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Annotation
Political internationalisms are borrowed into German from different languages (Latin, French, Greek, Russian and some others). Every lexeme has a variety of meanings and connotations. When the German language borrows words, they frequently change their meanings over time, typically making generic words more specific, and specific sememes are substituted by more generic, etc. Semantic transformation (or a change in one of the word's meanings) is typical of political international lexemes. This meaning can be added, removed or altered. The article illustrates all types of semantic transformation such as extension, narrowing, amelioration, pejoration, semantic drift, and metonymy in German political internationalisms. Some political international words go through more than one process of transformation. The others, on the contrary, do not change their meanings, because they appeared in German not long ago (in the 20th century). Reasons for semantic transformations are both extra-linguistic and linguistic.
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