Date: Sun, 3 Aug 1997 13:33:35 -0400

From: "Margaret G. Lee -English" mlee[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]CS.HAMPTONU.EDU

Subject: Re: Question on a word



How about "semantic shift" as described by Fromkin and Rodman (1978)?



Margaret Lee

Department of English

Hampton University



On Tue, 29 Jul 1997, Jonathan Gilbert wrote:



Date: Tue, 29 Jul 1997 17:30:27 -0500

From: Jonathan Gilbert JonG[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]DRAGONSYS.COM

To: ADS-L[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UGA.CC.UGA.EDU

Subject: Question on a word



Apologies for posting to lists I don't normally read; I'm asking here on the

suggestion of a friend who does read them -- please send replies

directly by email, and thanks.



The question is on behalf of another friend who is working on a

dissertation (not on a linguistics topic, it's social history of a sort); she

wants to describe a situation in which the usage of one word (in a

particular context, by a small group of people) has diverged enough from

its standard usage that it has become interchangeable with another

word, normally either different or unrelated in meaning. My friend

believes there is a word for this phenomenon, but nobody we've asked

so far has been able to identify it ... does anyone out there know?



Jonathan Gilbert

JonG[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]dragonsys.com