Frontmatter -- Preface -- Contents -- Introduction: historical semantics and cognition -- Section I. Theories and Models -- Cognitive Semantics and Structural Semantics -- Diachronic semantics: towards a unified theory of language change? -- Why do new meanings occur? A cognitive typology of the motivations for lexical semantic change -- Diachronic prototype semantics. A digest -- Cognitive semantics and diachronic semantics: the values and evolution of classes -- Section II. Descriptive categories -- Losing control: grammaticization, subjectification, and transparency -- The rhetoric of counter-expectation in semantic change: a study in subjectifícation -- Synecdoche as a cognitive and communicative strategy -- Laws of thought, knowledge and lexical change -- Section III. Case studies -- Intensifies as targets and sources of semantic change -- Cognitive ease and lexical borrowing: the recategorization of body parts in Romance -- Cognitive aspects of semantic change and polysemy: the semantic space HAVE/BE -- List of contributors -- Index