University of Gothenburg
Dirk Geeraerts
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  4. The Linguistic Forum: An onomasiological perspective on semantic change

The Linguistic Forum: An onomasiological perspective on semantic change

Culture and languages

Guest lecture by Dirk Geeraerts, professor emeritus of theoretical linguistics at the University of Leuven, Belgium. Everyone’s warmly welcome to participate in this event organised by the Linguistic Forum!

Lecture
Date
13 Mar 2024
Time
15:15 - 17:00
Location
J415, Faculty of Humanities, Renströmsgatan 6
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Seminar language: English
Organizer
Department of Languages and Literatures; Department of Philosophy, Linguistics and Theory of Science; Department of Swedish, Multilingualism, Language Technology

An onomasiological perspective on semantic change

The regularity of semantic change - the existence of substantive patterns in the semantic evolution of expressions - is a central topic in contemporary diachronic semantics. Originating in lexical research (as in Sweetser 1990, From etymology to pragmatics), it currently appears in different forms in grammaticalization research, diachronic conceptual metaphor theory, lexical typology, and computational diachronic semantics. Against the predominant tendency to formulate the 'laws of semantic change' from a semasiological perspective, I will suggest that the explanation of semantic change and the detection of regularities may be better served by an onomasiological orientation. This will include a.o. a discussion of the Invited Inferencing Model of semantic change (Traugott & Dasher 2005, Regularity in semantic change), and an overview of the onomasiological lines of research that I developed with my associates in the wake of Geeraerts 1997, Diachronic Prototype Semantics. The talk will focus on lexical issues, with a brief excursion to alternation studies in construction grammar research.

The Linguistic Forum

The linguistic forum is an informal meeting place for all linguists working at the Faculty of Humanities. We are a faculty-wide seminar activity with financial support from the faculty (since 2020). Our aim is to promote knowledge exchange and collaboration between the faculty's linguists. Read more at https://medarbetarportalen.gu.se/internt-sprak/natverk/sprakvetenskapligt-forum/.

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Register to our mailing list https://medarbetarportalen.gu.se/internt-sprak/formular/sprakvetenskapligt-forum/ to get information on upcoming events. 

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