Differentiation in
semantics
Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and comp ...
is defined by Löbner (2002) as a meaning shift reached by "adding concepts to the original concepts". His example is ''James Joyce is hard to understand'', where ''understand'' is differentiated from "perceiving the meaning" to "interpret the text meaning".
A related meaning shift is
metonymy, where one builds a new concept out of an element of the original concept. In the example mentioned, ''James Joyce'' most likely refers to "the work of James Joyce" and not to the author – a metonymical shift. If the name were to refer to the man, ''understand'' would be differently differentiated, perhaps one would read it as "interpret the speech articulation" or "comprehend the actions" of the person
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of ...
.
Meaning shifts are very common among language users, and allow for great flexibility of word usage. It is not to be confused with
lexical ambiguity
Ambiguity is the type of meaning in which a phrase, statement or resolution is not explicitly defined, making several interpretations plausible. A common aspect of ambiguity is uncertainty. It is thus an attribute of any idea or statement ...
though, words as uttered in a context may have perfectly precise meanings even though in varying contexts they may be used to express widely different meanings.
See also
*
Metaphor
A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide (or obscure) clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are often compared wi ...
References
*Sebastian Löbner, ''Understanding Semantics'' (2002).
Oxford University Press
Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...
, .
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Semantics