Construal operations in semantic change: the case of abstract nouns

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facets of the same meaning, conventionally associated with the lexical item (see Paradis 2003; Cruse 2003). The boundary between ‘occasion’ and ‘event’ on the one hand and ‘opportunity’ on the other is motivated by the different bases (or settings) decisive of the interpretations of the profile. The temporal and the eventive meanings are interpreted within the same setting, whereas ‘opportunity’ is interpreted within a different setting. The history of tillfälle however adds further meaning variants to the lexical network. The following variants are attested in Old Swedish (Söderwall 1884–1918): ‘event’ (5), ‘opportunity’ (6), ‘occasion’ (7), ‘cause’ (8), and ‘accident’ (9). Of these, ‘accident’ seems to be the earliest meaning, cf. the parallel formations MLG tôval, MHG zuoval ‘accident’, and Lat. accidens (from ad- ‘to’ and cadere ‘fall’ (Hellquist 1957)). (5) ciprianus … taladhe til biscopin all sin tilfälle Ciprianus ... spoke to bishop.the all his events Ciprianus ... told the bishop everything that had happened to him (6) han sökir tilfälle mik fördriffwa oc dräpa he seeks opportunity me to.drive.away and kill he seeks an opportunity to drive me away and kill me (7) jak gaf thik tillfälle I gave you occasion I gave you occasion (8) at ond gerning var hans dödz tilfälle that evil deed was his death.GEN cause that evil deed caused his death (9) aff eno tilfälle of one accident because of an accident 52
As I will argue the meaning ‘accident’ – paraphrased as “a random cause of something that has happened” – in fact includes all the other meaning variants of tillfälle. From ‘accident’ we may proceed to ‘cause’, by way of generalization of the cause-notion, suppressing the feature ‘random’ and leaving ‘cause’ as the only profiled content. The semantic structure of ‘cause’ (C), a well as ‘accident’ 8 , in turn presupposes the concept of ‘event’ (E) – bound to a point of time (PT). Profile C E PT Time Base Fig. 4: The schematic structure of ‘cause’/’accident’. By varying the structure in Fig. 4 also the other meaning variants (cf. 5, 6, 7) are derived. First, ‘event’ is related to ‘cause’ through promotion of the event-notion (E) in the profile, resulting in a schematic structure equal to the one in fig. 2. Further, ‘occasion’ is related to ‘event’ through promotion of the notion ‘point of time’ (PT), resulting in the schematic structure of Fig. 1. In both cases the focus of attention is changed. Finally, ‘opportunity’ is related to both ‘occasion’ and ‘event’ by changing the setting of the entire event-structure, cf. Fig. 3. As shown above the set of meaning variants in Old Swedish also includes the ones retained in Modern Swedish, i.e. ‘occasion’, ‘event’ and ‘opportunity’. Thus both diachronically and synchronically the meaning variants of tillfälle stay within the realms of the complex meaning attested in the earliest use of the word. Assuming that the concept ‘cause’ includes an event, bound to a point of time, provides an explanation of the coexistence of ‘cause’ and ‘opportunity’ (i.e. a possible point of time bound to a possible event) within the same lexical network. There are in fact further examples of this coexistence. Swedish, 8 It is assumed that ‘accident’ and ‘cause’ share the same schematic structure. The feature ‘random’, distinguishing the two meaning variants, is taken to be part of the lexical specification. 53
Page 1 and 2: Reprinted from Tre uppsatser om sem
Page 3 and 4: change may simultaneously be looked
Page 5: A further step from the “pure”
Page 9 and 10: TR LM1 LM2 ‘opinion’ COMMUNICAT
Page 11 and 12: 2.3. Uppgift ‘information’ The
Page 13 and 14: At first glance the two meanings of
Page 15 and 16: What the meaning variants of fråga
Page 17 and 18: As for the meaning variants F1, F3,
Page 19: SAOB = Ordbok över svenska språke

Construal operations in semantic change: the case of abstract nouns

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