Language Change Flashcards
Coinage
Term to refer to creation of new words
Morphology
Adding a suffix e.g. less or a prefix de/un/re
Compounding
adding two existing words together to make a new one e.g. television airport
Borrowing
taking a word from another language e.g. bungalow, cafe
Semantic change
Refers to how words change over time
Pejoration
Where a word takes on a negative meaning e.g. gay, queen, diva usually related to minority groups or sexuality
Amerlioration
Where a word takes on more positive meanings e.g sick or wicked
Blending
Blurring two words together e.g. bromance
broadening
Where a word takes on more meanings e.g pudding meant just a savoury dish and now includes sweet desert.
Narrowing
Where a word becomes more specific e.g. meat originally meant all food and now just animal flesh
weakening
Where a word loses strength e.g. soon used to mean right now and today means in an unspecific time
Eponyms
Where the name of a person becomes the name of the item e.g. Hoover, Sandwich
Conversion
Where the name of the person / product becomes a verb e.g to hoover or to google
Old English
500 to 1100AD. Anglo Saxon in origin. Used inflexions to identify verb object subject etc
Middle English
1100 to 1400AD was created out of Old French and combining with Old English after the Norman Conquest irregular spelling
