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Analogy as a Factor in Semantic Change

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2026

Samuel Kroesch
Samuel Kroesch*
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota
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Extract

It is now more than a half century since the memorable controversy concerning the application of analogy to linguistics began to be fought out between the old school on the one hand and the neo-grammarians on the other. Today, analogy is regarded as at least of equal if not greater importance than the phonetic laws themselves.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 2 , Issue 1 , March 1926 , pp. 35 - 45
Copyright
Copyright © Linguistic Society of America 1926

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References

1 Cf. Wheeler, Analogy and the Scope of its Application in Language. Cornell University Studies in Classical Philology 1.5 (1887).

2 Cf. Oertel, Lectures on the Study of Language 154.

3 Paul, Principien der Sprachgeschickte,5 Chap. VIII.

4 Oertel 158f.

5 AJP 12. 1ff.; 16. 409f.; IF 4. 66f.

6 Cf. Brugmann, Kz. vgl. Gram. §406.

7 Völkerpsychologie, 2 Die Sprache 1. 439.

8 Cf. Schuchardt, Slavodeutsches und Slavoitalienisches, Graz 1885; Paul, Prinzipien §382; Windisch, Sitz. Ber. d. kgl, sächs. Gesell, d. Wiss., 49. 101f.

9 See Wundt, Die Sprache 2. 600.

10 Cf. Stout, Mind 16. 195f.

11 Germanic Words for ‘Deceive.‘ A Study in Semantics. In the series Hesperia, Schriften zur germanischen Philologie No. 13, Goettingen 1923.

12 Cf. op. cit. groups V, VIII, XXXIII, XXXVII.

13 Op. cit. XXX.

14 Op. cit. XXXI.

15 Thumb und Marbe, Psychologische Grundlagen der sprachlichen Analogiebildung, Leipzig 1901, Chap. III; an application of the method to English by Esper, Psych. Rev. 25. 468-87 (1918).

16 Cf. Paul, op. cit. §173.

17 Meillet, Linguistique historique et linguistique générale 247 (Paris 1921). The same article, entitled Comment les mots changent de sens, is found also in L'Annee sociologique for 1905-6.

18 The examples here cited were taken from G. Esnault, Le poilu tel qu'il se parle, Paris 1919.

19 Cf. Mausser, Deutsche Soldatensprache, Strassburg 1917; Bergmann, Wie der Feld-grau spricht, Giessen 1916.

20 Cf. Kluge, Deutsche Studentensprache, Strassburg 1895.

21 In the Mémoires de la Société de linguistique 7. 49ff.

22 Cf. Singer, ZfdW 3. 220ff.; 4. 125ff.; Sandfeld Jensen, Notes sur les calques linguistiques, Festschrift für V. Thomsen, 166ff. (Leipzig 1912). Singer gives a long list of words representing possible loan-meanings, translation-words, i.e., native word translations from foreign languages, such as Fr. découvrir Ger. entdecken, etc. Sandfeld Jensen gives a good classification of the various types of these loans; but the best and most comprehensive discussion of these loan-meanings from a semantic standpoint is found in Chap. IV of Wellander's Studien zum Bedeutungswandel im Deutschen I, Uppsala Universitets Årsskrift, Uppsala 1917. The writer acknowledges his indebtedness to this study for a number of points in the following discussion.

23 Op. cit. group VI.

24 Cf. Wellander, op. cit. 133.