Sociocultural Factors Of Semantic Change

In the beginning of the study, it has been noticed that traditionally the study of semantic change mainly involve linguistic aspect, but pragmatics and sociocultural aspects are often raised because accounting for such a change is a complex perspective. There are various sociocultural factors that form the external impact for changes in meaning by inducing speakers to alter their usage of the available expressions of the language and through this modify their conventional meanings. There could be many reasons associated this change. “No change in meaning happens in a vacuum but always in a socio cultural context, and it reflects the changes and may even contribute them in the socio cultural environment (Anttila 1989:152)”. In this respect, the real causes for any change in the meaning derived from extra

In the case of Arabic and Urdu borrowing can take place because of two reasons firstly, they may have common inherited ancestor language or a common culture or secondly, they may share common universal features.

 Urdu has borrowed heavily from the Arabic language in all most all domains. Maximum borrowed words were from the religious domain like /sɔm o sala:t̪/, /zakat̪/. In other domains like arts and learning, house hold items, parts of the body, eating items and much more. These borrowed items are spoken so frequently by Urdu speakers that it is almost impossible to identify that they are borrowed from the Arabic language.

 The political change occurred when the Persian and the Turkish speaking Muslim took over the charge at the end of the 10th century. However, these political changes had a major impact on the socio-cultural life of the people because of this a large number of borrowed elements entered into the local dialect of the region. Later, in the post 18th century the Urdu language emerged as the dominant language that gradually replaced the