Motivation and semantic change

One more linguistic cause of semantic change is called fixed context.

• One more linguistic cause of semantic change is called fixed context.
• E.g. the word token brought into competition with the word sign and became restricted in use to a number of set expressions, such as love token, token of respect etc. and also became specialized in meaning.

CAUSES OF SEMANTIC CHANGE

• CAUSES OF SEMANTIC CHANGE
• Extra-linguistic Linguistic
• Ellipsis differentiation of synonyms fixed
• context

2.2. NATURE OF SEMANTIC CHANGE

• A necessary condition of any semantic change is some connection, some association between the old meaning and the new one. There are two kinds of association involved in various semantic changes:
• a) similarity / resemblance of meanings;
• b) contiguity of meanings.