Language Change (paper 2) Flashcards
Bailey’s “Wave Model”
- works on the same basis as a drop of water hitting the surface of a lake - it creates ripples
essentially the closer you are to the drop of water the strong the ripple - in this sense those closest to the geographical location of where the change occurs are more likely to pick up the change
challenged by Trudgill….
- believes that change comes from big cities, is passed to big towns then smaller towns, missing out country dwellings
- core case study of this is Yorkshire where the archaic “thee” and “thou” are still in use in place of “you”
Chen’s “S-curve” model
UPTAKE
point 1 - the change is made and there is some uptake (usually spreads through a social group)
point 2 - more people are using it, but limited to a geographical region or group
RESISTANCE
point 3 - many more people know it now
point 4 - change has reached as many people as it can (no change can reach 100% as some people will always resist)
Aitchison’s PIDC model
Potential - there is the gap or potential for change
Implementation - the change occurs
Diffusion - the change spreads
Codification - the change is made official eg. being added to the dictionary
Halliday’s functional theory
- lexical gaps - there is a gap in the lexicon for something which needs describing eg. laptop
- functional shifts - where a word exists but we need a different word class
eg. “google” as a noun (I found it on Google), a verb (I’ll google it) and an adjective (a google search)
Hackett’s “random fluctuation” theory
- when someone makes an error (a “random fluctuation” in the standard) these errors can be standardised and recognised as somewhat synonymous
Substratum theory
- changes can be made as a result of interactions with other languages and variations of English
eg. British English saw an increase in the use of “like” as an intensifier as a result of American English
examples of substratum changes
- the media
- invasion (French invasion 1066)
- immigration (MLE)
- travel and exploration (birth of America)
David Crystal’s tide metaphor
- describes language changing as being like the tide, new things get washed up on shore and the tide takes other things away
some things make it onto the beach permanently, others only momentarily - all change is different, lasts differing amounts of time and affects different groups of people
Aitchison’s prescriptivist attitudes
Damp spoon syndrome - stems from the distasteful act of leaving a damp spoon in a bowl of sugar
implies people are lazy and disrespectful of language
eg. the growing trend of “g-dropping”
Infectious disease assumption - changes are like germs which spread and infect the language
eg. language used while texting often described as infecting our language
crumbling castle view - English was at some point at a “golden age” and is now in a state of disrepair
LEXICAL CHANGE
blending
when two existing words are fused to make a new word
eg. smoke & fog forming smog
LEXICAL CHANGE
clipping
when part of a word is removed but the meaning is virtually the same
eg. sync from synchronise
LEXICAL CHANGE
compounding
when two existing words are stuck together to form a new word
eg. black and bird forming blackbird
LEXICAL CHANGE
conversion
word class of an existing word is changed
eg. noun “text” (I sent a text) to a verb (I”ll text him)
LEXICAL CHANGE
derivation
adding a bound morpheme to change the word class of a word
eg. adding “ing” onto the noun “text” to form the present progressive verb “texting”
