History of the English language Flashcards
What is “Change from Above”?
- Introduced by dominant social class / group
- Full public awareness
- Often borrowings with higher prestige
What is “Change from Below”?
- Introduced by any social class / group
(but not observed for highest status group) - Below the level of social awareness until
change is near completion - First appear in vernacular
- Most language changes are changes
from below
Explain “simplification”
Ease of use
* slæpde (Early OE) ➜ slæpte (Later OE)
‘slept’: Assimmilation
Explain “complexification”
Increasing precision
* New 2nd person plural forms you guys, y’all,
youse
Explain “language policies and ideologies”
- Prescriptivism (e.g. spelling and punctuation)
- Avoidance of thou due to association of use of
form with Quakers
Explain “language contact”
- Borrowings
Explain “new concepts and uses of language”
Creation of new vocabulary, e.g. to tweet, to
google
Northern Cities Shift?
We can refer to shifts like the Northern Cities Shift as a chain shift, because one change triggers another. It is tempting to ask why a chain shift starts happening in a speech community. One potential explanation proposed for the Northern Cities Shift is that white speakers kept more distance from African American speakers following the African American Great Migration (Van Herk 2008).
Quotative “BE like”
–> linguistic characteristics associated with
the language style of the “valley girl”
–> first reported in the 1980s
–> Has been attested in a large range of English
varieties
–> Varying attitudes, but mostly negative
Uptalk/ Upspeak
–> Rising intonation in declarative sentences
* First observed early in the 21st century
* Described in an increasing number of English
varieties
* Often associated with “powerless speech” and
insecurity
Vocal Fry
- Also described as “creaky voice”
- Created by an irregular vibration of vocal folds, which
occurs with low frequency voicing - Like the other two features
- vocal fry has been described in various varieties
- is usually evaluated negatively
- BUT:
- Is actually used by all speakers to some exent
- Used to be fashionable when it was a feature
associated with male RP speakers
Reduction of the inflectional morphemes
Explain effects of global and
regional mobility on the English language
- Loan words
- Spelling conventions
- Writing apart of compounds in German
- Use of apostrophe in German
- Grammar
- Text conventions
- The language of popular culture
- The language of advertising
- Academic writing
- Depending on the degree of language contact, all
phenomena can also affect English - Most marked in:
- border areas (e.g. South of the US)
- areas with a strong presence and awareness of
indigenous languages (e.g. Australia and New
Zealand) - cities
Explain the role of English as a lingua franca
- “a language which is used habitually by people whose mother tongues are different in order to facilitate
communication between them” - Language used in interaction by speakers with different levels of competence in the language
Define dialect levelling and illustrate
with examples
Dialect levelling: “eradication of marked linguistic
features” in local dialects
* marked:
* minority feature, in comparison with other
surrounding dialects
* found rarely in languages of the world in general
* learnt late in child language acquisition
* overtly stereotyped
Name central developments in the external history of the Late Modern English period
Globalisation (penny post; railroads; etc.) and the industrial revolution (urbanisation; social shifts); Enlightenement; Better Education
Explain the effect these external events had on the English language EModE
Explain the factors leading to prescriptivism and standardisation, as well as explaining how they
affected the English language
- Linguistic insecurities of new middle class
- Compulsory public schooling
- Dialect levelling
- Mobility
- Urbanisation
- Expansion of mass media (radio, newspapers)
- Publication of a large number of grammars and language guides
Explain the main shifts in politeness culture in relation to etiquette politeness, the increase of
handbooks and the appearance of (ceremonious) compliments
- Increase of handbooks on etiquette and politeness
- Etiquette: Concerned with social conventions of
how to behave - Appearance of ceremonious compliments (acts of
diplomacy) and later the first compliments in the
present-day understanding of the term - Response to the rise of the new middle class, shifts
in society
- /h/-dropping
- (Non-)rhoticity
- Negative contraction
(EModE)
Explain hypercorrection and provide an example
- Overuse of a prestigious variant
- E.g. adding a /h/ to words that do not have an /h/
- pronouncing arm as /harm/
- pronouncing herb as /herb/
- spelling souvenirs as sourvenirs
- Occurs when language users are unsure where a
prestigious form should be applied (Sourvenirs
Summarise the main changes to the vocabulary of Late Modern English and provide examples
- Changing meaning of existing words (Amelioration = meaning becomes nicer; perjuration = meaning becomes worse)
- Increase in new words
