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language change Flashcards

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Proverbs and Idioms flashcards
1
Q

What are neologisms?

A
  • new words, coinages and usages
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2
Q

What are some examples of neologisms?

A
  • selfie = wasn’t needed until front-facing cameras
  • gaslight
  • NPC
  • mewing
  • lore
  • rizz
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3
Q

In what order did different groups come to England and what languages did they speak?

A
  1. Celts - Celtic
  2. Romans - Latin
  3. Saxons - Old English
  4. Vikings - Old Norse
  5. Normans - French
  6. Romans - Latin
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4
Q

Roughly where and when did English originate?

A
  • somewhere between South Russia and the Baltic around 4000BC
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5
Q

What kind of language is English?

A
  • an Indo-European language
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6
Q

What type of words came from Mercian Old English?

A
  • man
  • woman
  • bairn
  • eat
  • drink
  • sleep
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7
Q

What words did English borrow from the Romanised Celts?

A
  • pear
  • cup
  • pail
  • anchor
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8
Q

What Latin words did English take from Rome missionaries?

A
  • minister
  • alms
  • altar
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9
Q

What words did the Vikings introduce?

A
  • are
  • ugly
  • trust
  • they
  • their
  • though
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10
Q

What words did the French invaders introduce?

A
  • castle
  • tower
  • moat
  • court
  • chimney
  • cooking words e.g. fry, boil, beef, pork, mutton and sausage
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11
Q

What English words come from dutch?

A
  • buoy
  • skipper
  • deck
  • dock
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12
Q

What English words come from Spain?

A
  • galleon
  • comrade
  • armada
  • grenade
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13
Q

What words come from portugal?

A
  • port wine
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14
Q

What words come from South and Central America?

A
  • tobacco
  • potato
  • maize
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15
Q

What English words come from Germany?

A
  • quartz
  • plunder
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16
Q

What English words come from Italy?

A
  • cameo
  • miniature
  • balcony
  • umbrella
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17
Q

What words have been borrowed from India?

A

cockatoo and chintz

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18
Q

What words have been borrowed from China?

A

tea

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19
Q

What words have been borrowed from Arabia?

A

sash and sofa

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20
Q

What words have been borrowed from Turkey?

A

coffee

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21
Q

What words have been borrowed from Persia?

A

divan and shawl

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22
Q

What words have been borrowed from West Africa?

A

chimpanzee and zebra

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23
Q

What words have been borrowed from Australia?

A

kangaroo and budgerigar

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24
Q

What is meant by synchronic variation?

A

variation at any given time

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25
Q

What is meant by diachronic variation?

A

variation over time

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26
Q

How are new words made?

A
  • borrowings
  • compounds
  • blends
  • acronyms
  • initialisms
  • word class changes
  • morphology
  • coinages
  • abbreviations
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27
Q

What is meant by borrowings?

A
  • words from other languages are incorporated into English e.g. shampoo
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28
Q

What is meant by compounds?

A
  • new words are made by joining two words together e.g. laptop
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29
Q

What is meant by blends?

A
  • new words are made by blending other words e.g. bromance
30
Q

What is meant by acronyms?

A
  • acronyms become words through common usage e.g. radar, scuba, asap
31
Q

What is meant by initialisms?

A
  • initialisms for phrases can become so commonly used that they become lexicalised e.g. FYI
32
Q

What is meant by word class changes?

A
  • new meanings are formes when words are used in different word classes e.g. ‘friend’ as a verb
33
Q

What is meant by morphology?

A
  • new words are formed when prefixes or suffixes are added to existing words e.g. ‘unfriend’
34
Q

What is meant by coinages?

A
  • completely invented new words e.g. leng
35
Q

What is semantic change?

A
  • general term for how words change their meanings
36
Q

What is meant by amelioration?

A
  • a word develops more positive connotations over time
    e.g. ‘nice’ originally meant ignorant q
37
Q

What is meant by pejoration?

A
  • words take on a more negative meaning
    e.g. silly originally meant happy/fortunate
38
Q

What is meant by semantic reclamation?

A
  • particular groups consciously reclaim a pejorative and start to self-consciously ameliorate the meaning
    e.g. ‘queer’
39
Q

What is meant by broadening?

A
  • when words pick up wider and less specific meanings
    e.g. ‘navigate’ is no longer just about ships
40
Q

What is meant by narrowing?

A
  • when words gain more specific meanings and lose their broader meaning
    e.g. ‘meat’ originally meant ‘food’
41
Q

What are the different grammatical cases in modern English?

A
  • subjective/nominative = a noun/pronoun is the subject of a verb
  • objective = object of a verb (direct = accussative or indirect = dative)
  • possessive/genitive = ownership or relationship
42
Q

What is an inflection?

A

a change in the form of a word (typically the ending) to express a grammatical function or attribute such as tense, mood, person, number, case, and gender

43
Q

What is one of the key grammatical changes in English?

A

the loss of inflections

44
Q

What are some inflections in modern English?

A
  • the possessive ‘s
  • the plural -s
  • the third person singular -s
  • the past tense -d, -ed, or -t
  • the negative particle ‘nt
  • -ing forms of verbs
  • -en forms of verbs
  • the comparative -er
  • the superlative -est
45
Q

What are some early modern english verb inflections?

A
  • -st
  • -th
  • art
46
Q

How are verb inflections determined in Early Modern English?

A
  • by the person
  • ‘th’ = 3rd person singular
  • ‘st’ = 2nd person singular
47
Q

What is needed in Modern English to form a question or a negative?

A

an auxiliary verb

48
Q

What do we do when the original sentence doesn’t have an auxiliary?

A

we add one - the periphrastic ‘do’ in the correct tense

49
Q

What is meant by periphrasis?

A

the use of one or more function words to express meaning that otherwise may be expressed through an inflection - the resulting phrase includes two or more collocated words instead of one inflected word

50
Q

Why have some of these grammatical changes taken place?

A

In his book ‘Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue’ (2008), **John McWhorter argues that they have their roots in the Celtic languages, which, also have these two features:
1. the necessary use of present progressive to describe a present action
2. the required periphrastic ‘do’ to form questions and negatives

51
Q

What is meant by the Great Vowel Shift?

A
  • the pronunciation of all Middle English long vowels was changed
  • it is the major reason why English spellings now often deviate from how they represent pronunciations
52
Q

Around what time did the Great Vowel shift occur?

A
  • primarily between 1400 and 1700, beginning in Southern England
53
Q

What is meant by uptalk?

A
  • where the intonation rises at the end of a sentence
  • sometimes this can be used to form questions, or perhaps to express doubt/uncertainty
54
Q

What are some examples of recent phonological changes?

A
  • vocal fry
  • glottal stop/dropping of consonants
  • ASMR
55
Q

What is an example of a major graphological change?

A
  • emoticons and emojis
56
Q

Why did emojis emerge?

A
  • developments in communication technology such as phones and the internet, means that written mode became electronic mode with the key difference being the informality
  • people were writing far fewer words and it began to mimic spoken mode, BUT the electronic mode lacked paralinguistic features and therefore pragmatic meaning of the conversation is lost
57
Q

When did people speak Old English?

A

500-1100

58
Q

When did people speak Early Middle English?

A

1100-1300

59
Q

When did people speak Late Middle English?

A

1300-1500

60
Q

When did people speak Early Modern English?

A

1500-1700

61
Q

When did people speak Modern English?

A

1700-present day

62
Q

When was the printing press invented?

A

1476

63
Q

When was Shakespeare writing?

A

1540s-1611

64
Q

When was the first settlement in America?

A

1607

65
Q

When was the King James Bible written?

A

1611

66
Q

When was the Oxford English dictionary written?

A

1886

67
Q

When was the telephone made?

A

1876

68
Q

When was the first iphone made?

A

2007

69
Q

Who invented the printing press?

A

William Caxton

70
Q

When was the first dictionary made and by whom?

A

1604 - Robert Cawdrey’s Table Alphabeticall

english language (16 decks)

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