Semantic Changes in the War and Violence Vocabulary of Tok Pisin

This honours thesis is a research project which investigates the semantic evolution of vocabulary in Tok Pisin, focusing on words related to war and violence broadly conceived. The research draws on sources such as the Sloan Corpus, Tok Pisin dictionaries, and other sources to trace the etymologies of lexical expressions within the theoretical framework of Cognitive Linguistics. The analysis aims to trace trajectories of semantic development, identify patterns of metaphor, metonymy, and meaning shift, and highlight the interaction between usage and lexicography. Ultimately, this study will contribute to the broader fields of etymology, cognitive semantics, and more by demonstrating how changes in lexical meaning can be analyzed in a mixed language.