Maidin Cornwall

Abstract

AbstractWhile the research literature on regional dialect levelling is substantial (e.g.Williams and Kerswill 1999;Britain 2002;Watt 2002;Jansen 2019), this process is under-explored and under-theorised when it comes to patterns of lexical usage. Usingmaidas a case-study, in this article I provide a detailed account of processes of lexical levelling in Cornwall. I consider the usage ofmaidfrom two perspectives, that of onomasiology and semasiology. From an onomasiological perspective,maid, as a variant of the conceptwoman, exhibits socio-stylistic reallocation, with attested usages ofmaidin this study being limited to older speakers in careful speech styles. From a semasiological perspective, two senses ofmaid, ‘woman’ and ‘female servant or attendant’, have undergone structural reallocation in apparent-time withmaid‘woman’ being the prototypical sense for older speakers but a more peripheral sense for their younger counterparts.