Re: Why does the meaning of words change?

Carsten Becker said:
> Hello,
>
> My question is already posted in the header of this mail: Why does the
> meaning of words change during the centuries, sometimes even radically?

That's an easy one.

Since word meanings (like every other feature of language that's not
universal) vary synchronically within a speaker population, they'd have to
be moving targets unless there were an effective mechanism for somehow
enforcing certain meaning associations over long periods of time. There is
no such mechanism, so word meanings (like every other feature of language
that's not universal) _are_ moving targets.


-- Mark