The Semantic Evolution: A Critical Perspective Between the Present and the Past in the Context of Sustainable Development

Abstract

When language is a living language, it resembles a living being in that it grows, changes, and develops according to the surrounding circumstances on one hand, and the differences between generations on the other. There is no doubt that this change affects the language at its phonetic, morphological, grammatical, and semantic levels, altering its sounds and internal and external structure. What concerns us here is the semantic change that words undergo and highlighting the development that shifts a word from one meaning to another, and how this development contributes to achieving the goals of sustainable development in preserving the Arabic language and making it a language that keeps pace with progress and meets the requirements of modern life. In this research, we have followed a descriptive approach that describes the linguistic event and outlines its forms, and an inductive method that draws on the views of both ancient and modern scholars regarding semantic development, supported by a critical approach—specifically linguistic criticism—that balances the views of the ancients and moderns and seeks to answer the following questions: Did modern scholars agree with the views of the ancients on semantic development, or did they differ in this regard? Did the ancients establish a stable term for semantic development, or is it a product of contemporary linguistic thought? How did the ancients address the changes in the meanings of words in their writings? What criteria did modern scholars base their theories on in studying semantics? All these questions laid the foundation for this research