The history of semantic theory

The chapter is grounded in the idea that semantic change is rooted in pragmatic meaning and discursive context. The principle underpinning this idea is that meaning is both cognitive and communicative in nature, such that we understand semantics as meaning and pragmatics as use. In this chapter, we trace this approach from nineteenth- and twentieth- century philological theories of meaning change, through the formalisation of the relationship of pragmatic and semantic domains of meaning in the invited inference theory of semantic change as developed by Traugott and her collaborators. The chapter explores the implications for a theory of semantic change of a new approach that begins not with the lexical item (semasiology) or the concept (onomasiology) but with discourse. We draw upon innovative digital methods for studying meaning change in the history of English to explore patterns and processes of semantic change in very large text corpora that invite distant rather than close reading, afforded by computational methodologies. In the process, we elaborate how linguistic concept modelling permits the structure of a pragmatic discursive theory of semantic change.