Two early twentieth century figures of great importance in the de- velopment of theories of semantic change were Meillet (see especially 1958 [1905–06]), who emphasized the grounding of meaning change in the structure of society, and Saussure (1996 [1916]), whose interests in comparing synchronic sys- tems ultimately led to work on “semantic fields” (see 2.2.3). It is often forgotten that much of Saussure’s work concerned language change, and that his career started with a brilliant reconstruction (1967 [1879]) of Indo-European phonemes that was later known as laryngeal theory. He is now remembered primarily for the profound effect of his interests in the sign as an element in a synchronic sys- tem. According to Saussure, change disrupts the system and is process; synchrony is product. Change emphasizes the arbitrariness of language because individual signs are the result of individual changes over time (even though there may be overall regularities such as the exceptionlessness of sound change). “In spite of appearances to the contrary, diachronic events are always accidental and particular in nature” (Saussure 1996 [1916]: 92) and not subject to “laws” in the sense of generalizations that are “imperative” and “general” (ibid. p. 90). Saussure cites the semantic change Fr. poutre “mare” > “beam, rafter” as an example, saying that “The change can be explained by reference to particular circumstances” (ibid.).
Poutre appears to originate in OF poutrel “young horse,” poutre “young mare.”
Mares carry burdens; analogically, beams carry roofs (Wartburg 1928–66 Lat.
pulliter). While Saussure’s insight is correct that individual signs are the result
“particular” change exemplified by poutre is an example of a general process of metaphoric transfer.
One post-Saussurean line of thinking led to emphasis on the arbitrariness of change, particularly as evidenced by change resulting from external factors, such as changes in material culture. Such approaches focused on referential and denotational meaning. Ullmann (1964) provides an example which, he shows, looks quite simple at first. The bread-roll called croissant might be thought to have this name because of its shape (we might think the meaning of crescent in French was simply extended by metonymy from an early stage of the moon to an object shaped like it). In fact, however, the connection to shape is more com- plex: the French word is calqued (translated into the native language) from Gm.
H¨ornchen “little horn”; this term was first applied to rolls baked in the late seven-
teenth century in Vienna to commemorate a victory over the Turks, whose national emblem was and is the crescent (Ullmann 1964: 197, citing Bloch and Wartburg 1960). This is still a metonymic explanation, but it involves social factors and only indirectly visual ones.
Other examples of denotational meaning changes that reflect social and tech- nological change include terms for economic exchange or for living communi- ties. A contemporary town has little or no referential connection with an OE tun or enclosure beyond designation of a community where people live together, a “population center.” In OE times, such a center was no larger, and often smaller, than what we now think of as a village, it was enclosed, and was not on a scale in which “city” or “urban center” played any part. In the present century changes in the nature of aviation or of information technology have changed the denotation of plane (from a single-engine plane such as the Wright brothers flew to Boeing 747s, the Concorde, and Stealth planes) and computer (from a machine that filled whole rooms to a lap-top). Similarly, Jp. kuruma signified “wheeled vehicle” (by metonymy from “wheel,” see above), including carts and carriages until modern times. During the early part of the twentieth century, kuruma most often referred to rickshaws, but since World War II its default interpretation has come to be “automobile.” MdJ daidokoro “kitchen” originates in LOJ daibandokoro, a com- pound of daiban “portable tray-table” and tokoro “place.” The daibandokoro was a specific room in the Imperial and other palaces of the ninth century and was used for placing (already cooked) food onto portable trays for serving to the nobility. At that time, the room in which the food was cooked was expressed by kuriya, but
dai(ban)dokoro came to be used to refer to this room as well. Daidokoro came to
be used in MJ for “kitchen” in a different type of architecture, namely the room in samurai houses and large farmhouses in which a large kettle was kept over a fire. Daidokoro continues to be used for kitchens in present-day Japan, although Takemitsu (1998: 195) expresses reluctance toward using daidokoro in reference to
a modern Japanese “dining-kitchen” (dainingu kittyin) with various appliances and eating table.
As Meillet 1958 [1905–06]) pointed out, regardless of the extent to which seman- tic changes may be driven by changes in the nonlinguistic world, they are driven in this way within the framework of linguistic meanings: senses, or conceptual structures. Furthermore, they are subject to the kinds of meaning changes outlined in 2.2.1 above, e.g. dai(ban)dokoro was generalized first from a room specialized for a particular phase of food preparation in Imperial palaces to Imperial kitchens as well, then to kitchens in samurai houses, and eventually to kitchens in general; this kind of generalization also involved a mild kind of pejoration. Takemitsu’s reluctance to use the term for a dining-kitchen suggests later specialization.
While changes in material culture are most frequently adduced to support the Saussurean notion of arbitrariness of change in meaning, the most striking examples of such arbitrariness are closely tied to conscious choice and linguistic interven- tion, or “language planning by decree” (Bartsch 1984: 369). We give two examples, one in the technical realm of scientific research, the other in the realm of social interaction (for others, especially in the realm of oligarchic control, see Hughes 1992). Gould (1977: 28–32, citing Bowler 1975) discusses how the Lat. etymology of the scientific term evolution denotes an unrolling of parts that pre-exist. From its earliest uses in English it meant both this and a series of connected events involving growth, even “progress.” As theories of preformationism declined, the first meaning fell into disuse. Definitions associated with development by structural differentiation of unstructured material (“epigenesis”), came to be preferred in the mid nineteenth century. Since evolution was shorter than the phrase Darwin used in The Origin of the Species, “descent with modification,” biologists began to prefer evolution for organic change leading to greater complexity.8 In the twentieth century evolution was extended from “general
progress” to “any genetic change in populations,” including “specific cases of adaptation” (Gould 1977: 32). Such changes in meaning have been affected by transmission of biological theories; they have influenced what is deemed worthy of research, and therefore worthy of funding, and have also filtered down into public consciousness, primarily through pedagogical and informational ma- terials, in ways that are not subject to any kind of regularity of the type we are discussing in this book.
Efforts to develop social awareness and “reinscribe” cultural mores have in re- cent years led to redefinition of terms like rape and harassment. Like changes in
evolution, these are changes that are essentially “objectification” in so far as they
are attempts to preempt for discussion and eventual regulation behaviors that were 8Gould (1977: 32) points out that this was, however, not Darwin’s own view of descent.
originally conceptualized differently. In recent years harass has come to be more and more associated with verbal behaviors, as in:
(8) He chose to live with the poor. He chose to argue for the homeless. He chose to embarrass, harass and challenge our leadership.
(1990 July 6, United Press Intl.; Jesse Jackson, eulogizing Mitch Snyder) According to the OED, harass was borrowed from French in the seventeenth century. It is defined as:
(9) 1. To wear out, tire out, or exhaust with fatigue, care, trouble, etc. Obs. or dial. (the first example is dated 1626)
2. To harry, lay waste, devastate, plunder. Obs. (first example 1618) 3. To trouble or vex by repeated attacks. (first example 1622)
4. To trouble, worry, distress with annoying labour, care, perplexity, importunity, misfortune, etc. (first example 1656)
5. Technical term. To scrape or rub. (first example 1875)
None of the examples in the OED are strictly verbal; all, however, have to do with effect. The American Heritage Dictionary defines the word similarly. Verbal uses are alluded to only in the section on synonyms: “Harass and harry imply system- atic persecution by besieging with repeated annoyances, threats, or demands” (The
American Heritage Dictionary 2000). Harass had, however, come to be extended
to contexts involving verbal events by the beginning of the nineteenth century. A possible early example is:
(10) but was strangely harassed by a queer, half-witted man, who would [“wanted to”] make me dance with him, and distressed me by his nonsense.
(1818 Austen, Northanger Abbey, vol. I, 26) Here would make me dance and distressed me with his nonsense appear to be reports of verbal acts. In (11), also from Austen, the harassing is clearly verbal, in the sense of self-questioning:
(11) while harassing herself in secret with the never-ending question, of whether Captain Wentworth would come or not?
(1818 Austen, Persuasion, vol. II, 227) The contemporary meaning of harass appears to be deeply connected with US federal laws including Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (1964) and Title IX of the Education Amendments Act (1972), forbidding harassment of any type, and specifically sexual and racial harassment. Especially influential is the definition of sexual harassment by the 1980 Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) Guidelines on Discrimination because of Sex. The by now well-known definition is, in part, as follows:
(12) Unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature constitute sexual harassment when (1) submission to such conduct is made either explicitly or implicitly a term of condition of an individual’s employment. . .9
Verbal conduct is central to this definition. Since the Meritor vs. Vinson case in 1986,10efforts to define the hearer’s role as interpreter of meanings have
led to lengthy legal debate concerning the meaning of “unwelcome,” “reasonable person,” more recently “reasonable woman,” and “hostile environment.” As the noun harassment and the cognate verb harass have come to be used in more and more non-legal contexts, older meanings pertaining to effect of conduct are being replaced by newer meanings pertaining to interpretation, and significant uncertain- ties as to the meaning of the words have arisen, leading to constant revision of workplace and campus codes of behavior. One thing that is certain, however, is that language plays a far more prominent role in the meaning of harassment and harass than it did in earlier times, a change that may be attributed not only to changing social expectations, but even more specifically to the 1980 EEOC Guidelines, that is, to interventive change. Interestingly, the interventive change happens to coincide with shifts to “speech act” meaning. Examples (10) and (11) from Austen suggest this change might have been naturally in progress and was merely hastened by intervention.
While much work on semantic change in the years after the publication of Saus- sure’s lectures concerned individual arbitrary change, far more important was the attention paid to the structural oppositions inherent in Br´eal’s list and to the mutual constraints these oppositions imposed on each other (see Ullmann 1957, 1964: 244). For example, in his chapter on semantic change in Language, Bloomfield built on the traditional classification of semantic change as narrowing–widening, metaphor– metonymy, synecdoche, hyperbole, litotes, degeneration–elevation, but insisted that these types of changes could not be regarded as explanatory. In his view such meaning changes arise out of “a connection between practical things” (1984 [1933]: 428), most especially out of language in use: “Since every practical situation is in reality unprecedented, the apt response of a good speaker may always border on semantic innovation” (1984 [1933]: 443). This leads him to insist on the need to determine contexts of change. Since in many cases the social and political contexts are no longer accessible, a more abstract set of contexts needs to be found: that of the oppositions into which the term enters. To Bloomfield the most important investigation in semantic change is gradual extension from one type of situation to 9Title VII, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Guidelines on Discrimination
because of Sex. Federal Register 1980, 45 (219): 74677. 10Meritor Savings Bank vs. Vinson (477 U.S. 57, 1986).
another, with concomitant competition from some other term. For example, of the shift from meat “food” > “edible flesh of an animal” he says that while we may “some day find out why flesh was disfavored in culinary situations” (1984 [1933]: 441), linguistic analysis leads us to:
see that a normal extension of meaning is the same process as an extension of grammatical function. When meat, for whatever reason, was being favored, and flesh, for whatever reason, was on the decline, there must have occurred proportional extension of the pattern:
leave the bones and bring the flesh : leave the bones and bring the meat
= give us bread and flesh : x,
resulting in a new phrase, give us bread and meat. The forms at the left, containing the word flesh, must have borne an unfavorable connotation which was absent from the forms at the right, with the word meat.
(Bloomfield 1984 [1933]: 441; italics original) Bloomfield, therefore, moved from focus on arbitrariness in semantic change, and change in reference, to the structural issue of extension and obsolescence as conse- quences of analogies and patterns that operate on structural forms. Without being explicit about directionality in semantic change, he presumably subsumed it in his claim that: “As to change, we have enough data to show that the general processes of change are the same in all languages and tend in the same direction. Even very specific types of change occur in much the same way, but independently, in the most diverse languages” (Bloomfield 1984 [1933]: 20). His chapter on semantic change ends with a comment on the way in which “personal innovations are modeled on current forms” (1984 [1933]: 443), and on the relationship of ordinary to poetic metaphor, a theme that was to survive long after Bloomfield’s behaviorist, referen- tial views on language had been replaced by focus on mental, sense constructs, and which was taken up in the context of work on semantic fields. It is to the latter that we now turn.