From: Tavi
Message: 68921
Date: 2012-03-11
--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Tavi" <oalexandre@...> wrote:
>That is, the concepts of "word" and "meaning" are analogue to "species" and "ecological niches" in biology. Two competing species within the same niche can lead to the extinction of one of them, an outcome implictly assumed by the lexical replacement model. But in other cases, a process called "niche differentiation" occurs, by which a new niche is created to accomodate one of the competing species. This is comparable to the semantic split which happened in the English word for 'dog'.
> The thing is I don't understand the utility of the concept "lexical
> replacement" in comparative linguistics, which (if I understood well)
> treats meanings as if they were ecological niches
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_niche?PHPSESSID=6p9cglivdvragdt\
> qd6mip56ol7> . That is, what these studies measure is the rate a given
> meaning is occupied by different words along time.
>
> But IMHO what it really matters are the words themselves, which in the
> course of time **change** their meaning (i.e. they undergo semantic
> shift). For example, the IE word for 'dog' hasn't been "replaced" in
> English, but only has shifted its meaning to 'hound'.
>