Language Change Flashcards
Semantic drift
a process of linguistic change over a period of time in regards to lexis and how words evolve
aka semantic change
diachronic texts
- change over time and over the course of history; thus, it is also referred to as historical linguistics
- two different era’s texts
synchronic texts
- change at a particular moment in time
- it is the study of language at a given point in time
- thus it refers to a particular segment of history
- two texts from same era
Theory: FUDGE
- who
- what
- Metclaf (2002)
- theory addresses why and how new words come into the language and how others become “unsuccessful”
what does
FUDGE
stand for
Frequency Unobtrusiveness Diversity Generation Endurance
FUDGE: Frequency
the more often a word is used and the number of people who use it will impact the word’s success
FUDGE: Unobtrusiveness
metclaf claims that words that attract less attention and comment are more likely to catch on that those that “stand out”
FUDGE: Diversity
used by more than one group of users
FUDGE: generation
successful words tend to be used as other parts of speech eg “verbing” nouns, multiple meanings, or extended as metaphors
FUDGE: endurance
if a neologism word is no longer used, the survival of that word is minimal
how can the type of semantic drift can vary
- old meanings can be forgotten, thus die out
- context, such as technology/wars, can impact a word’s meaning and production
- current slang can alter a word eg a particular social group can take ownership of an existing word and change it’s meaning eg wicked
formation of words: clipping
what are the two types
the truncation of words
- apheresis: first part of word clipped eg telephone-phone
- apocope: second part of clipped eg examination-exam
formation of words: derivation and affixation
what are the two types
the addition of a morpheme to the beginning of end of a word, often resulting in a new word class
- suffixing: adding to end eg happy-happiness
- prefixing: adding to beginning eg happy-unhappy
formation of words: portmanteau
two words fusing together to make a new one
eg nouns “spoon” “fork” creating “spork”
formation of words: compounds
- the process of two words combining to create a coinage
- this lexical change mainly involves noun+noun, examples eg book worm and football
formation of words: borrowing/loanwords
- words we have taken from other languages
- eg term karaoke is a japanese word we have adopted into our language
formation of words: eponym
- name of a person after whom something is named
- eg British monarch “Elizabethan”
formation of words: proprietary names
- name given to product of organisation which becomes commonly used name for general product
- eg calling all glue “pritt-stick”
the long S /f/
- demonstrates a change in orthography
- now obsolete in the English Language
- probably lost after standardisation
standardisation
- the process English went through to create a unified system of speaking/writing/spelling
- cannot be pinpointed to one moment in history
- but started during Middle English period(1150-1500) to the early modern English period (1500-1800)
- its effects were most prominent in 18th century (1700s)
when’s the early modern English period
1500-1800
when’s the late modern English period
1800-present
morphology: inflectional morpheme
- in early modern English period, we saw the inflections morpheme on words instead of our modern day morpheme
eg hath for has - linguistically refer to and as third person singular morpheme
morphology: past tense
- in early modern English period, we saw variety of past tense form
eg ‘write’ has writ/wrate/wrote
depends on pronunciation
syntax: complex sentences/polysyndeton
- in early modern English period, lots of CS and P as longer sentences carried “greater prestige”
- as it provided them with more ethos
- nowadays, variety of sentences to adhere to the manner of maxim (Grice), so aim is to be clear
- attitude has changed
syntax: what did researcher Romaine say
- the discourse of texts during the early modern English period were built on latinate prestige forms, where lengthy and complex sentences were used
grammar: you/ye
- in early modern English period, we saw the use of “you” and “ye” as pronoun forms
- “ye” is now archaic
grammar: archaic (lexis)
old language not used frequently
grammar: obsolete (lexis)
- language/phrases/meanings which have died
- alway say ‘possibly’
grammar: double negatives
- evident during early modern English times
- only in 17th/18th centuries where this became ‘stigma’
- could be why still evident in present, but as non-standard
pragmatics: changing attitudes (good A01)
- how views/ideas change across time
- eg if beliefs change, language changes as a result of this
lexis: polysyllabic lexis
- early modern English often made use of latinate lexis (polysyllabic/lengthy) as this was seen as the language of prestige
lexis: religious lexis
- language often had many religious allusions as majority of Britain was christian during this time period
lexis: semantic change: amelioration
words become more positive over time
lexis: semantic change: pejoration
words become negative over time
lexis: semantic change: generalisation
words broaden over time
lexis: semantic change: specialisation
words narrow over time
orthography: interchangeable graphemes
<u> and
<i> and
often interchangeable
(there will be pattern)</i></u>
orthography: terminal
used on ends of words that are not longer present today
eg “sicke” for “sick”
often an accent indicator as it was pronounced using schwa on some words
Printing press:
- when was the printing press established
- by whom
- what did this mean
- 1476 (15th century)
- William Caxton
- texts started to standardise
16th century context:
- what do we expect to see
- variations of spellings/grammar rules, even within 1 text
16th century context:
- when Johnson’s dictionary
- 1755
- Samuel Johnson
“Dictionary of the English Language”
16th century context:
what is The Renaissance
1300-1700
- happened during 14th century
- reached height during the 15th and 16th centuries
- meant we borrowed many words from latin/French/greek
- Overt
- Covert
Theorist: Labov
Overt: using standard English
Covert: using non-standard forms (often associated with a sociolect)
subjunctive mood
- verb form used to express things that could/should happen
- used to express wishes/hopes, commands/demands or suggestions
eg I wish I were able to fly, it is vital that she attend the meeting, I suggested that he face up to the bully (modern English=was/attends/faces
how to apply the subjunctive mood to language change
- this mood seems to be dying out of the language
- often used in older texts to add greater formality
Theories (subjunctive mood)
- Crystal
- The New Fowler’s English Usage
- David Crystal said the subjunctive adds greater formality to the text
- decrease in usage of the subjunctive mood from 1600-1900
Theory: Goodman
language overtime has become more informal
Theory: Labov
“changes from above” related to changed made by socially dominant groups
In Early Modern English times, Grammarians eg Swift, had a major impact on the standardisation of our language
Grammar changes:
- negation
- passive voice
- location of adverb
- pronoun
- prepositions
- contractions
- negation has changed eg “I know not”
- active used more now eg “the food was eaten by the cat”
- adverb now after/before verb eg “certain it is”
- “one” not used anymore eg “one is thankful” - adds greater prestige
- “I am at London” - now replaced with “in”, at is rather IDIOSYNCRATIC to a modern reader
- we now contract eg “He is starving” - more formal, now more conversational
Theory: Biber
- use of passive seems to have declined in usage in later modern period
- Biber denotes more common in all registers in the 18th Century than in 20th century, by which time it had become mainly restricted to informational registers such as scientific writing
capitalisation is sporadic
writers capitalised words that them deemed important also bc early stages of standardisation
Theory: Fogarty
said using conjunctions at the start of sentences creates informal style and makes writing sound “conversational”
Theory: Beal
said there are four different usages of the dummy auxiliary “do” aka “periphrastic do”
N: negated forms eg “don’t”
I: inverted forms to formulate interrogatives eg “did you see the film”
C: code usage to avoid repetition eg “susie did it to”
E: emphatic usage eg “I do hope you smiled”
enclitic contractions
- words contracted at END eg can’t, don’t, I’d
proclitic contractions
- words contracted at BEGINNING eg t’was, t’were
orthography
study of spelling (use)
Theory: David Crystal
in anglo-saxon times (old English), spelling was regular, however, over the centuries, the pronunciation has changed many times, and the spelling has not kept up with this, which is one of the reasons we get so many irregularities.
- Printing press (18thcent) created more problems
what is the Great Vowel Shift
- a massive sound change affecting the long monophthongs of English during the fifteenth to eighteen centuries
- in old English, used to have mostly monothongs vowels, but now mostly diphthongs are used
eg “mice” changed from “mee” to “miice”
(if see irregular word, say “due to GVS”
monophthong vowel
diphthong vowel
- mouths stays in one positon, no movement eg kIt (individual vowel)
- mouth moves eg fAce (moving vowel)
what is the impact of the Great Vowel Shift
- people wrote the way they spoke, these changes happened along side the printing press (William Caxton), so that’s why words don’t always follow a pattern
- by the time the GVS was complete (early 1600s) many book had been printed that used spelling system that reflected the pre-GVS
- that is why so many irregular spellings
How to use Great Vowel Shift in an exam
- eg get inconsistent phonetic spelling
The use of inconsistent phonetic spelling in this text might be because the text was written in 1580, a time when The Great Vowel shift was in progress, along with Standardisation not being firmly established. It seems that the scribe is thus writing in his own dialect, which was commonplace of texts in this era.’
Context: linking of graphemes
- The linking of two graphemes, once common practice in printing, but is now becoming less common.
- Examples include æ and œ. We call these LIGATURES.
- The ampersand (&) developed from a ligature in which the handwritten Latin letterseandt
- spellinget, from the Latinfor “and” were combined (also French)
What did Caxton’s printing press encourage
Caxton’s printing press established in the 15th century encouraged unified spelling
what has happened to words like “knee” and “gnaw”
these consonant clusters became reduced to the /n/ phoneme, but the spelling remained.
main reasons for orthographical change:
- phonology
- terminal -e was once pronounced in some words, which may be linked to middle English pronunciation. However, the sound died out in the Early Modern English Period
- Great Vowel Shift
main reasons for orthographical change
- technology
- printing dropped off the terminal -e off letters to fit everything in one line
- sometimes printing added more letters as they got paid by the number of letters produced
main reasons for orthographical change
- standardisation
- long S lost in Late Modern English Period (1800), it was used initially and medially (short s used at the end of words)
- U and V were once interchangeable - by 1630 this stopped
main reasons for orthographical change
- influences from other languages
- silent letters often have Greek etymology
- pre and pro are Latin affixes (eg pre-school)
Caxton: punctuation
- he used the period (.) and the colon (:)
- also used the oblique stroke (/) AKA: virgule
- but this was replaced with the comma (,) during the 16th century
(good A01, along w/ repetition of semicolons to break up sentences)
punctuation changes from Early-Late Modern English:
- commas/semicolons
- commas used more often to link long clauses - more prestige
- commas and semi colons were common feature to separate clauses, creating more sentence complexity
punctuation changes from Early-Late Modern English:
- apostrophes
- 19thC: apostrophes were applied to possession as well as missing letters/vowels in words
- apostrophes were the last punctuation to be added to language, by grammarians as they hated “work’d” - but it may be dying out to fit online medium
punctuation changes from Early-Late Modern English:
- contractions
- contractions varied: proclitic contractions were common in 18thC but there was a gradual shift to enclitic contraction
- so more proclitic in older texts
punctuation changes from Early-Late Modern English:
- capitalisation
- by late modern English period, capital letters had begun to be capitalised according to the rules we follow today (proper nouns and at the beginning of sentences)
- this was mainly bc 18thC grammarians felt that a system was needed
(before: on words with importance)
punctuation changes from Early-Late Modern English:
- punctuation today
- when texting: punctuation is used to mark prosodic features where they are used in a non-standard form (!!!!)
- CAPITALISATION ALSO HAS AN EFFECT
- also with advancement in technology: auto-correct
- apostrophes have been omitted to fit outline medium
Theory: Lynn Truss
- Truss credits some of the current misunderstandings of punctuation rules to the fact that before the 19th century, it was customary to put an apostrophe, before the plural inflection of foreign, borrowed words ending with a vowel
eg banana, which would become “banana’s” in every context
of-genitive
- form of possession which adds formality to a text
eg “crumbs of the bread” rather than “bread crumbs” - of-phrasing increases the prestige of both sentences
Give dates of…
- Middle English
- Early Modern English
- Late Modern English
- Renaissance
- Middle English: 1100-1500
- Early Modern English: 1500-1800
- Late Modern English: 1800-present
- Renaissance: 1300 - 1700
Attitudes towards language:
- prescriptive language
- descriptive language
- Prescriptive grammar: Prescribes rules governing what people should/shouldn’t say
- Descriptive grammar: Describes the rules that govern what people do or can say
Theory: Jonathan Swift
- Swift proposed an authoritative plan to improve, correct and ascertain the English tongue.
in 18th cent - There were several other grammarians of this time that held a very prescriptive approach like Swift (eg Lindley) CHANGE FROM ABOVE (Labov)
(apply any century: 17th-before, 19th-post)
The Doctrine of Correctness
In the 18th century, rules began to be formulated, efforts began to be made to ‘fix’ the language, to determine what was right and what was wrong, to prescribe the goal to be attained: We refer to this as the doctrine of correctness.
- Samuel Johnson had a big influence upon this.
- Johnson was an English writer and critic, and one of the most famous literary figures of the 18th century. His best-known work is his ‘Dictionary of the English Language’ (1755)
How to apply attitudes towards language
eg if get formal text
- If formal with prescriptive grammar rules, you can suggest that this is from the influence of 18th century grammarians and how prescriptive attitudes emerged
- also mention the influence of standardisation, Johnson’s English Language dictionary (18th century) and how Caxton’s printing press was well established (15th century)
Theory: Beal (2009)
The turn of the millennium (21st century) has seen the appearance of a number of overtly prescriptive texts
(more standard=more ethos)
(challenge or support with Beal/Goodman)
Theory: Sharon Goodman (1996)
She believes we are living in a time of increased informalisation (a good one to remember!) – thus we are becoming more descriptive.
(challenge or support with Beal/Goodman)
idiosyncratic
- peculiar
could say idiosyncratic to a modern reader
Consonant clusters
in words like “knee” and “gnaw” constant clusters are reduced to the /n/ phoneme, but spelling has remained
Dictionaries and grammar rule books
There was a huge increase in the number of these eg Johnsons in 1755 and Lowths 1762 (first one=Cawdrey, 1604)
These texts were seen as guides to proper usage
Prescriptive attitudes
The consequences of these doctrinaire approaches to language and the process of language codification meant that prior common features
eg double negatives and final prepositions became stigmatised
Variation and change
- in the 18th century, we stil saw different registers of language use in terms of style and genre of texts
(not all ‘formal” - look at TENOR
- discrepancy between formality (unexpected difference)
Third person singular
- by 18th century, most texts had moved away from representation eg “hath” to eg “has”
- arose in EMP and continued into 18thC
Second person pronoun
Nominative singular: THOU
Nominative plural: YE
Objective singular: THEE
Objective plural: YOU
16th century: singular pronouns = informal and lack of status (thou/thee)
18th century: “thee” changed to “you”
and “ye” used to address someone of equal status/someone more superior, this was slowly leaving the language too
