Amelioration and degeneration in "Türkçe sözlük"

Syntax represents the current state of a language whereas lexicon represents the historical process together with the past and present of it. Lexical items are the free forms of a language. Free forms are among the symbolic and arbitrary signs, which mean they have double articulation. Thus, a dictionary as a product of the lexicon of a language is the resource in which one can see the background of a language throughout the history. Meaning is the interpretation of the knowledge in mind. Therefore, the concept of 'meaning' does not represent the same sense for everyone, but it is a notion that puts forwards individualism. To illustrate, the way how a person who grows up by the sea perceives 'sea' is definitely different from the way a person who has not seen a sea in her/his life. Words are made sense only in the minds of people. Furthermore, the meanings of words are not fixed. Words might go through changes in terms of form and meaning by virtue of various social, economic and political improvements and changes in time. Double articulated units might turn into triple articulated units. And, this is called semantic change. Two of the most common semantic change types are amelioration and degeneration. If a word gains a positive sense, this is called amelioration or euphemism. On the other hand, if a word gains a negative sense, this is called degeneration. Words in Turkey Turkish also go through changes in terms of amelioration and degeneration to a great extent. In this study, these semantic changes are examined in detail. The study is conducted through the investigation of 77.005 lexical entries in "Türkçe Sözlük" (2011 edition) by Turkish Language Association. All the meanings of the entries are not included in the study but only the entries which have gone through semantic changes are listed and described. 28 out of 1141 tokens which have been detected to have the relevant semantic changes were commented on regarding amelioration and/or degeneration. Example sentences from different sources are used to ensure the intelligibility of the semantic changes. After the examination of the dictionary, the obtained results are the following: (i) many words in the dictionary display neither amelioration nor degeneration, (ii) some words display either amelioration or degeneration, (iii) a limited number of words have gone through both amelioration and degeneration. Lastly, amelioration is observed more than degeneration in Turkey Turkish. Key Words: Dictionary, Meaning, Signification, Semantic Change, Amelioration, Degeneration