Coleman and Kay (2002) and Díaz Vera
(2002). It offers a collection of studies in meaning change from linguistic
as extralinguistic perspectives conducted by scholars in the fields of
linguistics, philology, lexicology, sociology, anthropology and history.
The volume allows comparing as well as making in-depth investigations of
language change from different angles and scientific paradigms. Each of the
contributions demonstrates the methods and techniques of its own core field
whilst showing the fruitful mixing of perspectives of more than one
discipline. In bridging the gap between disciplines, the contributors want
to strengthen sensitivity of the many dimensions of language as a social,
cultural, cognitive, formal and historical object. With sincere emphasis on
the neighboring disciplines, which arrest attention in the task of semantic
study of words of a language, the volume directs us towards a new path we
would like to traverse in future. Enriched with data, analysis, and
information the volume promises growth of the field with newer inputs from
other disciplines. Probably, the only tangible limitation of the volume
lies in some typographical errors, which could have been easily avoided
with little more attention.

REFERENCES 

Coleman Julie and Christian J. Kay (Eds.) (2002) Lexicology, Semantics and
Lexicography: Selected Papers from the 4th G. L. Brook Symposium.
Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 

Díaz Vera, Javier E. (2002) A Changing World of Words: Studies in English
Historical Lexicography, Lexicology and Semantics. Amsterdam-New York, NY:
Rodopi (Costerus New Series 141).

Kaplan, David (1989) "Demonstratives". In Joseph Almog, John Perry, and
Howard Wettstein (Eds.) Themes from Kaplan. Pp 481-563. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.

McCoard, Robert W. (1978) The English Perfect: Tense Choice and Pragmatic
Inferences. Amsterdam: North-Holland.

Thomason, Richmond (Ed.) (1974) Formal Philosophy: Selected Papers of
Richard Montague. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Putnam, Hilary (1975) "The meaning of meaning", in Keith Gunderson (Ed.)
Language, Mind and Knowledge. Pp. 131-193. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press. 

ABOUT THE REVIEWER 

Dr. Niladri Sekhar Dash works in the area of Corpus Linguistics and
Language Technology at the Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Unit of
the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, India. His research interest
includes Corpus Linguistics, Lexicology, Lexical Semantics, and
Lexicography. Presently he is working on corpus generation, lexical
polysemy, corpus-based dictionary, and corpus-based machine translation in
Indian languages.



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