From 74774.157@compuserve.com Sat Sep 2 14:57:14 1995 Date: 02 Sep 95 00:46:11 EDT From: Jeffrey Henning <74774.157@compuserve.com> To: BlindCopyReceiver: ; Subject: _Model Languages_ Issue 4 Part 1 NOTE: If you received more than one copy of this newsletter, please let know how each copy was addressed. Thanks. MODEL LANGUAGES The newsletter discussing newly imagined words for newly imagined worlds ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Volume I, Issue 4 -- August 1, 1995 Meaning Change Silly are the goddy tawdry maudlin for they shall christgeewhiz bow down before him: bedead old men, priest and prester, babeling a pitterpatternoster: no word is still the word, but, a loafward has become lord. - Ronald Suffield, _The Tenth Beatitude_ This subtle poem by the English philologist Ronald Suffield is actually written at two levels. For Suffield intends that the reader hold in mind not just the current meanings of these words but the original meanings as well. For the meaning of a word changes over time. The example everyone knows is _gay_, which originally meant "merry", but because some people are a little too merry came to mean "wanton", and because some people are a little too wanton came to mean "homosexual", which is the sense almost exclusively used now. A model language that you develop will have words that are descended from words with quite different meanings. Some of the words used in Ronald Suffield's poem, _The Tenth Beatitude_, will be used to demonstrate how words change through time. PEJORATION Pejoration is the process by which a word's meaning worsens or degenerates, coming to represent something less favorable than it originally did. Most of the words in Suffield's poem have undergone pejoration. For instance, the word _silly_ begins Suffield's poem and meant in Old English times "blessed", which is why Suffield calls his poem a beatitude (Christ's beatitudes begin with "blessed are the..."). How did a word meaning "blessed" come to mean "silly"? Well, since people who are blessed are often innocent and guileless, the word gradually came to mean "innocent". And some of those who are innocent might be innocent because they haven't the brains to be anything else. And some of those who are innocent might be innocent because they knowingly reject opportunities for temptation. In either case, since the more worldly-wise would take advantage of their opportunities, the innocents must therefore be foolish, which of course is the current primary meaning of the word _silly_. The word _goddy_ in the poem is a metaplasmus (artful misspelling) of _gaudy_. The word _gaudy_ was derived from the Latin word _gaudium_, "joy", which was applied to praying (as a type of rejoicing). Because the most common prayers in Middle English times were the prayers of the rosary, Middle English _gaude_ came to be associated with the rosary and came to mean "an ornamental rosary bead". Unfortunately, not all who prayed with the rosary were genuinely pious; many were like the Pharisees of old and just wanted to be seen praying -- religion for them was decorative (ornamental) rather than functional. As a result, modern English _gaudy_ gradually acquired its current meaning of tasteless or ostentatious ornamentation. A related word to _gaudy_, which is not explicitly referenced in Suffield's poem but is implied, is _bead_ (in the poem, _bedead_ is probably an anagrammatic play on _beaded_). In Middle English times, _bead_ (then spelled 'bede') referred only to a rosary bead. Middle English _bede_ was itself descended from Old English _gebed_, prayer. The phrase _telling one's beads_ was literally "saying one's prayers", with each rosary bead used to keep count of the number of prayers said. In the days when all English-speaking Christians were Catholics, using the rosary was such a common practice that it was only natural for the word for prayer to become the word for the bead used to say a prayer. In this way, Suffield is arguing, deep spiritual communication has been trivialized into a trinket. Modern English _bead_ has come so far from its original center that its sphere of meaning no longer includes prayer -- but does include other small round objects, such as beads of sweat. The word _rosary_, incidentally, originally was Latin for "a rose garden", which was applied as a metaphorical description of the prayer cycle, which was "a rose garden of prayers", with the rose garden symbolizing both the Garden of Eden (or paradise, which originally meant, well we could go on forever...) and the rose of the Virgin Mary. A word that has shown similar semantic degeneration to _gaudy_ is _tawdry_. In the eighth century, AEthelthy/rth, Queen of Northumbria, abdicated her office and renounced the pleasures of the flesh, having her marriage to the King of Northumbria annulled to become abbess of a monastery on the Isle of Ely. This act of sacrifice and her subsequent holiness prompted others to revere her as a saint. Legend has it that she died of a disease of the throat, a disease that she regarded as judgment upon the vanity of her youth, when she loved to wear beautiful necklaces in court. Eventually, AEthelthy/rth was beatified, and -- as by this time phonetic change had simplified her name to _Audrey_ -- she was known as St. Audrey. An annual fair was held in her memory each October 17th, and at the fair were sold cheap souvenirs, including a neck lace called _St. Audrey's lace_. In England, the initial [s] of saints' names is often elided (for instance, the town of St. Albans in Hertfordshire is locally pronounced as [talbans] by some). As a result of this process, by the 1800s, the necklaces were called _tawdry laces_. It wasn't long before _tawdry_ was applied to the other cheap souvenirs sold at the annual fair, with the result that _tawdry_ became a general adjective meaning "gaudy and cheap in appearance". The word _tawdry_ is not the only eponymous word to degenerate: the last word in Suffield's first stanza, _maudlin_, is short for Magdalene. Mary Magdalene was the reformed prostitute who wept at Christ's tomb that first Easter morning; this weeping has been memorialized in innumerable medieval paintings and stain-glass windows. As a result, her name came to be used to describe anyone who was weeping, and from there the meaning radiated out to "excessively sentimental." _Magdalene_ came to be pronounced _maudlin_ through gradual phonetic change; in fact, _Magdalen College_ at Oxford University is locally known as _Maudlin_. _Silly are the goddy tawdry maudlin._ Moving on to the next line of Suffield's poem (_for they shall christgeewhiz bow down before him_), we find another religious figure, of greater stature than Mary Magdalene or St. Audrey, who has had his name spawn many new words. Of course, this is Jesus Christ, whose name has become an oath. Because swearing is considered inappropriate in polite society, people slightly changed the sound of the invective. _Damn it!_ became _darn it!_, _shit!_ became _shoot!_, _Jesus!_ became _gee_, _gee whiz_ and _geez_ and _Jesus Christ!_ became _Jiminy Crickets_, among others. These euphemistic changes are called minced oaths. The final word in Suffield's poem to undergo pejoration is _paternoster_, which is descended from the Latin _pater noster_, which represents "Our Father", the first words of the Lord's Prayer. As a result of this relationship, the words came to be known as another name for the Lord's Prayer and came to mean one of the large beads on a rosary on which the Paternoster was recited (those beads again!). As its meaning radiated outward from "large bead", it even came to mean "a weighted fishing line with hooks connected by bead-like swivels". The word _paternoster_ also came to mean any word-formula spoken as a prayer or magic spell. Since the Paternoster was in Latin, and in Medieval times Latin was no longer the native language of any of the reciters, the prayer was often recited quickly and with little regard for the sense of the words. Because of this, _paternoster_ came to mean meaningless chatter, words empty of meaning -- this sense of the word gave rise to the form _patter_. (The word _pitter-patter_, though used by Suffield in his poem, is actually etymologically unrelated to the word _patter_ with this meaning.) _Patter_ has the sense of meaningless words, and sharp words can become rounded and dull. But although Suffield laments that no word is still the Word [of God], some words do assume a dignity they had not before possessed. AMELIORATION Amelioration is the process by which a word's meaning improves or becomes elevated, coming to represent something more favorable than it originally referred to. Two words that have undergone amelioration are _priest_ and _prester_. Both words (along with _presbyter_) are descended from the Greek word _presbuteros_, "older man, elder", a comparative form of the word _presbus_, "old man". Because churches of most religions are headed by elders and not youth, and because age is often equated with wisdom, the Greek word gradually acquired the meaning of "church leader, priest". The different forms represent borrowings made at different times, with _priest_ being the oldest English form, followed by _prester_, followed by the learned borrowing of _presbyter_. In what for Suffield is the greatest example of amelioration, the early Old English word _hla/fweard_, which if translated using its descendant words would be rendered _loafward_, meant "the keeper of the bread" and was applied to the head of a household. Although "keeper of the bread" might bear witness to the importance of that most basic of foodstuffs to early Anglo-Saxons, alternatively one might argue that it had no more literal sense than _bread-_ does in the modern word _breadwinner_. The word _hla/fweard_ has been shortened over time, first to _hla/ford_ and then to _lord_. Over time, the word has been used of not just any head of household but of princes and nobility; this sense was extended to include the Prince of Light, God. For Suffield, this extension of _lord_ makes a fitting appellation for Christ, given that Christ was the keeper of the bread of communion. The word _lord_, which ends the poem, stands in start contrast to the demeaning phrase _christgeewhiz_ used earlier in the poem as an example of pejoration. By ending the poem with the word _lord_, Suffield offers a hope for redemption for all words. Clearly the poet Suffield believes that man has taken the meaning out of God's words, reducing _pater noster_ to _patter_ and God's son's name to a curse. Yet if he is extreme in his view of pejoration as an example of man's trivialization of God and rejection of divine meaning, the process of semantic change is almost universally condemned by teachers, scholars and other concerned language speakers. In fact, semantic drift is as natural as continental drift and almost as inexorable. The meanings of words change, sometimes for the worse, but sometimes providing useful distinctions. Some words, like _lord_, are even inspired. Categories of Semantic Change As the above discussion shows, many people view semantic change with strong emotions. Some, like Suffield, may even perceive it as an almost diabolical force. The discussion of meaning change is often emotionally charged, with the meanings perceived as "improving" (amelioration) or "worsening" (pejoration) over time. This next section will attempt to provide a more clinical overview of how words change meanings. Try this: flip through the dictionary and look at random for a word with four or more meanings, preferably a word you think you know. Chances are you will find that it has an unlikely hodge-podge of meanings, at least one of which will surprise you. Here's what I found when I tried this myself: _daughter_ has these senses, among others: 1. One's female child. 2. A female descendant. 3. A woman thought of as if in a parent/child relationship: _a daughter of Christ_. 4. Something personified as a female descendant: _the Singer sewing machine is the daughter of the loom_. 5. Physics. The immediate product of the radioactive decay of an element. The last sense makes me want to write a short story, _The Daughter of Fat Man_, in which I could use the word _daughter_ in at least three of its senses. How does a word come to have such broad, often very different, meanings? At the simplest level, words do undergo only two types of meaning change, not amelioration and pejoration, but _generalization_(a word's meaning widens to include new concepts), and _specialization_ (a word's meaning contracts to focus on fewer concepts). Generalization Also known as extension, generalization is the use of a word in a broader realm of meaning than it originally possessed, often referring to all items in a class, rather than one specific item. For instance, _place_ derives from Latin _platea_, "broad street", but its meaning grew broader than the street, to include "a particular city", "a business office", "an area dedicated to a specific purpose" before broadening even wider to mean "area". In the process, the word _place_ displaced (!) the Old English word _stow_ and became used instead of the Old English word _stede_ (which survives in _stead_, _steadfast_, _steady_ and -- of course -- _instead_). Generalization is a natural process, especially in situations of "language on a shoestring", where the speaker has a limited vocabulary at her disposal, either because she is young and just acquiring language or because she is not fluent in a second language. A first-year Spanish student on her first vacation in Spain might find herself using the word _coche_, "car", for cars, trucks, jeeps, buses, and so on. When my son Alexander was two, he used the word _oinju_ (from _orange juice_) to refer to any type of juice, including grape juice and apple juice; _wawa_ (from _water_) referred to water and hoses, among other things. Some examples of general English words that have undergone generalization include: Word Old Meaning _pants_ "men's wide breeches extending from waist to ankle" _place_ "broad street" Specialization The opposite of generalization, specialization is the narrowing of a word to refer to what previously would have been but one example of what it referred to. For instance, the word _meat_ originally referred to "any type of food", but came to mean "the flesh of animals as opposed to the flesh of fish". The original sense of _meat_ survives in terms like _mincemeat_, "chopped apples and spices used as a pie filling"; _sweetmeat_, "candy"; and _nutmeat_, "the edible portion of a nut". When developing your model language, it is meet to leave compounds untouched, even if one of their morphemes has undergone specialization (or any other meaning change). For an example from another language, the Japanese word _koto_ originally referred to "any type of stringed instrument" but came to be used to refer only a specific instrument with 13 strings, which was played horizontally and was popular in the Edo Period. Other examples of specialization, from the development of English, include: Word Old Meaning _affection_ "emotion" _deer_ "animal" _forest_ "countryside" _girl_ "a young person" _starve_ "to die" A Taxonomy of Semantic Change All other semantic change can be discussed in either terms of generalization or specialization. The following diagram shows different subtypes of meaning change. generalization, or extension metonymy metaphorical extension radiation specialization, or narrowing contextual specialization shift amelioration pejoration semantic reversal contronyms meaninglessness A shift in meaning results from the subsequent action of generalization and specialization over time: a word that has extended into a new area then undergoes narrowing to exclude its original meaning. In the unlikely event that all the senses of _place_ except for "a business office" faded away, then _place_ would be said to have undergone a shift. Metonymy Metonymy is a figure of speech where one word is substituted for a related word; the relationship might be that of cause and effect, container and contained, part and whole. For instance, Shakespeare's comment "Is it not strange that sheep's guts should hale souls out of men's bodies?" (from _Much Ado About Nothing_) uses "sheep's guts" to refer to the music produced by harpstrings. Had _guts_ come to mean "music", then the meaning would have shifted due to metonymy. The Greek word _do/ma_ originally meant "roof". In the same way English speakers will metonymically use _roof_ to mean "house" (as in "Now we have a roof over our heads"), the Greeks frequently used _do/ma_ to refer to "house", so that that is now the standard meaning of the word. A Russian word will provide a similar example: _vinograd_, "vineyard", was so frequently used to refer to "wine", as in "Let's have a taste of the vineyard" that it has come to mean "wine". Metaphorical Extension Grace Murray Hopper, the late Admiral and computer pioneer, told a story of an early computer that kept calculating incorrectly. When technicians opened up its case to examine the wiring, which physically represented the machine's logic, a huge dead moth was found, shorting out one of the circuits and causing the faulty logic. That moth was the first of its kind to achieve immortality. Because of it, software is now frequently plagued with "bugs". The use of _bug_ to refer to an error in computer logic was a metaphorical extension that became so popular that it is now part of the regular meaning of _bug_. The computer industry has a host of words whose meaning has been extended through such metaphors, including _mouse_ for that now ubiquitous computer input device (so named because the cord connecting it to the computer made it resemble that cutest of rodents). Metaphorical extension is the extension of meaning in a new direction through popular adoption of an originally metaphorical meaning. The _crane_ at a construction site was given its name by comparison to the long-necked bird of the same name. When the meaning of the word _daughter_ was first extended from that of "one's female child" to "a female descendant" (as in _daughter of Eve_), the listener might not have even noticed that the meaning had been extended. Metaphorical extension is almost a natural process undergone by every word. We don't even think of it as meaning change. In its less obvious instances, we don't even see it as extending the meaning of a word. For example, the word _illuminate_ originally meant "to light up", but has broadened to mean "to clarify", "to edify". These meanings seem so natural as to be integral parts of the words, where senses such as "to celebrate" and "to adorn a page with designs" seem like more obvious additions. A few specific metaphors are common to many different languages, and words can be shown to have undergone similar, if independent, developments. Thus the Welsh word _haul_ and the Gaelic word _su/il_, both meaning "sun", have both come to mean "eye". Nor is this metaphor a stranger to English, where the _daisy_ was in Old English originally a compound meaning "day's eye", from its yellow similarity to the sun. More often, languages will differ in the precise correspondences between words, so that some languages have broad words with many meanings, which must be translated into multiple words in another language. A word like _paternoster_, discussed earlier, with senses ranging from the "Lord's Prayer" to "a magic spell" to "a large bead" to "a weighted fishing line" will have to be translated into four different words in another language (though I challenge you to find an English-to-language-of-your- choice dictionary that indicates the four meanings of _paternoster_). Word Old Meaning _illuminate_ "to light up" [CONTINUED]