Whenever there is a paradigm shift because of changing technology, religion, politics, culture, etc., new concepts are brought into the language. And when there are no words to talk about these new concepts, then new words must enter the language. This PowerPoint gives examples of semantic gaps and the linguistic processes that are used to fill these semantic gaps: Borrowing, Loan Translation, Shift in Denotation or Connotation, Metaphorical Shift, Suffixation, Prefixation, Compounding, Clipping, Blending, Back Formation, Acronyming, Metathesis, Onomatopoeia, Reduplication, and Part of Speech Change. We also discuss “Sniglets.” Whenever we have a paradigm shift based on changing technology, religion, politics, or culture, how do we bring new words into the language to talk about the changes?
Language is developing during many centuries and according to human needs
Don L. F. Nilsen
You've already got quite a list of hows in the subtext to your question. I guess whim and serendipity might be added. Possible examples: the mathematical term "googol", the original word for quark, namely "quork" (it was changed because "quark" appears in Finnegan's Wake), and perhaps the names of some of the types of quarks.
Karl: Good point and good example. Another example is self-defining words, like "mispelling," haplogy" (for haplology, the accidental dropping of a syllable") and "metasethis" for metathesis, the incorrect sequencing of sounds.
Don L. F. Nilsen
I edited my answer: the correct spelling is "googol", not "google". Confusion results because there a also a derivative mathematical term "googolplex" (10 to the power of googol) and Google has chosen to name the complex for its headquarters "Googleplex" in allusion to googolplex.
Karl: The only number I know of that's bigger that Googol or Googolplex would be infinity, (in history, it's "eternity."). Is our macrocosm infinite. I can't imagine what infinity is like, but I can't imagine what could make our macrocosm non-infinite. If the earth rests on a giant turtle, what is beneath that turtle, and beneath that one. The answer is, "It's turtles all the way down."--infinite regress, but what else could it be? Thanks for your insights.
Don L. F. Nilsen
Infinity isn't really a particular number because you can't get to it by counting even if you had eternity. However, there are different kinds of infinity, e.g. those that can be put in one-one correspondence with the natural numbers and those that can't, the latter infinities being "larger" than the former. The natural numbers themselves, the integers, or just the even numbers alone are just the same size of infinity because they can be put in one-one correspondence with the natural numbers, whereas the real numbers (i.e. those that may have decimal fractions attached) include the natural numbers, but can't all put in one-one correspondence with the natural numbers. However, you can have the larger infinities in a finite macrocosm. Just imagine a line of finite length being halved and then each half in turn being halved, and so on, for eternity.
Karl: 1/3 = 3.333333 to infinity. 2/3 = 6.666666666666 to infinity. Pi = 3.14159265358 and a non-recurring pattern to infinity.
Don L. F. Nilsen
You say "to infinity" as if that's an actual destination that can be reached, whereas one might just as well say, "and on and on, without end".
Yes, π is nonrecurring. But notice that it's a ratio that can be attributed to finite features (circumference and diameter) of a finite object, viz. a circle.
Don L. F. Nilsen
Perhaps you misunderstand the invocation of one-one correspondence? It's the same as the notion of countability; the natural numbers and integers are countable in a way that the real numbers are not. There's a proof (diagonalization argument) to the effect that when you attempt to count the real numbers, some will always get left out "along the way to infinity" (so to speak).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIZd23zGV3M
Karl: I'm way out of my field of expertise here, but I'll comment nevertheless. In a digital system there are only two numbers 1 and 0, and they are discreet, like the digits on a human hand. But in an analogue system, the distance between each of the integers is infinitely dividable. Zen Budhism is an analogue system with the yin intruding into the yang and the yang intruding into the yin. But in Aristotle's world, it is two value--black-white, it is vs. it isn't, etc. Computers had to be invented by people trained in Aristotelian logic, but it is also Aristotelian logic that gives is the God-vs-the Devil type of religion.
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