English Historical Semantics - Paperback

by Christian Kay (Author), Kathryn L. Allan (Author)

This guide gives students a solid grounding in the basic methodology of how to analyse corpus data to study new words entering the language or language change. It uses a number of case studies to provide insights into collocations, phraseology, metaphor and metonymy, syntactic structures, male and female language, and language change. Students will become proficient in the key concepts in semantic change by applying ideas from theoretical semantics to historical data. They will also cover recent work at the intersections between historical semantics and other disciplines.

Back Jacket

EDINBURGH TEXTBOOKS ON THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE - ADVANCED Series Editor: Heinz Giegerich Books in this series provide readers with a detailed description and explanation of key areas in English Language study. The authors presuppose a basic working knowledge of the topic and explore aspects of the linguistics of English for an intermediate or advanced student readership. Providing an ideal introduction to historical semantics, this book offers graduate students and advanced undergraduate students in linguistics and English Language an accessible overview of structural and cognitive approaches to English historical semantics. Focusing primarily on Lexical Semantics, the study of word meaning, the book looks at how these approaches help to answer two key questions in Historical Linguistics: how and why languages change. Considering changes both in the meanings of individual word forms and in larger areas of the lexicon, English Historical Semantics illustrates how data can be found and analysed, and explores how Lexical Semantics interacts with other areas of linguistics. In particular, the book describes in detail two of the most significant resources in this field: the Oxford English Dictionary and the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary. By using empirical data to study historical semantics, the book provides students with essential tools to investigate new words entering the language, and to study language change. With extended case studies including colour and kinship terms, suggestions for further reading, and exercises designed to stimulate reflection and test understanding, this textbook is an invaluable resource and practical guide designed to help students navigate this large and fascinating field. Christian Kay is Professor Emeritus and Honorary Professorial Research Fellow in English Language at the University of Glasgow. Kathryn Allan is Senior Lecturer in the History of English at University College London. Cover design & illustration: riverdesign.co.uk [EUP logo] ISBN & barcode

Author Biography

Christian Kay is Professor Emeritus and Honorary Professorial Research Fellow in English Language at the University of Glasgow. She was an editor of the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, and A Thesaurus of Old English, and founded the Scottish Corpus of Texts and Speech. She has written on historical semantics and lexicography and contributed to projects on metaphor and semantic annotation based on the Historical Thesaurus of English dataset.

Kathryn Allan is Senior Lecturer in the History of English at University College London. Her research interests are in historical semantics and lexicology, and she is the co-editor of Historical Cognitive Linguistics and Current Methods in Historical Semantics. Her monograph Metaphor and Metonymy: A Diachronic Approach was published in the Philological Society series, and she is a collaborator on the Keywords Project