[A paper presented at Qualico-97]

Semasiological and Word-formational Processes

in Natural Language Lexical Evolution

Anatoliy A.Polikarpov

1. Basing on the assumption of basic semantic micro-processes do minating in the history of any word meaning is possible to predict [Polikarpov, 1988; 1990; 1991; 1993; 1994; 1995] and to test [Karapetjants, Obukhova, Polikarpov, 1988; Karimova, Polikarpov, 1988; Polikarpov, 1995; 1997; Polikarpov, Kurlov, 1994; Kolodjazhnaja, Polikarpov, 1992; 1994; Kapitan, 1994; Breiter, 1994; Breiter, Polikarpov, 1997; Savchuk, 1997] some most probable directions for the derivative micro-processes (e.g., change of some semasiological and word-formational parameters of a word) and for macro-evolution of a lexical system on the whole, due to various, but correlated changes of its parameters.

2. Basic microproceses are:

1. abstractivization of any meaning, loss of components by it in its individual history;

2. relatively more abstract character of each successive meaning appearing in the history of a word as compared to a maternal meaning.

All other processes and features on the microlevel of a lexical system evolution (processes on the level of a word) are derivatives from mentioned basic ones: changes of the tempo of acquiring new meanings, different rate of losses for meanings of different semantic quality, change of word-formational ability of a word during its history, etc.

Processes on the macro-level of lexical system organization are the result of some specific integration of micro-processes under some boundary conditions specific for the system on the whole.

3. First of all, it is possible to construct a typical curve of the polysemy development of any word which integrates the information for the following basic processes:

- (1) some exaustion in time of the activity of any meaning in "generating" new meanings as a result of its "wearing out" (growth of its abstractness) and making busy its associative valences in its own history as a result of accumulation of realised links while giving birth to new meanings ;

- (2) relatively lower initial level of any succesive meaning's activity in generating new meanings (as a result of its greater relative abstractness);

- (3) increase of the initial level of stability for any successive meaning (as compared to the corresponding preceding meaning) according to its correspondance to the relatively wider sense sphere;

- (4) slight growth of the initially obtained level of stabilityfor a meaning while becoming more abstract in its history (but being usually exausted and deleted from language life much faster than the mentioned kind of the stability can grow).

These four processes are present, but with different degree, in any word history .

4. Typical word polysemy development curve integrates step by step decrease of the tempo of acquiring new meanings up to zero and increase of longevity for each successive meaning up to some large (but not endless) term - in some asymmetric trajectory, with the exponentially-like retarding increase in the beginning, achieving some maximum and then having long history of decreasing polysemy, when addings of new meanings become lesser and lesser (stopping at some time), but losses grow (with retarding according to relatively greater stability of any successive meaning).

5. Processes of "relative" and "absolute" abstractivization of word meanings should lead to the greater probability of older words' meanings to enter synonymic and antonymic relations with meanings of other words in a vocabulary. It is explained by the fact that in the process of abstractivization specific, rare present components of meanings are more vulnerable, oftener are omitted. So, objective degree of similarity between all meanings of some degree of abstractivization should be greater than between meanings of a lower degree of abstractness. This fact leads meanings of ageing words to more successive finding of those counterparts which coincide with them in almost all components (and differ in some small proportion of them) than meanings of younger words, on the average, can do. Differential components in synonymic meanings typically can be neutralized in some specific (synonymic) conditions of their use, or, on the contrary, can be activated as symmetrically opposed (or, sometimes, opposed within a privative kind of an opposition).

Naturally, antonymic potential of a word also grows during its ageing, as a result of the same process of objective growing of similarity with meanings of other words and rise of probability for achieving clear and stable oppositions between meanings.

6. Ability of a word to "generate" new phraseologically bound meanings depends on two different factors, each of them being derived from the same basic factor of successive abstractivization of meanings, but changing in time their relevance for the considered process of idiomaticization in two opposite directions:

(1) the more abstract meanings of a word during its ageing, the less they are able to supply some components for fixing them within a new idiomatic meaning arising on the basis of intersecting meanings of several collocated words;

(2) the more abstract meanings of a word during its ageing, the greater variety of them are able to be used together with meanings of other words and, consecutively, greater chances for them to come across with some of others suit to them for building new idiomatic combinations. Combined action of the two factors developing in the opposite directions predetermines nonmonotonous character of the dependence of the development of word's idiomatic activity on its age.

7. It is natural to expect that the most probable (statistically dominant) direction of the categorial development within the nest of derivationally connected words will be the movement from some relatively concrete, objectively oriented categorial semantics of each word-base - towards its derivatives of more abstract and subjectively oriented categories (parts of speech). So, there should be a tendency to begin a word-formational tree mainly from nouns, to continue it with adjectives, verbs, adverbs, pronouns, etc., and to end it with words of pure syntactic quality like conjunctions and prepositions.

This direction of categorial development most basically is predetermined by the mentioned fact of the inescapable development of any word's integral lexical semantics during speech acts into the direction of the greater abstractness. More abstract lexical semantics seeks for the corresponding more abstract categorial form (which is more organic to it).

8. This succession of the categorial changes predetermines further that in any word-formational tree those words, which were produced on earlier steps of the process, should, on the average, be more derivationally active than words on further steps of it. It causes gradual decline of this process intencity which ends by the complete halt at some remote steps of it. It can be naturally explained by the narrower necessity in a language for words of greater categorial abstractness, than for words referentially more objective.

9. Among words of the same grammar category and of the same step of derivation the most active in "generating" new words should be he youngest ones. The older a word the less it is active in word-formational process. It can be explained by the greater amount of its derivational potential waisted already on the previous stages of its productive existence.

10. Among words of the same age and of the same step of derivation, the most active in generating new words among other categories should be nouns. Adjectives and verbs should be weaker in this ability. The weakest should be semi-syntactic and pure syntactic words like prepositions and conjunctions.

11. Parallelly to the process of production of new words from some time there begins the process of words losses. Greater abstractness of the categorial semantics of later generated words of a nest also naturally presupposes greater, on the average, predisposition of them to longevity, stability. The most changing part of any language vocabulary are nouns, the most stable - pronouns and prepositions. Adjectives, verbs, adverbs and numerals are between them.

12. According to widening referential scope of words of greater categorial abstractness they should be characterized, on the average, by proportionally greater frequency of use than words of less abstract categorial semantics.

13. Initial stages of the word-formational process, as opposed to successive stages (analogously to the polysemy development within a word), should be characterized by the greater irregularity in semantic relations between bases and derivatives - in inheritance of meanings by derivatives from their bases. So, on initial stages of the process there should be observed oftener cases of pure lexical" derivation (and oftener in its "mutation" variant than in its "modification" variant) and rarer - cases of pure categorial (so-called, "syntactic") derivation of words.

14. Polysemy of words on each next step of the derivational process should steadily decrease as a result of the additional categorial restrictions put by word-formative affixes of a new word on its lexical semantics inherited from its word-base.

15. The volume of any word-formational nest, as well as the number of meanings posessed by some word-forming affix, should develop with ageing of each of these units analogously to the development of word polysemy during aging of a word (according to the similarity of causes in both cases) - with the fast in the beginning, but gradually retarded growing of the number of elements in a unit (words in a nest or meanings in an affix), with arriving then at some maximum, when the growing intensity of the process of loosing elements (words in a nest or meanings of an affix) at last equals the intencity of the process of acquiring new elements (words in a nest and meanings by an affix), and with prolonged, continiously retarded dicrease of nest's volume (or decrease of the number of meanings of an affix) in the course of its further existence.

16. Average length of morphemes belonging to words from nests of longer derivational history (and, correspondingly, of greater nest age) should be proportionally less than that of morphemes belonging to words from nests of shorter derivational history. This leads to existence of the so called Menzerath-Altmann's law. Natural explanation of this law for a word (as a specific construction) is connected with the categorial and age ordering of morphemes within a wordform.

17. Abstractivization of morphemes' meanings leads to the decline of clarity in boundaries between them and to the simplification of morpheme structure of a word, i.e., reinterpretation of a group of morphemes as some new morpheme. This is the most productive way for emerging new morphemes in a language.

18. Basing on these qualitative and quantitative assumptions and conclusons is possible also to predict, further, the most probable direction of the correlated development of the variety of the semasiological and word-formational features in relation to other language features - flectional, syntactic, phonological, etc. during some language's typological reconstruction (e.g., development from relative syntheticity to the more analytic structure or in the opposite direction).

19. Obtained data on some Slavic (Russian and Polish), Germanic (English and German), Romance (Latin, Italian, French, Spanish, Portuegese), Finno-Ugric (Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian), Turkic (Volga-Tartarian, Turkmen, Azerbaidjanian), Mongolian, Syno-Tibetian (Chinese), Vietnamese languages show clear correspondence between theoretically drawn and empirically investigated system regularities in the dependences between various language features.

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