Abstract

Abstract: Colour words have symbolic meanings, which have been acquired over the years and through different cultures. This is why «colour» words are widely used to create new lexical units. In this article, the authors analyse an aspect of the names of colours that is relatively unstudied: their role in the shifting of meaning of a language’s new lexical units. This linguistic study is based on fundamental linguistic anthropology concepts and also on the theoretical assumptions of Cognitive Semantics. After establishing fundamental notions, the study analyses a corpus of lexicographical polylexical neologisms containing a colour word. It focuses on the analysis of those units that include the word «green». The authors’ objective is to determine the semantic mechanisms and conceptual relationships that have generated new meanings of colour words or containing a colour word. Key words: neology, shifting of meaning, semantic change, colours, metaphor, metonymy, cognitive linguistics.

Abstract

Abstract: The study of neology is inextricably linked with the study of language change and, therefore, with diachrony. The aim of this paper is to describe the semantic change process undergone by the Catalan verb esmar, which is the etymological form of the Latin verb *ADAESTIMARE, parallel to the Latinism estimar. This research is corpus-based, using large corpora along with other manually processed materials. The concepts of subjectivation and inferences according to the Invited Inference Theory of Semantic Change (IITSC) have been applied to these materials. Key words: Diachronic semantics, inference, subjectivization, evidentiality, pragmatics, semantic change.