Dirk Geeraerts, University of Leuven 

The course will sketch a framework for an approach to diachronic (lexical) semantics that, descriptively speaking, integrates a semasiological and an onomasiological perspective and that, theoretically speaking, explores the impact of cognitive linguistics on historical semantics. The framework will be illustrated with case studies focusing on prototypicality effects, and on metonymical and metaphorical patterns. In addition, the course will pay attention to recent methodological developments that exploit computational distributional methods for modelling semantic change.