Radden, G. (2003). The Phonology and Morphology of the Tanacross Athabaskan Language. Dixon, R. M. W. (2003). Amsterdam: Benjamins. The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor: A Perspective from Chinese. These findings are particularly interesting in view of the widely debated use of Mandarin Chinese spatial terms shang upper, up, over, above for past events and xia lower, down, below, under, for future events, which show the opposite metaphorical extension (e.g., Yu, 1998, pp. 31, 7498. Think of the word 'nice' as an example of amelioration. G. Senft (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 197220. Spatial Expression in CAAC: An Oceanic Language Spoken in the North of New Caledonia. Levinson summarizes the distinctiveness of the vertical axis by stating that the intrinsic (canonical position of objects), the relative (perception from an upright stance) and the absolute (as defined by the gravitational axis) tend to coincide (Levinson, 2003, p. 75; see also Carlson-Radvansky and Irwin, 1993, p. 224 for the same observation). When talking about inhabitants of the village, a person might conventionally be referred to by an UP or DOWN demonstrative based on the permanent location of her house within the village, which is mentally divided into an upper part and a lower part, and not on the location of that person with respect to the speaker or another spatial anchoring. Amelioration elevates a word's meaning over time. However, as a modern slang term, the word has been elevated and has taken on the positive meaning of 'great': Think of other slang words that have gone through a similar process like 'wicked', for example. In Old English, the word dizzy meant what? Its 100% free. Doctoral dissertation, La Trobe University, Melbourne. Amelioration occurs for different _______________ reasons. It is well known that words for front and back are commonly used as temporal metaphors in a wide range of different languages and cultures (e.g., Traugott, 1978; Haspelmath, 1997, pp. Invisible (Muna, Khasi, Baskeet, and Daga). Some examples of amelioration are words such as 'nice', 'pretty' and 'lady'. In practice, locations above the speaker and above the addressee during a conversation largely coincide. Friedman, V. (1994). See Diessel (1999, pp. Be perfectly prepared on time with an individual plan. 7579). A word that previously had a negative meaning develops a positive one. Amelioration (word meanings). . The meaning of a word doesn't just change in an instant, it can take many years. The first type (general) corresponds to Burenhults verticality proper and global elevation, and the second term (topographic) to his geophysical elevation. General elevationals are used in accordance with the gravitational axis. (2020, August 27). Below are two examples of semantic broadening: The word, 'business' originally was only used to refer to being busy. Clark, H. H. (1973). Set individual study goals and earn points reaching them. The metaphor TIME AS SPACE across languages. You can find out more about our use, change your default settings, and withdraw your consent at any time with effect for the future by visiting Cookies Settings, which can also be found in the footer of the site. Narrowing is when the meaning of a word becomes more specialized whereas broadening happens when a word's meaning changes to be more generalized. 240, 263, 271). Levinson (2018, pp. As I already explained, it is sound to expect the absolute use to be the default such that the interpretation of down there in (17) is normally understood in relation to the position of the speaker and not some other ground object because of gravity. Semantic broadening is the antonym of semantic narrowing, as the process that takes place is the opposite. Spot two examples of semantic broadening! Figure 2 shows a person stretched out on the ground. 6. salary 3, ed. Table 4. The four basic verticality values expressed by elevational demonstratives are UP, DOWN, LEVEL, and ACROSS. They seem to be absolute because normally gravity determines the direction and thus what is up and down, but the same is true for relational adverbials referring to the vertical axis. In Yakkha, a spider can be referred to as being on the downhill side of the speaker, even if it is located on the same elevation level as the speaker and thus factually not lower than the deictic center (Schackow, 2015, pp. Amha, A. Doctoral dissertation, Radbound University, Nijmegen. I did not find any other types of landmarks defining topographic elevational demonstratives. Murane, E. (1974). HUA: A Papuan Language of the Eastern Highlands of New Guinea. In Sougb, the pronominal and/or identificational use requires additional morphology (2), but adnominal and adverbial uses are identically and unmarked (1), (3). The expression of space in grammars of natural languages is ubiquitous and spatial language has been investigated for decades within many different linguistic subdisciplines and by means of various approaches and frameworks. I will also mention a few other languages in which spatial verticality metaphorically maps onto time. Charachidz, G. (1981). In their demonstrative systems, languages repeatedly combine elevation with distance. "The word silly is a classic example of pejoration, or gradual worsening of meaning. Ma Manda (FinisterreHuon), has a three-level contrast in elevation (DOWN/UP/LEVEL), in contrast to Tulil, which has only terms for UP and DOWN, co-expressed with distance such that we arrive at six items (Pennington, 2016, pp. Vignettes of Cora locatives. For the (b) subtypes, the question can be asked what the nature of the elevational morpheme is, in particular, whether they are themselves deictic or non-deictic. In those languages that optionally or obligatorily conjoin elevational meanings with distance, it is almost always the distal demonstratives that express elevation, whereas medial or proximal demonstratives can lack elevational distinctions. Aikhenvald, A. This meaning grew more specific until the word 'meat' was only used when relating to one type of food (animal flesh). (ii) The local larger, but delimited environment, e.g., a village, a valley, or an island; locations within this area can be visible or not. Elevation and degradation of meaning of a word - studopedia.su This language has two cognate sets of basic adverbial elevational roots, which are classified in the grammar as topographic. The first set, which in the grammar is called /u/-forms based on their stem vowel, is given in the lower part of Table 11. The degree to which the syntactic contexts are expressed by specialized, formally distinct elevational demonstratives varies. Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany, School of Arts, Languages and Cultures, Faculty of Humanities, The University of Manchester, United Kingdom. 3:212. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00212, Bryant, F. J., Tversky, B., and Franklin, N. (1992). A word that previously had a negative meaning develops a positive one. I encountered only very few cases of elevational demonstratives that combine with person-based deictic systems and therefore express person-based elevational meanings, e.g., Manambu (24) (Table 8). For instance, Tanacross and other Northern Dene languages have genuine topographic elevational systems (in addition to the general elevational demonstratives) that conventionally extend to the micro level. Broadening is a process where a word's meaning becomes more general. Yu (1998, p. 111) argues that this conceptualization can be explained if one presupposes that on the horizontal plane the sagittal FRONT (or FURTHER) corresponds to EARLIER and BACK (or NEARER) to LATER. You can find out more about our use, change your default settings, and withdraw your consent at any time with effect for the future by visiting Cookies Settings, which can also be found in the footer of the site. To put it simply, pejoration is the opposite of amelioration. Broadening can be caused by both extralinguistic and linguistic causes, such as a change in worldview, or linguistic analogy. The temporal meaning of the first two elevational demonstratives can be schematized as DOWN = BACK = PAST and UP = FRONT = FUTURE, and it is possible that the temporal meanings are, in fact, based on the front/back meanings. This touches upon a problem I encountered during this study. The Manambu Language of East Sepik, Papua New Guinea. (ii) Obligatory co-occurrence of demonstrative morphemes with elevational morphemes in a single word-form. Narrowing is when the meaning of a word becomes more specialised whereas broadening happens when a word's meaning changes to be more generalised. In Manambu, the noun phrases a-da-wur du (DEM.DST-M.SG-UP man) (Aikhenvald, 2008, p. 53) and a-na-wur numa-d du (DEM.DST-CURR.REL-UP big-M.SG man) (Aikhenvald, 2015) are used to refer to God (in addition to their literary sense (big) man up there., Demonstrative systems that encode elevation are, in general, already larger than the more common systems that express only (person-based) distance. The intrinsic frame of reference entails that the ground and the origin of the coordinate system that serves as anchoring point are identical and the spatial relation between the figure and the ground is binary. Masters thesis, University of Papua New Guinea, Port Moresby. Recalling that April 1564 is the date on which Shakespeare was born. Formerly the word meant learned men in theology, law, and in many other fields besides medicine, but nowadays it is applied only to the practitioner of the healing art, whether having a University degree or not.