History and Background What Research Suggests In such a context, the anchor point can be the actual location of the speaker, or her/his home village can serve as conventionalized anchor point (similar to the conventionalized use of Sanzhi Dargwa demonstratives mentioned above). Leiden: Brill. Berlin: de Gruyter. These are: narrowing, broadening, amelioration, pejoration, and semantic reclamation. I then propose the elevational hierarchy along which the basic elevational meaning categories can be ordered. Masters thesis, University of Papua New Guinea, Port Moresby. Only topographic elevational systems make a straightforward reference to mountains or hills, but as I stated above, most languages have general elevational systems and genuine topographic systems are rare. Soc. I am grateful to Don Kilian for helpful suggestions and discussions of elevational demonstratives and advice with respect to the data. Holton, G. (2000). This general elevation and availability is called spreading activation. Dixon, R. M. W. (2003). Semantic change can be caused by extralinguistic or linguistic causes. Heeschen, V. (1998). (i) Co-expression of elevational and demonstrative meaning in a single morpheme. Which sentence DOESN'T use an ameliorated word? . Out of six demonstrative forms (with anaphoric and deictic variants), only one (tatu) co-expresses the elevational meaning UP and the deictic meaning distal. 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 particular, it is not sufficient if the demonstrative only occurs in example sentences that refer to people, animals, and other relatively big objects such as trees or houses and their location in the outside geophysical environment. This led to the word's meaning to die of hunger. The sense of the word 'terrific' that we still use now - meaning 'excellent' - began to be used later in the 19th century. It is sometimes also referred to as semantic deterioration. Example #5: Night (By William Blake) We can find use of semantic features in poetry more elaborately, as these features describe the meanings of sentences, phrases, and words, and make relations between them. Topographic elevational demonstratives basically mean something like uphill/downhill, upriver/downriver and the like. True or False - Meat is an example of semantic narrowing. Dixon, R. M. W. (1972). Yu, N. (1998). In Iaai, the elevationals are in complementary distribution with other items that also convey compass points. Table 5. Amelioration: Definition, Meaning & Example | StudySmarter English Lexis and Semantics Amelioration Amelioration Amelioration 5 Paragraph Essay A Hook for an Essay APA Body Paragraph Context Essay Outline Evidence Harvard Hedging Language Used in Academic Writing MHRA Referencing MLA Opinion Opinion vs Fact Plagiarism Quotations Restate Summarize In Buru (Malayo-Polynesia, Moluccas of Indonesia) topographic elevationals express three elevational values (UP, DOWN, and ACROSS) and general elevational morphemes only two (UP and DOWN) (Table 6). Reesink, G. P. (1999). Structures and Their Functions in Usan: A Papuan Language of Papua New Guinea. The term 'semantic shift' can also be used to refer to the changing meanings of words. A Grammar of Central Alaskan Yupik: An Eskimo Language. Create beautiful notes faster than ever before. Later, the sense of the word shifted and it was associated with 'mental state, mode of thinking' until its meaning took on more negative connotations and it began to be associated with what we understand by 'attitude' today - 'confronting, uncooperative manner'. However, only on the island of New Guinea and immediately adjacent islands, in particular in the New Guinea Highlands, elevational demonstratives are found across a large range of different language families. Amelioration is a term that refers to when a word acquires a more positive meaning over time. Brown, P. (2012). No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. For example, the original meaning of ambassador was . According to Ozanne-Rivierre (2004, p. 135), there are other Austronesian languages such as Taba with the same temporal extension DOWN = PAST. This means that the word went the semantic change (more specifically narrowing). Sociocultural factors can influence narrowing as a major shift in a country's politics or social landscape will lead to semantic changes. On the expression of spatio-temporal relations in language, in Universals of Human Language, Vol. Leer, J. In Iaai, an Oceanic language from New Caledonia, only the second equation, i.e., DOWN = PAST exists. . This additional semantic component is either not expressed by a separate morpheme and then part of the basic demonstrative stem, or it is expressed by a separate morpheme. This is a clear indication that the speaker cannot be the deictic center that serves as the point of anchoring for the location of the woman. Doctoral dissertation, La Trobe University, Melbourne. Below, we will discuss the characteristics of these, and look at examples of each type of semantic change. The topographic and elevational morphemes express also directional and locational meanings (e.g., allative). Terms such as 'sick' or 'wicked' now also have positive connotations. If we break the term 'extralinguistic' down we can see that it refers to factors that are 'extra' so exist outside the language itself. 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. Directional are used instead, e.g., hey! https://www.thoughtco.com/amelioration-word-meanings-1689082 (accessed May 1, 2023). Percept. Distance contrasts in demonstratives, in The World Atlas of Language Structures Online, eds M. S. Dryer and M. Haspelmath (Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology). G. P. Reesink (Jakarta: Universitas Katolik Indonesia Atma Jaya), 105129. Linguist. For example, the word 'cool' was originally used in the context of jazz music but as the popularity of jazz increased, the word became associated with anything trendy. If the combination is tight such that the items are synchronically monomorphemic, this leads to the deceptive impression that the elevational component is also deictic. Amelioration is less common than the opposite historical process, called pejoration . Bender and Beller (2014, p. 348) provide useful graphic representations of the basic types and further subtypes. For example, in Manambu (Ndu, Sepik, Papua New Guinea), three person-based deictic stems take gender, number and the current relevance suffix, followed by the topographic and general elevational morphemes (Table 8). Most of the meanings are well-known from the literature on demonstratives (see, e.g., the lists by Diessel, 1999, p. 51; Dixon, 2003; Imai, 2003; Levinson, 2018, p. 35). Time and space in Tzeltal: is the future uphill? Yarapea, A. M. (2006). In the Himalayas, only Sino-Tibetan languages have elevationals. The data for this paper mainly come from grammatical descriptions of some 50 languages with elevational demonstratives from a range of different language families across the globe. Instead, they co-occur with determiners. The term, 'cool', was popular within the language of jazz musicians, as it referred to a specific style of music ('cool jazz')! Casad, E. H. (1984). Nungon makes formal distinctions between the first three syntactic contexts (Sarvasy, 2014, pp. Casad, E. H. (1985). Through the process of amelioration a word that used to have a negative meaning develops a positive one. The Manambu Language of East Sepik, Papua New Guinea. Demonstratives in Space and Discourse: A Synchronic and Diachronic Analysis. Miyaoka, O. Sougb, in Studies in Irian Languages: Part II, ed. 12, 99142. It is now used to refer to hunting dogs, such as bloodhounds or beagles. Everything you need for your studies in one place. The only language I found so far that contradicts this otherwise robust cross-linguistic tendency is Yakkha. For a detailed explication of the concept of frames of reference in spatial language and its three basic types, intrinsic, absolute and relative, see Levinson (2003, pp. A word that previously had a negative meaning develops a positive one. Examples (1)(4) illustrate all four contexts. Berlin: de Gruyter. Holton, G. (2019). Ozanne-Rivierre, F. (2004). For example, demonstratives in the Athabaskan language Tanacross (Alaska) morphologically and semantically combine deictic meaning (distality) with specific topographic and elevational morphemes. Widening/Extension => range of meanings of a word increases so that the word can be used in more contexts than were appropriate before the change -dog =>1) specific powerful breed of dog => all breeds or races of dog While amelioration is a process in which a word that used to have a more negative meaning develops a more positive one over time, pejoration occurs when the once positive meaning of a word changes into a more negative one. By contrast, in a relative frame of reference there is a ternary relation because in addition to the figure and the ground (relatum or ground object) there is an anchoring point (=the origin of the coordinate system). Dallas, TX: SIL. Languages with morphologically complex elevational demonstratives in which the elevational meaning is expressed by bound roots or affixes and regularly combines with demonstrative stems are Blagar, Tauya, Tanacross (Table 4), Koyukon, Andi (Table 5), Manambu (Table 8), Ngiyambaa (7), and Dyirbal (10). A Reference Grammar of Southeastern Tepehuan. 9193). 57, 145. Random House, 2008) Hound and Indigenous The main results of this study can be summarized as follows. Daga (Papuan), for instance, has a particularly rich system with 14 demonstratives, of which two are merely person-based, eight co-express three distance-based meanings (CLOSE, DISTAL, and FAR DISTAL) with the elevational values UP, DOWN, and LEVEL, and four more encode only elevational meanings (Table 9). In (6), I introduced the basic terms for verticality values. For example, the verb 'to starve' originally meant 'to die'; however, it was frequently used in sentences about hunger. Doctoral dissertation, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. Fig. In the context of this sentence, the word 'sick' means 'corrupt, troubled'. Fortescue, M. (1984). Spot two examples of semantic broadening! Sentence (34) is the only example that she cites for this use and it shows the elevational UP-directional da up (without a preceding pronoun, deictic or anaphoric suffix). A Grammar of Yakkha. The first two equations are also found in Bantawa. There are two different causes of semantic change. Vertical spatial relations among objects remain largely constant with respect to a moving observer whereas on the transverse (i.e., horizontal) plane spatial relations change more frequently. Stop procrastinating with our study reminders. Elevation and the relative frame of reference. You're sick! For instance, the speaker who uttered (19) is located in a village at around 100 m above sea level and Itanagar, where he would like to go, is situated at around 440 m and thus higher, and to the south but not visible from his village. New Guinea is the only area in which a wide range of languages with different genealogical affiliations that are spoken in mountain settlements have elevational demonstratives and thus geography or even language contact might have played a role in the development of those systems. However, this hypothesis might obviously be rejected by new data and future studies. In Sougb the equation is the opposite, namely UP = west and DOWN = east (26). Introduction: demonstratives: patterns in diversity, in Demonstratives in Cross-Linguistic Perspective, eds S. C. Levinson, S. Cutfield, M. Dunn, N. Enfield, and S. Meira (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 142. The word, 'engine', was originally used to mean any war machine. Below, we will look at two different examples of pejoration: The word, 'silly', is a common example of pejoration. The demonstratives in the East Caucasian language Andi (Zilo dialect, Caucasus, Russia) are particularly transparent and consist of stems that express distance- and person-based deixis, followed by a range of further optional suffixes such as an emphatic marker, the elevational morphemes and gender suffixes (and/or oblique stem markers and case suffixes not displayed in Table 5). What does it now refer to? There are 5 main types of semantic change. Figure 2 shows a person stretched out on the ground. The first example comes from Tidore (North Halmahera), in which the elevational with the meaning UP is used to refer to locations and movements in the direction of the sultans palace even though the palace is located rather low.18 van Staden (2018) calls this usage royal up and shows that in certain cases it includes de facto downward movement. Stop procrastinating with our smart planner features. However, in (22) the UP-demonstrative occurs together with the hearsay evidential, which means that the speaker has acquired her/his information from the speech of others. Only when the referent is potentially visible (i.e., within the minimal local and larger local domain) the relevant items encode elevational and riverine meanings. 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. R. J. Hayward (London: SOAS), 210355. Fig. Figure 1. Positions along the vertical axis cannot easily be rotated or reflected in contrast to positions on the back/front and the left/right axes (i.e., front becomes back or left becomes right through rotation or reflection). Upload unlimited documents and save them online. The three body planes and axes. Lang. Tidore: non-contrastive demonstratives, in Demonstratives in Cross- Linguistic Perspective, eds S. Levinson, S. Cutfield, M. Dunn, N. Enfield, and S. Meira (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 343360. Recalling the type of food people in ancient Egypt used to eat. However, over the years, the meaning of this word broadened to refer to any type of work or job. An old lady with short white hair who usually wears a red coat. Furthermore, a number of languages spoken on volcanic islands of Southeast Asia have elevational demonstratives. Friedman, V. (1994). Ameliorate is pronounced like this: uh-mee-lee-uh-rayt. The last context (iv) has several subtypes (presentative, identifier, localizer, and copular demonstratives, see Killian, unpublished for the full typology, explanations and examples). We have to distinguish at least three domains (which obviously form a continuum and therefore lack clear borders): (i) The local domain: the minimal local scale is the peripersonal sphere, but it extends to the area inside a house or its immediate surrounding; locations within this area are often visible. Visibility has attracted some attention (Diessel, 1999, pp. A Grammar of Galo. I also suggest that the same principle should apply to other semantic distinctions that demonstratives in some languages express such as visibility or audibility since such semantic categories are only relevant when the referent is not near to the speaker. Will you pass the quiz? In this paper, I concentrate on the semantic and pragmatic properties of elevational demonstratives, more specifically, adnominal, spatial adverbial, and pronominal demonstratives. The author confirms being the sole contributor of this work and has approved it for publication. The reason for the relative rareness of person-based elevational demonstratives is probably unnecessary specificity. For example, Sanzhi Dargwa has a general elevational system clearly based on an abstract vertical axis (Forker, 2019). Grimes, C. E. (1991). There are three major types of semantic change. TABLE 4 Table 4. Blagar, Galo (26) and all East Caucasian languages in my sample (Avar, Lak, Andi, and Sanzhi Dargwa) have not only spatial elevational demonstratives, but also a further class of elevational demonstratives that function as manner adverbs, e.g., Blagar do-la (up.there-as) like that/those up there (not necessarily visible) (Steinhauer, 2014, p. 159). The word, 'hound', traditionally referred to any type of dog. They can also be general as in Usan and applied in the local domain (14). This proves Holton (2019) remark that elevation does not require mountains. The definitions of the general elevational demonstratives given in (6) do not refer to salient landmarks. I suspect that these claims are probably sometimes wrong or at least misleading because, first, the authors do not provide unambiguous evidence that the relevant items refer on the basis of the geophysical environment and not simply to the vertical dimension.
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semantic elevation examples