Expansion of meaning

Extension of meaning is a technical term from linguistics and describes a type of meaning change . In principle, there are two possible cases: Words are given an additional meaning or the meaning they have becomes less specific.

Extension of meaning in language contact

This often happens with etymologically related words in two languages. The closer the languages ​​are related to each other, the more common hereditary vocabulary they have.

In Namibian German, for example, there are very often expansions of meanings because many words in German and Afrikaans have a common origin.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Claudia Maria Riehl: Language contact research. An introduction. 2nd, revised edition. Narr, Tübingen 2009, ISBN 978-3-8233-6469-6 , pp. 97-98.

See also

• Assumption of meaning
• Differentiation of meaning

Web links

Wiktionary: Meaning expansion  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations