FROM ‘SUPREME WORLD’ TO ‘PHYSICAL WORLD’: A COGNITIVE SEMANTIC ANALYSIS

This article discusses on the changes of loanword meaning in Malay language. For example, the word alam (world) is originated from Arabic and has been assimilated into Malay lexicon. Based on the classical corpus taken from Malay Concordance Project (MCP) and modern corpus retrieved from Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (DBP) data bank, it shows that the core meaning of alam has changed over time. This article discusses the cognitive motivation that takes place in the domain of supremacy in the classical period to the domain of physics in the present period through the cognitive semantics approach. The cognitive motivation is based on cognitive mechanisms that bring together all the derived meanings. Analysis from the corpus data illustrates that in the classical era, alam denotes ‘supremacy’ or ‘sovereignty.’ However, in the contemporary era, alam refers to ‘physical world.’ The phenomenon of semantic change in languages is not an arbitrary transformation, but is linguistically motivated.