KJCKorea
Journal Central

The acceptance of the theory of meaning change in our country comes down to Ullmann(1962). In this book, as a ‘comment’ of meaning change, Meillet cited “discontinuity, vagueness, and loss of flexibility”. Ullmann also added “variability by polysemy, ambiguous contexts, and an infinite set of lexical structures”. More “relationship between words, culture” could be added to this. There are also six reasons for meaning change. They are “language causes, historical causes, social causes, psychological factors, foreign language influences, and the need for a new name”. From a modern perspective, new causes will also be added due to the influence of communication environment, communication means, and the dailyization of non-face-to-face communication. Meanwhile, “the property of meaning change” was also proposed as a methodology. It was noteworthy here that two or more properties often change in meaning in four properties as they are complexly involved. More factors, causes, and properties can be added to the meaning change. In addition, in a future society where the language environment will be distinctly different from the present, there may be other important factors, causes, and properties of meaning changes. In addition, even in “The Consequences of Meaning Change”, <Change in Scope> may include ‘magnification, reduction’ not only the ‘meaning category of the monosemy’ but also the ‘meaning category of the polysemy’. If we look at “Change in Evaluation” from a slightly different perspective, a new perspective arises. From the perspective of ‘near diachronic’ and synchronic points, we can find not only the types of improvement and depravity of meaning, but also the phenomenon in which the original meaning and the improvement or depravity coexist parallel.

meaning change, drift, comment, infection, folk etymology, metaphors, monosemy, polysemy, enlargement of meaning, curtailment of meaning