Talk:Semantic change

Nationality
I think an example of a word changing right now is nationality. Philosophically it's a concept all it's own - but in legal documents it's much more akin to citizenship (not exactly citizenship, but much closer to that than the old concept of nationality). And in common use "What is your nationality" is akin to "What is your ethnicity?" I'll leave it to the more experienced to decide whether or not to include this, but I wanted to bring it up to discussion. 1 December 2005

Awful as portmanteau?
Beautiful, delightful and remorseful could all be said as "full of beauty, delight or remorse". I don't think that it behooves the reader to throw other linguistic terminology at them for issues that are understood to them (-ful) and not fully understood to them (how -ful is a bound morpheme that comes from the free morpheme "full", etc.)

I guess, what I'm trying to get at is why it would be necessary to overly "jargonize" an intro snipet to Semantic Change with other heavy linguistic terminology, seemingly just added for its own sake. To me, portunhol, chillaxing and frappuccino are portmanteaux, not words like "awful" that simply underwent internal orthographic changes because of morphemic shift. Save the introduction of other linguistic jargon for more authentic examples.

71.57.186.90 (talk) 19:07, 12 February 2012 (UTC)Tom in Florida

Of mice and mice, a Blank, and the alleged similarity of concepts
This version of the article, edited by User:Sinatra at 14:15, 13 October 2007, says


 * However, Blank's (1998) categorization has been gaining more and more acceptance:
 * metaphor (= change based on similarity between concepts, e.g. mouse 'rodent' > 'computer device'; Grzega (2004) paraphrases this as “similar-to” relation)

(It doesn't identify "Blank 1998".)

Over seven years later, we are told:


 * However, the categorization of has gained increasing acceptance:
 * Metaphor: Change based on similarity between concepts, e.g., mouse "rodent" → "computer device".

(This still doesn't identify "Blank 1998".)

I do not understand the similarity between the concepts of rodent and computer [input] device. (Indeed, to me they seem extraordinarily dissimilar concepts.) What am I missing? -- Hoary (talk) 05:29, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

"Narrowing" listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect Narrowing and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 September 4 until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Mover of molehills move me 23:14, 4 September 2022 (UTC)

Lacks of references
There are a number of examples here that have no reference. Rickogorman (talk) 13:40, 12 February 2023 (UTC)