Rich and poor in the history of English : corpus-based analyses of lexico-semantic variation and change in old and middle English
Year: 2008
Type: dissertation
Abstract: The dissertation deals with lexico-semantic variation and change of the concepts rich and poor in Old and Middle English. The semantic field was determined with the help of the Thesaurus of Old English. In contrast to former studies, which concentrated on single lexemes or individual text types, the present study supplies analyses of related lexemes in the semantic field of wealth. In this respect, the study is based on a wealth of data (Dictionary of Old English Corpus, Middle English Dictionary, Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse and Oxford English Dictionary). The semantic field is analysed from various perspectives: structuralist approaches, as well as cognitive and pragmatic approaches, such as prototype, cognitive metaphor, metonymy and prototype are integrated into the discussion. This integrative perspective is justified as semantic change is a complex and multi-dimensional phenomenon caused by a variety of factors. The quantitative and qualitative analyses of the selected lexemes reveal one predominant mechanism at work: metonymy. This most frequent process is largely caused by pragmatic inferences. Besides these mechanisms, further factors such as cognitive and psychological components, as well as socio-cultural aspects play an important role in diachronic semantics. The processes involved in the semantic changes under investigation are highly regular and can be regarded as the main mechanisms, not only in grammaticalisation, but also in diachronic sense developments of autosemantic words.
Author: Bianca Kossmann
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2885626247