Introduction

In this conclusion we briefly summarize the major hypotheses that we have presented, and in doing so essentially reprise the main points of chapter 1. We end with a few suggestions for future research.

Summary of major findings

Our primary goal has been to show that there are general tendencies in semantic change that are widely attested across a range of semantic fields and languages, and that they result from the interaction of language use with linguistic structure. We have hypothesized that semantic change starts with SP/Ws instantiating a code that they have acquired. Drawing on and exploiting, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously, pragmatic meanings, most especially those kinds of implicatures that we have called “invited inferences,” SP/Ws may innovate new uses of extant lexemes. If these new uses spread to AD/Rs and are replicated by them in their role as SP/Ws, then semanticization will take place. We have argued that the main mechanism of semantic change is subjectification (including intersubjectification). This follows from the hypothesis that the seeds of semantic change are to be found in SP/Ws, drawing on and exploiting pragmatic meanings that arise in negotiated interaction. SP/Ws do so for their own ends – to inform, to express beliefs and emotions, and to make explicit what they are (or claim to be) doing with language. Some aspects of what SP/Ws do, most especially projecting innovative metaphorical relations, are primarily self-directed, manifestations of analogical conceptualizing, solving problems of expression, and language play.p