SEMANTIC CHANGE AND THE

METHODOLOGY OF
SEMANTIC RECONSTRUCTION
Matthias Urban
MPI EVA

Outline

Approaches to and issues in Semantic Reconstruction

A new proposal
Application to IE data
How natural typologically is the reconstructed PIE
lexicon generally?

Practice of Semantic Reconstruction

Nikolayev and Starostin (1994: 7): the semantic

reconstruction is of course very tentative; we do not
pretend that meanings can be exactly reconstructed in
most cases.
Most etymological dictionaries I know do not make explicit
the reasoning the authors used to arrive at semantic
reconstructs at all (though this doesnt mean that authors
didnt apply any or didnt think carefully about what to
reconstruct).

Though note Rix (2002: 1336): Wo die

einzelsprachlichen Bedeutungen differieren, ist der Ansatz
zu suchen, der die wenigsten und/oder leichtesten
einzelsprachlichen Bedeutungsvernderungen impliziert...
But what are leichte Bedeutungsvernderungen?

Koch (2004): typology of practical approaches

The additive type

The selective type

The taxonomic-abstracting type

The engonymic type

Theory: Reconstruction by Semantic

Features
Foreshadowed in Benveniste (1956), discussed
by Fox (1995), applied e.g. by Zorc (2004)
Idea: look at the meanings of cognates in
daughter languages and what semantic
features they have in common. These features
are thought to figure in the proto-meaning as
well.

Benvenistes famous example

(summarized from Koch 2004)

Reconstruct: passage (franchissement)

The resulting proto-meaning thus becomes a sort of

lowest common denominator of the descendent
meanings. If we took these feature-based semantic
etymologies in general at their face value, the
resulting Proto-Indo-European vocabulary would be
an improbably abstract one. (Sweetser 1990: 24)
it is scarcely surprising that to many linguists, the nonphonological side of etymology appears inherently
non-scientific (Sweetser 1990: 23)

Theory: from concrete to abstract

Sweetser (1990: 24) Furthermore, such generalizations

about semantic change as we do have ... suggest very
strongly that meaning more frequently shifts from
concrete to abstract than in the opposite direction; an
observation which makes the semantic side of many
feature-based etymologies doubly suspect.
An extremely valuable generalization, but restricted in
application mostly to (i) changes related to
grammaticalization and (ii) the conceptualization of
abstract domains via metaphor. But what to do with
data where neither applies (in practice, probably the
majority)?

A new synchrony-based approach

(Urban 2011)

Basic Observation: Cross-linguistically, the same

semantic relationship that is realized by polysemy in
one language may be realized by word-formation
relations in another (Evans 1992: 478, inter alia).
Khalkha Mongolian kebeli belly, stomach, womb
Vietnamese is d con stomach child = womb .
This I call an asymmetry in overt marking revealed by
cross-linguistic evidence.

Hypothesis: Directionality in word-formation

(synchronic) often mirrors directionality in
semantic change (diachronic): Terms for
stomach are likely to develop the meaning
womb, but not vice versa.
Data: A world-wide sample of 149 languages
on both patterns of polysemy and
morphologically complex terms for a wordlist
of 160 meanings.

46 asymmetries and thus testable

hypotheses
1. cloud fog/mist
2. sun moon
3. grass straw/hay
4. smoke fog/mist
5. steam fog/mist
6. animal bird
7. lake swamp
8. smoke dust
9. smoke cloud
10. tree branch
11. ashes embers
12. tree forest
13. day dawn
14. flower/blossom bud
15. day noon
16. sun noon
17. honey wax
18. bone horn
19. river/stream flood
20. breast milk
21. mouth lip

22. belly/stomach womb

23. heart belly/stomach

24. milk nipple

25. liver lungs
26. car train
27. heart kidney
28. mirror glasses
29. heart lungs
30. (molar) tooth jaw
31. belly/stomach navel
32. cheek buttocks
33. mouth cheek
34. skin bark
35. saliva/spittle foam
36. house nest
37. mouth estuary
38. tongue flame
49. road/street/way Milky Way
40. bed nest
41. egg testicle
42. sun clock
43. seed testicle
44. shadow mirror
45. bird airplane
46. foam lungs

Test against Indo-Aryan data

Semantic Change
Matches
Prediction
Semantic Change
Does Not Match
Prediction

Developments in Developments
Individual Lexical for Meanings
Items
Only

p < .002

p < .05

(Binomial test)

Caveat: not considered is the special case of shift

from animal body part to human body part (beak
mouth etc.), since pragmatically special

Application to IE reconstruction

Given that there is reason to believe that the

predictions work out (although it would be required
to test against more data to get a better assessment
of the validity of the suggestions), the asymmetries
can be applied for semantic reconstruction.
Standard of Comparison: Reconstructions in Pokorny
(1969/1994). Reconstructions here are mostly of
the taxonomic-abstracting type.

22. womb belly/stomach

Root / lemma: udero-, udero- (Pk 1104-1105)

Reconstructed Meaning: Bauch, und gleichbedeutende Worte hnlichen Anlautes

Material:
Ai. udara-m Bauch, Anschwellung des Leibes, der dicke Teil eines

Dinges, Hhlung, Inneres

Lat. uterus Unterleib, Bauch, bes. Mutterleib, Gebrmutter [], venter Bauch

1. fog/mist cloud

Root / lemma: sneudh- (Pk 978)

Reconstructed Meaning: Nebel; neblig, dster

Material:
Av. snaoa- Wolke, sdbalui nd leichtes Gewlk, Nebel, Regenwolke,

gr. . , , lat. nbs Wolke

cymr. nudd Nebel

Suggestion: Reconstruct cloud (in line with the evidence from older stages)

9. cloud smoke

Root / lemma: reu-b / reu-g (Pk 871-872)

Reconstructed Meaning: sich erbrechen, rlpsen, hervorbrechen, auch Wolke, Rauch

Material:
Wenn alb. r Wolke aus *rougi entstanden ist wie nhd. Rauch, ist ein bereits uridg.
*reug Wolke, Rauch vorraussetzbar.

If anything, more likely only Rauch (would also fit better as metaphorical extension of basic
verbal meaning); but note that the etymology is more complicated (Kluge 2002)

23. stomach heart

Root / lemma: skerd-, krd-, krd-, kred- (Pk 579-580)

Reconstructed Meaning: Herz

Material:
Arm. sirt, Instr. srti-v Herz

gr. (att.), (hom.), (lesb.), (kypr.) Herz; Magen; Mark

bei
Pflanzen'
Hitt. Ka-ra-az (karts) Herz []

41. testicle egg

Root / lemma: (u)i -om (Pk 783)

Reconstructed Meaning: Ei, d. h. das vom Vogel gehrige

Material:
Old pers. xya Ei

gr. att. (* (u)i -om), ol. (* (u)i -om), dor. (* (u)i -om) Ei
cymr. wy, corn. uy Ei
Av. ap-vaya entmannt (?), falls aus apa-vaya ohne Hode

Advantages
-Consistent Method
-Reconstructed Meanings are natural
-Based on synchronic typological data,
so even languages with no documented
history can contribute to the data pool
Disadvantages
-Margin of error, probabilistic only
-Requires at this stage further empirical
substantiation and testing on other language families
-Requires expansion to different meanings

How natural typologically is the

reconstructed PIE lexicon otherwise?

One of the most striking properties is the huge

amount of analyzable items, both derivatives and
compounds.
How natural is that, and is an increase in
analyzability in reconstructs an artifact of the
process of reconstruction?

Comparison of the same meanings in Proto-Uralic:

Comparison of the same meanings in Proto-NakhDaghestanian:

Unsystematic comparison suggests that

reconstruction does not automatically entail a
largely analyzable lexicon.
But whence the difference?
Again, synchronic typology may help: the shorter
the lexical roots are in a language, the more
analyzable terms its lexicon will feature (Urban
forthcoming, on the basis of a sample of 72
languages):

IE Lexical root structure: monosyllabic, dominantly

CeC structure, with possibility of root enhancements
Roots typically verbal, with nominals often derived
from them
PIE reconstruct in line with typological evidence:

PIE would be in this group

Thank you!

References

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10.251-264.
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