A corpus-based study of gradual meaning change in Late Modern English

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The present study focuses on the analysis of a set of originally nautical terms (aboard, ahead, aloof and astern) in the Late Modern English period. Specifically, the main interest lies in showing the contribution of corpora to the analysis of meaning change. The examples containing the chosen terms were extracted from the «Corpus of Late Modern English Texts» (Extended Version) (CLMETEV). They were all used for the first time on board ships, i.e., they were part of the nautical jargon, and their meanings were originally connected to the notions of location and/or direction. However, most of them extended their uses to other contexts because of different processes of grammaticalization and developed metaphorical extensions. The analysis of the examples as well as the contexts in which they appeared was followed by a series of statistical analyses to compare the evolution of the meanings and the frequency of usage of the different words. The results show that, in general, whereas at the beginning the literal original meanings of the words were more frequently present, towards the end of the period they had already achieved the range of meanings that can be found in the Oxford English Dictionary and even others not present in it. Also, their presence was restricted to very specific texts, mainly connected to theworld of the sea, in the early 18th century, whereas later on in the period most of the texts included in the corpus contained at least one of the terms. Finally, it can also be observed that towards the end of the period some collocations between the chosen terms and some verbs become gradually closer and, therefore, more grammaticalized.