Semantic Change. A Comparison betweenWandel der Wortbedeutung by Hermann Paul and Semantic change and cognition by Gábor Györi

Seminar paper from the year 2013 in the subject German Studies - Semiotics Pragmatics Semantics grade: 1.0 University of Hannover language: English abstract: The study of language change has evolved at a high rate throughout the last century.Significant insights have been gained concerning the workings of the human mind andby extension the workings of semantic and linguistic change. Set in comparison andcontrast however it becomes obvious that some convictions have remained stable andstill play a role as prominent as they did in the year of 1880. It can even be argued thatmost of the accomplishments of today's language change researchers strongly build onthose of the last century and could not have been achieved without them. To illustratethis assumption the present termpaper compares two works on language change thatwere written in two different centuries in two different countries; Prinzipien derSprachgeschichte (Chapter 4: Wandel der Wortbedeutung) written by Hermann Paul in1880 and Semantic Change and Cognition written by Gábor Györi in 2002. HermannPaul was a German linguist and lexicographer who was born on August 7 in 1846 andpassed away on December 29 in 1921. He was a significant representative of theNeogrammarian school of thought. The cognitive linguist Gábor Györi is associateprofessor and head of the department of English linguistics at the University of PécsHungary and has a strong focus on the evolution of cognition and categorization.It shall furthermore be shown that Paul's work shares many of the tenets ofmodern cognitive linguistics even though that might not be obvious at the first glancedue to differences in terminology and methodology.In order to filter out similarities and differences between both the authors' pointsof view chapter 1.1 will briefly summarize the contents of Paul's text while chapter 1.2will give an account of the most important tenets of Györi's work. In chapter 2.1 theterminology Paul a