Language Change and Origins Flashcards
How many words does the average educated person have in their active vocabulary
10,000
When was the origins of English
450AD to 1066AD
When was the Middle English period
1066 - 1485
When was the black death
1347 - 1350
What effect did the black death have on language
death of between 1/4 and 1/3 of Britain’s population, introduction of neologisms related to plague, death of priests and clergy led to loss of Latin
When was the printing press invented and who invented it?
Johannes Gutenberg, 1458
What did the invention of the printing press do to language?
Enabled some standardisation of language
When was the great vowel shift?
1300-1500
What was the great vowel shift?
change in the pronunciation of all long vowels - vowels in this period had acquired their present pronunciation
When was the tudor period?
1485-1603
What occurred during the Tudor period?
Expansion of lexis, travel to and discovery of colonies in north America, trade and discovery brought about rapid language change. English word borrowing included words from 50 different languages
When was the first dictionary released and by whom?
1604, Robert Cawdrey
When was the American dictionary first released and by whom?
1828, Noah Webster
Give some examples of Americanisms in language
Colour -> color, centre -> center, travelled -> traveled, unionisation -> unionization, manoeuvre -> maneuver
What % of Britain speak RP
3%
Jean Aitchison theory
Language isn’t decaying and change isn’t necessarily a bad thing
Jean Aitchison’s language metaphors
The crumbling castle: English language is like a castle, it should be preserved
The damp spoon: New forms of language arise from laziness, like a damp spoon in sugar
The infectious disease: Changes in language are often contagious
Saphir and Whorf
Linguistic determinism, language and its structures limit and determine human thought, implies people of different languages have different thoughts
Supports prescriptivist approach that preserving language as it remains is important as it
impacts thought
- we can only think things we have the language to articulate, however this would mean you couldn’t coin new terms
David Crystal
- Tide metaphor, language is constantly changing and brings in new words and removing others in a natural progressive way
- Changes are not for the worse or better they are simply changes
- forms of grammar and spelling still convey the same message so why should it be considered wrong to use incorrect forms of these
Charles Hockett
- Random fluctuation theory, random events and errors lead to language change
- for example the word ‘pease’ was used to refer to a single pea but people mistakenly thought it was plural and used ‘pea’ as the singular
- Language changes as a result of ever changing contextual factors
Suzanne Romaine
Believed language change can occur in two ways:
- Internal changes, the factors within language e.g dictionaries promoting new words and meanings
- external changes, changing social contexts, ideologies, technology and inventions e.g political correctness
Micheal Halliday
Functional theory, language changes according to the needs of its user. this explains archaisms as many of them occur because technology has moved on
Norman Fairclough
- Noticed advertisements are increasingly attempting to mimic speech (conversationalism)
- At the same time synthetic personalisation is becoming more common in an attempt create a personal relationship
Sharon Goodman
- Increased information lesson, language forms that were traditionally reserved forpersonal relationships are now used in wider social contexts. For example letter X is a supercharged typographic icon and has a range of different meanings: kiss, incorrect, no named person, site on a map.
- words in texting are becoming increasingly multi modal
- ‘They use devices from more than one semiotic mode of communication simultaneously’
- Finding a term to describe visual elements of a text is problematic
Donald Mackinnon
Categorises attitudes people may have to language use:
- as pleasant or ugly
- socially acceptable or socially unacceptable
- appropriate in context or inappropriate in context
- useful or useless
change generally takes place overtime but political correctness involves a conscious process
Zuzana Justman
The language of the Nazis made it easier for the rest of the world to ignore the events:
- ‘final solutions’, extinction of German Jewry
- ‘Evacuation’, removal of enemies to camps
- ‘special treatment’, gas/death
- ‘protective custody’, imprisonment
Samuel Johnson
- Created the Dictionary of English language with 4000 words
- language is copious without order and language is impossible to
‘fix’ because of its everlasting changing nature - The dictionary was a way to record language of the day
Shirley Russell
Grammar and Style book, 1996
modern english is made up of 3 layers of vocabulary
1. anglo-saxon (with additions from viking language, old norse)
2. french
3. latin (additions from greek)
What features of anglo-saxon language does Shirley Russell identify?
- extremely important structure words e.g. ‘a’ ‘the’ ‘in’ and ‘that’ - join sentences together and are indispensable words
- personal pronouns e.g. ‘I’ ‘you’ ‘he’ ‘she’ ‘we’ ‘us’
- demonstrative pronouns ‘this’ ‘that’ ‘these’
- auxiliary verbs ‘can’ ‘shall’
- conjunctions ‘as’ ‘and’ ‘but ‘ ‘so’ ‘then’
- prepositions ‘on’ ‘in’ ‘under’ ‘over’ ‘down’ ‘up’
- adverbs ‘when’ ‘where’ ‘while’
- most parts of the body and numbers
- many Strong Verbs (form their past tense by changing the vowel) - e.g. speak - spoke
What features of French language does Shirley Russell identify?
- from 1066 - brought by the normans, it was the language of the court and upper and middle
classes - low classes and peasants spoke english - lasted for 200 years after conquest
- many humble words. e.g. bucket came from french - most french borrowings are elegant words, with connotations of chivalry, courtliness and romance
- anglo-saxons put stress on first syllable of most words e.g. ‘board’, french put equal stress on all syllables e.g. ‘cliché, elite’
What features of Latin and Greek language does Shirley Russell identify?
- 20th century scientists mainly used Greek rather than Latin words for inventions and discoveries e.g. medicine use, Greek suffixes -itis’ and -osis’ e.g. arthritis
- latin made a far deaper and wider impact on the english language - half of the english
- language is derived from latin
- lots of latin prefixes e.g. ‘ant’ ‘re’ ‘pro’ ‘trans’ ‘pre’ ‘post’, and suffixes e.g. ‘-ate’ ‘-al’ ‘-ic’ e.g. educate, normal, elastic
What is an eggcorn?
a word or phrase that sounds like and is mistakenly used in seemingly logical or plausible way for another word or phrase
What is Folk Etymology?
A change in the form or pronunciation of a word or phrase that reflects a mistaken assumption about its origin
