语义变化 词汇学课件.ppt

Teaching Steps Lead-in New Class: changes in word meaning Summary Practice Assignment Lead-in The following sentences are from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Can you figure out the meanings of the italicized words? ‘ The rivals of my watch, bid them make haste’ ‘ Thus twice before, and jump at this dead hour’ ‘ as common as any the most vulgar thing to sense’ ‘ Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgement’ ‘ I’ll wipe away all trivial fond records’ ‘ How pregnant sometimes his replies are ’ The italicized words mean “partner, just, common, opinion, foolish, meaningful” respectively. It is not easy for us to understand these sentences. Shakespeare is perhaps more difficult to understand than more recent writings because many of his words were used in different sense from what they have now in contemporary dictionaries. Why have the word meanings changed so much? And how has they changed? Vocabulary is the most unstable element of a language as it is undergoing constant changes both in form and content. Comparatively speaking, the content is even more unstable than the form. “ …almost every word we use today has a slightly different meaning from the one it had a century ago: and a century ago it had a slightly different meaning from the one it had a century before that” (Quirk) New class: Changes in word meaning Types of Changes Linguists have observed that in semantic change, words often follow certain well-marked tendencies. Among the more common of these are: A. Narrowing of meaning (narrowing / specialization) B. Extension of meaning (extension / generalization) C. Degeneration of meaning (degradation / pejoration) D. Elevation of meaning (elevation / amelioration) A. Narrowing Narrowing of meaning, also called specialization, is a process by which a word of wide meaning acquires a narrower or specialized sense which is applicable to only one of the objects it had previously denoted. Typical examples: More exa