Diachronic Prototype Semantics: A Contribution to Historical Lexicology

ISBN-13: 9780198236528 / Angielski / Twarda / 1997 / 224 str.

Dirk Geeraerts

Opis

Prototype theory makes a crucial distinction between central and peripheral sense of words. Geeraerts explores the implications of this model for a theory of semantic change, in the first full-scale treatment of the impact of the most recent developments in lexicological theory on the study of meaning change. He identifies structural features of the development of word meanings which follow from a prototype-theoretical model of semantic structure, and incorporates these diachronic prototypicality effects into a theory of meaning change.

Recenzje

A well written and useful book. Rigorous studies of how lexical meaning changes over time, such as Geeraerts's, are exactly what are needed to shed light on this essential problem.