Abstract

The aim of this paper is to show the existence of regularities in word meaning variation and change between Latinate borrowings in present-day English and their cognates in Italian, such as gross/grosso, lecture/lettura and rumour/rumore. Starting from an original and shared meaning core, the semantics of these etymologically related words has evolved in different directions in the two languages, often producing what are commonly known as ‘false friends’.

Despite their ‘false-friendship’, however, there appear to be some recurrent patterns in meaning evolution: through a qualitative analysis of 30 pairs of English and Italian cognate words, five main processes have been identified, namely meaning bifurcation, original meaning retention, non-figurative meaning extension, figurative meaning extension (via metaphor and metonymy) and meaning inversion.

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