Change in Life, Change in Language

This book provides the reader with a description of the semantic change that took place over two periods of the history of English language: Middle English and Early Modern English. The results of the analysis indicate a tendency towards specialisation in the meaning of lexical categories which runs parallel to specialisation in society.

Begoña Crespo is a senior lecturer at the University of La Coruña (Spain). She has been teaching English language and culture since 1996. She earned her PhD in English Philology in 2001 and has published several works on semantic change in English, historical word-formation and the lexicon of medieval and (Early) Modern scientific English. She is head of the research project «Women discourse and variation in English Scientific Texts (1700-1930)».

Contents: Semantic change – Semantic change models – Semantic field – Componential analysis – Language change – Socio-historical Linguistics – Outer history – Inner history – .