The Routledge Handbook of Historical Linguistics by Bowern Claire; Evans Bethwyn;

Author:Bowern, Claire; Evans, Bethwyn;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1734198
Publisher: Taylor and Francis

3 Modern approaches

The notion of polysemy plays a key role in understanding semantic change as a process, because a common way for semantic change to take place is by an intermediate stage of polysemy (Evans and Wilkins 2000, as well as Enfield 2003, also speak of ‘bridging contexts’). That is, a word does not change its meaning abruptly over night across an entire speech community (though from the perspective of individual innovating speakers and speakers adopting innovations, the change is instantaneous, Traugott and Dasher 2002: 34). Rather, it acquires a novel conventionalised sense, with the original one at least initially remaining intact (e.g. Sweetser 1990: 9; Wilkins 1996: 269; Campbell 1998: 268). Eventually the original meaning may, but need not, be lost. Diagrammatically, the process may be depicted as follows (Traugott and Dasher 2002: 12):

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