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SEMANTIC CHANGE AND THE METHODOLOGY OF SEMANTIC RECONSTRUCTION Matthias Urban MPI EVA Slide 2 Outline Approaches to and issues in Semantic Reconstruction A new proposal Application to IE data How natural typologically is the reconstructed PIE lexicon generally? Slide 3 Practice of Semantic Reconstruction Nikolayev and Starostin (1994: 7): the semantic reconstruction is of course very tentative; we do not pretend that meanings can be exactly reconstructed in most cases. Most etymological dictionaries I know do not make explicit the reasoning the authors used to arrive at semantic reconstructs at all (though this doesn t mean that authors didnt apply any or didnt think carefully about what to reconstruct). Though note Rix (2002: 1336): Wo die einzelsprachlichen Bedeutungen differieren, ist der Ansatz zu suchen, der die wenigsten und/oder leichtesten einzelsprachlichen Bedeutungsvernderungen impliziert... But what are leichte Bedeutungsvernderungen? Slide 4 Koch (2004): typology of practical approaches The additive type Slide 5 The selective type Slide 6 The taxonomic-abstracting type Slide 7 The engonymic type Slide 8 Theory: Reconstruction by Semantic Features Foreshadowed in Benveniste (1956), discussed by Fox (1995), applied e.g. by Zorc (2004) Idea: look at the meanings of cognates in daughter languages and what semantic features they have in common. These features are thought to figure in the proto-meaning as well. Slide 9 Benvenistes famous example (summarized from Koch 2004) Reconstruct: passage (franchissement) Slide 10 The resulting proto-meaning thus becomes a sort of lowest common denominator of the descendent meanings. If we took these feature-based semantic etymologies in general at their face value, the resulting Proto-Indo-European vocabulary would be an improbably abstract one. (Sweetser 1990: 24) it is scarcely surprising that to many linguists, the non- phonological side of etymology appears inherently non-scientific (Sweetser 1990: 23) Slide 11 Theory: from concrete to abstract Sweetser (1990: 24) Furthermore, such generalizations about semantic change as we do have... suggest very strongly that meaning more frequently shifts from concrete to abstract than in the opposite direction; an observation which makes the semantic side of many feature-based etymologies doubly suspect. An extremely valuable generalization, but restricted in application mostly to (i) changes related to grammaticalization and (ii) the conceptualization of abstract domains via metaphor. But what to do with data where neither applies (in practice, probably the majority)? Slide 12 A new synchrony-based approach (Urban 2011) Basic Observation: Cross-linguistically, the same semantic relationship that is realized by polysemy in one language may be realized by word-formation relations in another (Evans 1992: 478, inter alia). Khalkha Mongolian kebeli belly, stomach, womb Vietnamese is d con stomach child = womb. This I call an asymmetry in overt marking revealed by cross-linguistic evidence. Slide 13 Hypothesis: Directionality in word-formation (synchronic) often mirrors directionality in semantic change (diachronic): Terms for stomach are likely to develop the meaning womb, but not vice versa. Data: A world-wide sample of 149 languages on both patterns of polysemy and morphologically complex terms for a wordlist of 160 meanings. Slide 14 46 asymmetries and thus testable hypotheses 1. cloud fog/mist 2. sun moon 3. grass straw/hay 4. smoke fog/mist 5. steam fog/mist 6. animal bird 7. lake swamp 8. smoke dust 9. smoke cloud 10. tree branch 11. ashes embers 12. tree forest 13. day dawn 14. flower/blossom bud 15. day noon 16. sun noon 17. honey wax 18. bone horn 19. river/stream flood 20. breast milk 21. mouth lip 22. belly/stomach womb 23. heart belly/stomach 24. milk nipple 25. liver lungs 26. car train 27. heart kidney 28. mirror glasses 29. heart lungs 30. (molar) tooth jaw 31. belly/stomach navel 32. cheek buttocks 33. mouth cheek 34. skin bark 35. saliva/spittle foam 36. house nest 37. mouth estuary 38. tongue flame 49. road/street/way Milky Way 40. bed nest 41. egg testicle 42. sun clock 43. seed testicle 44. shadow mirror 45. bird airplane 46. foam lungs Slide 15 Test against Indo-Aryan data p