Cognitive Semantics and Prototype Theory

Abstract With the birth of cognitive semantics, new ideas from the field of theoretical semantics have found their way to the study of meaning changes, and that should not come as a surprise: one of the major things cognitive semantics is interested in is polysemy-and polysemy is, roughly, the synchronic reflection of diachronicsemantic change. As elsewhere in the language, diachrony within synchrony equals variation, and in the present case that means semantic variation. The interest of theoretical semanticists working within the framework of cognitive semantics in the study of meaning changes derives from their interest in polysemy, if only because the synchronic links that exist between the various senses of an item coincide with diachronic mechanisms of semantic extension such as metaphor and metonymy.