Historical English Word Formation And Semantics

TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS is a series of books that open new perspectives in our understanding of language. The series publishes state-of-the-art work on core areas of linguistics across theoretical frameworks as well as studies that provide new insights by building bridges to neighbouring fields such as neuroscience and cognitive science. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS considers itself a forum for cutting-edge research based on solid empirical data on language in its various manifestations, including sign languages. It regards linguistic variation in its synchronic and diachronic dimensions as well as in its social contexts as important sources of insight for a better understanding of the design of linguistic systems and the ecology and evolution of language. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS publishes monographs and outstanding dissertations as well as edited volumes, which provide the opportunity to address controversial topics from different empirical and theoretical viewpoints. High quality standards are ensured through anonymous reviewing.

This is a volume of selected papers presented at the International Conference on Historical English Word-Formation and Semantics held in Warsaw on 10-11 December 2011 and organized by the School of English at the Warsaw Division of the University of Social Sciences in Łodź. The conference was attended by scholars from Poland, USA, Germany, Austria, Belgium, France, Japan, Italy, Ukraine and Slovakia. Their papers covered a wide range of topics concerning the area of word formation and semantics in Old and Middle English."

English Words: History and Structure is concerned primarily with the learned vocabulary of English, the words borrowed from the classical languages. It surveys the historical events that define the layers of vocabulary in English, introduces some of the basic principles of linguistic analysis, and is a helpful manual for vocabulary discernment and enrichment. Exercises accompanying each chapter and further readings on recent loans and the legal and medical vocabulary of English will be available online in the near future. * Introduces students to some basic linguistic terms needed for the discussion of phonological and morphological changes accompanying word formation * Designed to lead students to a finer appreciation of their language and greater ability to recognize relationships between words and discriminate between meanings * An informative appendix discusses the history and usefulness of the best known British and American dictionaries * Online readings and exercises to deepen and strengthen knowledge acquired in the classroom

From the contents: Maurizio GOTTI: The origin of 17th century canting terms. - Anne MCDERMOTT: Early dictionaries of English and historical corpora: in search of hard words. - Paivi KOIVISTO-ALANKO: Prototypes in semantic change: a diachronic perspective on abstract nouns. - Manuela ROMANO POZO: A morphodynamic interpretation of synonymy and polysemy in Old English."

In the study of word formation, the focus has often been on generating the form. In this book, the semantic aspect of the formation of new words is central. It is viewed from the perspectives of word formation rules and of lexicalization. An extensive introduction gives a historical overview of the study of the semantics of word formation and lexicalization, explaining how the different theoretical frameworks used in the contributions relate to each other. Each chapter then concentrates on a specific question about a theoretical concept or a word formation process in a particular language and adopts a theoretical framework that is appropriate to the study of this question. From general theoretical concepts of productivity and lexicalization, the focus moves to terminology, compounding, and derivation. Theoretical frameworks discussed include Jackendoff's Conceptual Structure, Langacker's Cognitive Grammar, Lieber's lexical semantic approach to word formation, Pustejovsky's Generative Lexicon, Beard's Lexeme-Morpheme-Base Morphology, The onomasiological approach to terminology and word formation.