【正确答案】正确答案：There are mainly three kinds of semantic changes, namely, broadening, narrowing, and meaning shift. Class shift and folk etymology also contribute to change in meaning. (1) Broadening Broadening is a process to extend or elevate the meaning from its originally specific sense to a relatively general one. For instance, the word holiday used to mean "holy day" in religious English. Today it means "a day for rest" regardless of its religious nature. (2) Narrowing Contrary to broadening, the original meaning of a word can be narrowed or restricted to a specific sense. A typical example is the word meat which originally meant "food". In the course of time, the range of meaning was narrowed to mean specifically "the flesh of animals used as food". (3) Meaning shift All semantic changes involve meaning shift. Yet, in its narrow sense, meaning shift refers to the change of meaning, which has nothing to do with generalization or restriction. What makes the meaning of a word different is its departure from its original domain as a result of its metaphorical usage. For instance, the word bead originally means "prayer", but later it refers to "the prayer bead", the visible manifestation of a prayer, finally " small, ball-shaped piece of glass, metal or wood". (4) Class shift By shifting the word class one can change the meaning of a word from a concrete entity or notion to a process or attribution. This process of word formation is also known as zero-derivation, or conversion. The word engineer as a noun means "a person trained in a branch of engineering", but it means "to act as an engineer" or "to plan, to maneuver" when used as a verb. (5) Folk etymology It refers to a change in form of a word or phrase resulting from an incorrect popular notion of the origin or meaning of the term or from the influence of more familiar terms mistakenly taken to be analogous. As a result of this modification, the word sparrowgrass in English derived from asparagus; the Spanish cucaracha changed into English cockroach.