Article.
Наталя Олійник
УДК 811.111(075.8)
CONCEPT SCARCITY AND ITS HISTORICAL
DEVELOPMENT IN ENGLISH
У статті
досліджено структурно-семантичний потенціал термінологізованого імені концепту
НЕСТАЧА – лексеми scarcity (n.) за
допомогою етимологічного аналізу. Етимоном лексеми scarcity (n.)
виступає протоіндоєвропейський корінь дієслова kerp- із значенням «збирати врожай». Зміст концепту утворений
сукупністю семантичних ознак та внутрішньою формою «відсутність певної
кількості» з негативною оцінкою «менше норми». Ці ознаки профілюються в
понятійних доменах ЕКОНОМІКА та ТОРГІВЛЯ, МАТЕМАТИКА, БІДНІСТЬ, які складають
«базу даних» номінативного простору концепту та мотивують відповідні когнітивні
ознаки та концептуальні зв’язки НЕСТАЧА в дискурсі.
Ключові слова: внутрішня
форма слова, етимологічний аналіз,
етимон, концепт, нестача, семантична ознака.
The principal focus of the current cognitive
linguistic studies is on the natural language “as a means for organizing,
processing, and conveying information” (Geeraerts 5) stored in the brain with a semantic
meaning being treated as “the primary linguistic phenomenon” (ibid).
With an assumption that there is a growing tendency among scholars to
investigate the mechanisms of communication ability based upon intellectual and
cognitive competence it naturally involves interdisciplinary researches and
cooperation with other disciplines to determine the mechanism of human
communication ability.
The purpose of this study is to carry
out electronic corpora-based (historical dictionaries and thesauri)
etymological analysis of the name of the concept SCRACITY – the lexeme scarcity
(n.) in order to “establish the origin of the
word, explain the history of its occurrence, uncover past word-formation
relationships, show how modern meanings emerged” (Makovskij 26) and see how the
conceptual content is construed and whether it changed through time.
The theoretical background of this study is
historical cognitive science as a new and perspective direction of cognitive
research in linguistics which focuses on revealing “the most general laws of
the evolution of concepts on the basis of diachronic analysis methods” (Shevchenko
139). In terms of diachronic approach I follow I. Shevchenko’s (ibid 135)
clearly stepped algorithm for determining historical transformations of the
concepts at all levels:
1) pre-conceptual (archetypal) features and
the notional basis of the concept;
2) its categorical properties; 3) the name of
the concept and the structure of the semantic space;
4) modeling of the cognitive structure of the
concept in particular historical periods;
5) figurative and value characteristics of
the concept according to metaphor and metonymy data;
6) mechanisms of discursive actualization in
speech acts (for concept-events) or in strategies and tactics of politeness
(for concepts-signs);
7) comparing the data obtained for each
of the historical periods and determining the leading vectors of development as
the evolutionary/involutionary types of transformations of the concept.
The structure of the concept is much more
complicated and varied than the lexical meaning of words so etymological review
on the historical development of the semantic properties of the name of the
concept, which is a matter of ‘time’ and ‘cognitive mechanism’, requires
determining the etymon of the name of the concept, the inner form,
the semantic structure of the lexeme scarcity (n.) in diachrony and the
range of domains where its meanings were profiled over time.
I argue that all those semantic
transformations given below are motivated by a repeated denotative sign or a
formal semantic indicator – ‘state of being limited in amount’, which determines
the inner form of the lexeme scarcity (n.) – “the nearest etymological
meaning of the word, the way the content is expressed” (Potebnja 146), which
has survived to the present day and underlies the formation of modern meanings
of scarcity (n.).
The content of the concept SCARCITY is stored
in the verbal form and manifested by its name – the term “scarcity” (n.)
defined in Business Dictionary as “ever-present situation in all markets
whereby either less goods are available than the demand for them, or only too
little money is available to their potential buyers for making the purchase.
This universal phenomenon leads to the definition of economics as the “science
of allocation of scarce resources” (BD) and as such, possesses term properties
– definition, meaning correspondence, strictness of the term; serves as “a
designation of a specific concept of science” (Leitchik, Shelov 90).
It should be noted, that by
the word scarcity I distinguish between: the term of scarcity
specified above; the notion of scarcity implying that “there is never
enough (of something) to satisfy all conceivable human wants, even at advanced
states of human technology which involves making a sacrifice – giving something
up, or making a tradeoff – in order to obtain more of the scarce resource that
is wanted” (Milgate 548) and the theory of
scarcity as an economic principle “which states that limited supply,
combined with high demand, equals a lack of pricing equilibrium” (BD).
Therefore the semantic content of the concept is disclosed by the meanings of the lexeme scarcity (n.) and the
term scarcity itself and can be explained as a category of understanding
based on cognitive models.
According to the lexicographical sources (ODC; MWD; OED), technically, the lexeme scarcity (n.) is a suffixed word
derived from scarce (adj.) with the help of the Latinate suffix -ity
by a relatively productive
word-formation pattern ADJ+ity with a growth rate of 0.0007
by Baayen’s index of productivity (Baayen “Quantitative aspects” 116). This suffix is considered to be “more
productive in scientific and technical discourses” (Baayen 22) as different
registers tend to be employed for communication on different topics and it is
used to form nouns
denoting quality or condition or ‘degree of a quality or condition’ (ODC).
I. Plag proves through his examples that
“words, belonging to this morphological category, are nouns denoting qualities,
states or properties usually derived from Latinate adjectives (e.g. curiosity,
productivity, solidity). Apart from the compositional meaning described
above, many -ity derivatives are lexicalized, i.e. they became
permanently incorporated into the mental lexicons of speakers, thereby often
adopting idiosyncratic meanings, such as antiquity ‘state of being
antique’ or ‘ancient time’, curiosity ‘quality of being curious‘ and
‘curious thing’” (Plag 115). He also explains this tendency by the suffix’s
ability to change the stress pattern of the base so that many of the
polysyllabic base-words undergo an alternation (trisyllabic shortening),
whereby the stressed vowel or diphthong of the base word, and thus the last but
two syllable, becomes destressed and shortened as in obsc[i]ne -obsc[E]nity
(ibid).
The same transformation took place in the
structure of the name of the concept under consideration, i.e., scarce originating from Vulgar Latin scarsus from classical Latin excerpere
with the meaning ‘pluck out’ (first registered in the English language in 13th
century meaning ‘restricted in quantity’ (OED)) which, as a
result, adopted its basic present-day meaning ‘the quality, condition, or fact
of being scarce’ and evolved into the close to its present “shape” of scarcety
in the 15th century.
Having traced the whole
chain of morphological transformations of the word scarcity (n.) (OED) to its ‘ultimate’ origin, it became clear that the etymon of this lexeme is PIE
stem of the verb kerp- (‘to gather, pluck harvest’) which in its turn
underwent a set of transformations and emerged in Latin as a derivative from carpere
(‘pluck, gather’) + prefix ex- → excerpere with three semantic
properties: 1) ‘pluck out, pick out, extract’; 2) figuratively ‘choose,
select, gather’; 3) ‘to leave out, omit’. Only the first meaning migrated into
ME instantiated in the forms scarsete, skarsete, skarcete, scharsete (ibid).
The following data collected from historical
thesauri (HTOED; NEDHP) indicate that the semantics of the
lexeme scarcity (n.) has gone through nine stages of evolution from 1340
up to present time:
1340–1531 (obs.) frugality, parsimony; niggardliness,
stinginess, meanness, e.g.,
For right as men blamen an Auaricious man by
cause of his scarsetee and chyngerie.
1380–1450 (obs.) deficiency, shortcoming, e.g.,
Set in A meene of prudent governaunce, That
ther be nouthir skarsete nor excesse, But a ryght Rewle of Attemperaunce
1387–1616 (obs.) the condition of being slenderly or
inadequately provided (also absol., straitened condition with regard to means
of living or comfort; penury, hardship), e.g.,
Scarcity and want shall shun you, Ceres blessing so is on
you.
1398–1526 (obs.) scantiness (of diet), e.g.,
Scarcyte in meate, and the bely alway somwhat hungry, is ...
praysed
1400– insufficiency of supply; smallness of available
quantity, number, or amount, in proportion to the need or demand, e.g.,
And tho was..grete scarste of corne
and of othir vitaill.
1450– insufficiency of supply, in a community, of the
necessaries of life, dearth (a period of scarcity, a dearth), e.g.,
After such a famine there followed a Scarsitie
in South Wales.
1663– (rare) comparative fewness, small number
(of something not desirable), e.g.,
The Hollanders ..Vant of their scarcity of
theeves… but attribute the same scarcity to that defence they… make against
Theeves.
1787– the
mangel-wurzel (also scarcity plant, scarcity root), e.g.,
Beta vulgaris, the Beet, with its varieties,
the Scarcity and Mangel Wurtzel.
1848– (attrib.)
an enhanced value due to scarcity (so scarcity price, etc.), e.g.,
Things which cannot be increased ad libitum
in quantity, and which therefore, <…>, command a scarcity value.
Out of these nine
meanings four are marked as obsolete (‘frugality’, ‘deficiency’, ‘straitened living
condition’, ‘scantiness of diet’) as no longer used, but
they are still present within the semantic space of SCARCITY, (cf. these
meanings with those in modern dictionaries (MWD; CED): ‘straitened living
condition’ → ‘want of provisions for the support of life’; ‘deficiency,
shortcoming’ → ‘lack’; ‘insufficiency of supply’; ‘scantiness of diet’ →
‘hunger’). Moreover, they operate in the semantic space of the concept in the
form of synonyms and related words also included in the notional layer of the
concept: deficit, deficiency, crunch, dearth, deficit, drought,
failure, famine, inadequacy, lack, inadequateness, insufficiency, lacuna,
paucity, pinch, poverty, scantiness, scarceness, shortage, undersupply, want (ibid) except, of course, the meaning
‘mangel-wurzel’ which otherwise can motivate figurative linguistic means of the
concept (cognitive metaphors) where SCARCITY is understood in terms of another
conceptual domain (PLANT).
Further morphological changes brought to life
two more derivatives: scarcely (adv.), scarceness (n.) which
altogether with scarce (adj.) and scarcity (n.) constitute the ‘etymological nest’ (M. Makovskij’s term),
i.e. “the aggregate of
related words united by a common root in terms of their origin” (Makovskij 14).
The range of semantic domains where
these meanings were profiled through history determine “a database” of
the nominative space of the concept and fall into two
main categories: EXTERNAL WORLD and MIND (HTHOED) which are further specified
by its semantic properties such as referring to the domains SCIENCES (ECONOMICS
and COMMERCE, MATHEMATICS) and HAVING or POSSESSION (POVERTY and MEANNESS)
respectively (ibid). This allows for the content of a name mental
representation to be identified with the information carried by the
corresponding mental representation type while the etymological analysis
provided information about the emergence and development of the semantic
structure of name of the concept, its compatibility with lexemes in other
languages and can facilitate the reconstruction of newly created meanings in
further research.
To sum up, the name of the concept SCARCITY –
the lexeme scarcity (n.) is a polysemous word formed by the nominal
suffix -ity (borrowed from Latin through French) from scarce
(adj.) with nine lexical meanings motivated by the inner form ‘‘state of being limited in amount’. Though the word-forming meaning of the suffix is
partially adopted by the word, its analysis allowed us to see how the semantics of the
derivative and therefore the semantic structure of the concept were formed: the
categorical semantic properties ‘a state or condition or degree of being
scarce’ make up the semantic basis of the concept’s notional content and
together with other meanings profiled within the domains ECONOMICS and
COMMERCE, MATHEMATICS, POVERTY, MEANNESS take part in the formation of the
stereotypical perception of the concept SCARCITY in the English worldview
defined by its name. Modeling the cognitive structure of the concept
in particular historical periods can become the subject of further analysis of
the concept SCARCITY so in a further perspective these findings may prove to be
useful in the development of historical cognitive linguistics in general and
diachronic cognitive semantics, in particular in terms of collection and
analysis of the empirical data.
References.
References
Baayen,
Harald. (1992). “Quantitative aspects of morphological productivity”. Yearbook
of Morphology. Ed by G. Booij and J.
van Marle. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1991. 109–149. Print.
Baayen,
Harald. “Corpus Linguistics in Morphology. Morphological Productivity”. Corpus
Linguistics. An International Handbook. Vol. 2. Ed. by Anke Lüdeling and
Merja Kytö. Berlin; New York: De Gruyter, 2009. 899–919. Print.
Geeraerts, Dirk and Cuyckens,
Hubert. “Introducing Cognitive Linguistics”. The Oxford Handbook of
Cognitive Linguistics. : Oxford University Press, 2010. 3–22. Print.
Leitchik, Vladimir and Shelov, Sergej. “Some
basic concepts of terminology: traditions and innovations”. Terminology
science and research: Journal of the International Institute for Terminology
Research (IITF). 14 (2003): 86-101. Print.
Makovskij, Mark. Istoriko-jetimologicheskij
Slovar' Sovremennogo Anglijskogo Jazyka. Slovo v Zerkale Chelovecheskoj
Kul'tury (Historical and Etymological Dictionary of Modern English
Language: the Word in the Mirror of Human Culture). – Moskva: Dialog,
1999. Print.
Milgate, Murray. “Goods and commodities”. The
New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics Online. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Web.
22 Aug. 2017.
Plag, Ingo. “Word-formation in English”. Cambridge Textbooks in
Linguistics. Ed. by Robert S.
Anderson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 1–250. Web.
22 Aug.2017.
Potebnja, Aleksandr. Mysl' i jazyk
(Language and Thought). Har'kov:
Tip. Mirnyj trud, 1913. Print.
Shevchenko, Irina. “Jevoljucionnye mehanizmy
kognitivnoj semantiki (Evolutional mechanisms of cognitive semantics)”. Kognicija,
kommunikacija, diskurs (Cognition, Communication, Discourse) 13
(2016): 131–141. Print.
List of Sources
“-ity”. Oxforddictionaries.com, 2017.
Web. 3 Aug. 2017.
“Scarce”. On-line
Etymology Dictionary, 2001–2017. Web.
3 Aug. 2017.
“Scarcity”.
A New
English Dictionary on Historical Principles, 1900. Web. 3 Aug. 2017.
“Scarcity”. BusinessDictionary.com., 2017. Web. 8 Aug. 2017.
“Scarcity”. Dictionary.com
website. Collins English Dictionary, 2012. Web. 3 Aug. 2017.
“Scarcity”. Historical
Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary: with additional material from A
Thesaurus of Old English, 2009. Web.
3 Aug. 2017.
“Scarcity”. Merriam-Webster Dictionary and Thesaurus, 2015. Web. 3 Aug. 2017.
“Scarcity”. OED Online,
2017. Web. 8 Aug. 2017.
List of Abbreviations
BD – BusinessDictionary.com
CED – Collins English Dictionary
HTOED – Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford
English Dictionary
MWD – Merriam-Webster Dictionary and
Thesaurus
NEDHP – A New English Dictionary on Historical
Principles
ODC – Oxforddictionaries.com
OED – On-line Etymology Dictionary
OEDO – Oxford English Dictionary Online
Надійшла до редакції 21 серпня 2017 року.
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