Motivation and semantic change

Linguistic causes

• are factors acting within the language system.
• ellipsis – the omission of one word in a phrase, e.g. the verb to starve in OE meant ‘to die’ and was habitually used in collocation with the word hunger (ME sterven of hunger).
• Later this verb itself acquired the meaning ‘to die of hunger’.

discrimination/differentiation of synonyms, e.g. in OE the word land meant both ‘solid of earth’s surface’ and ‘the territory of a nation’.

• discrimination/differentiation of synonyms, e.g. in OE the word land meant both ‘solid of earth’s surface’ and ‘the territory of a nation’.
• In the ME period the word country was borrowed as its synonym. The meaning of the word land was altered and ‘the territory of a nation’ came to be denoted by the borrowed word country.