The morphosemantics of selected English doublets: Synchrony and diachrony

Abstract

Doublets are “etymological siblings”, and, even though the term sug-gests it, they do not necessarily only form pairs. In English, where – because of its history of extensive influence exerted by speakers of different languages – the lexicon is extremely broad and complex, there are many cases of multiplets, i.e., whole word families with a common etymological root which can often be traced back to Proto-Indo-European. Usually their meanings are similar (e.g. fragile and frail), in other cases, though, the meaning can be very different or even opposite (e.g. host and guest). The aim of this paper is to high-light the scope of semantic evolution of lexemes of the same origin, as there is no place for absolute synonymy in a language. Similarities, or shared semantic scopes connecting the words, will also be provided.