Paper 2 : Language change Flashcards
Dates for Old English
450 - 1066 CE
Dates for Middle English
1066 - 1476 CE
Dates for Early Modern English
1476 - 1800s CE
Dates for Late Modern English
1800 CE -
Six Driving forces of language change
Movement of people, technological change, war, politics, youth culture, expressiveness
Diachronic change
Historical development of language
Synchronic variation
Study of language variation at a given moment of time
What type of language is English?
Germanic branch of the great Indo-European language tree
What are the Indo-European languages thought to have evolved from?
The language of Anatolian farmers, eastern Turkey, circa. 6500 BCE
What is the ‘wave of advance’?
Spread of the Indo-European languages through peaceful expansion, not war and conquest
When did the Germanic tribes (Angles, Saxons, Jutes) come to Britain?
CE 450
Example of language change through war in Old English
Eradication of the Celts, with the Anglo-Saxon’s Germanic language forming the basis of English today
Lexemes adopted by the Anglo Saxons from the Celts
Coombe, whiskey, clan, bog, slew, brat
Impact of the Viking invasion on language (CE 865)
Danelaw line divided territory of the country - people eventually intermarried, and Old Norse and Old English merged, but both were mutually intelligible anyway
What is the function of most Anglo-Saxon origin words?
Grammatical
Influence of Old Norse on synonyms
Saxons had ‘craft’, Vikings had ‘skill’ - adopted both and had slightly different meanings rather than replacing, therefore lexicon grew and specified
Influence of Old Norse on phonemes
Consonant cluster /sk/, gutteral /g/ sound
Why is English heterogeneously composed?
Anglo Saxon, Old Norse, Norman French, Latin and Greek -> borrowed from all these
Impact of Norman Invasion, 1066CE
English became the tertiary language and the language of serfdom - French or latin was spoken in churches, cities and courts
How was English re-established following the Normans?
Black Death (1348-49) killed many in the main population centres, therefore English speakers were brought in to occupy prominent societal positions + loss of the Norman Kingdom on the continent to the French
French influence on the language
Softer sounds and stressing syllables differently meant more varied intonational qualities, equal stress to all syllables rather than Anglo Saxon habit of forward stress
Greek and latin loan words in the Middle Ages
Mostly religious terms from Christian missionaries
When did William Caxton bring the printing press to Britain?
1476 CE
Importance of the printing press for the masses
Reading English translations was prohibitively expensive and required hiring a scribe / Monk - PP could mass produce text quickly and bring costs down
Impact of the printing press on the costs of books
Cost fell by 80% - reachable for the middle class
What did Caxton base the spelling and grammar in his books on?
The Mercian dialect - spoken in the triangle between London, Oxford and Cambridge, where his target demographic was - had to choose between five main regional dialects therefore there was no standardised basis for the language
How did Caxton’s printing press kickstart standardisation?
Mercian dialect as seen in print became the basis for standard English
How many new words entered the lexicon during the English Renaissance?
10 - 12,000 new words entered the vocab between 1590 - 1610
How did standard English gain overt prestige?
Writing has a greater degree of permanence than speech, and is associated with education / power / employability
Examples of terms from other languages during the English Renaissance
‘coffee’, ‘alcohol’ from Arabic, ‘curry’ from Tamil, ‘violin’, ‘balcony’ from Italian
Where did the biggest influx of new terms come from in the English Renaissance?
Latin and Greek - Oxbridge wanted to preserve this due to ties with knowledge and scholars, could be used to describe new concepts being imported from abroad
When was the Inkhorn controversy?
16th / 17th century
Notes on the Inkhorn controversy
John Cheke - Felt English should be reclassified as Germanic, refused Greek and Latin imports (‘Inkhorn’ terms), ‘bankruptcy of the English language”
Contribution of Philip Sidney
Knightly courtier of Queen Elizabeth, fetishisation of poetry, 2225 words in Oxford online dict. attributed to him eg. ‘miniature’, used compound qualitative adjectives, growing confidence in English as a significant and artistic language
Influence of vernacular English during the English Renaissance
Playwrights eg. Shakespeare fused high-brow vocab with street language therefore language becomes universal, ability to code switch
Influence of Shakespeare on language
First used over 2000 new words -> neologisms influenced by the latin of his schooling + the English of his church
Societal influence of Shakespeare
His plays were visible and accessible therefore 50% literacy rate was achieved, 50% of citizens saw a show in London, HOWEVER many words attributed to him may be because he wrote them down first
Influence of Samuel Johnson’s dictionary
Crystallised semantic and orthographic aspects of the language
Robert Cawdrey’s Table Alphabeticall
A ‘glossary’ of sorts to react to renaissance influx of new words concerning philosophy, religion and high culture
What was English Language reform?
Conscious attempts to codify the language and apply prescriptive suggestions - began with Caxton and standardisation, reinforced through dictionaries and glossaries
Successful example of English Language reform
James Howell, ‘Grammar’, 1662 - successful minor changes to spelling eg. logique -> logic
Linking of English words to Graeco - Latin counterparts
16th century onwards - adding letters to reflect their Greek or Latin counterparts eg. ‘det’ became ‘debt’ to reflect the latin ‘debitum’
Typical features of Early Modern English
proclitic morphemes (twas), periphrastic grammar (‘he did go yesterday’), archaic pronouns
How many words are in the English vocabulary?
Between 650,000 and 1 million
What percentage of English words are borrowed?
Around 70%
What is the functional theory of language change?
Language changes to suit the needs of users, changes because society does, often aligns with technological development
Examples of tech-driven language
MP3 (initialism), Texting (synecdoche), Cyber bullying (compound term)
What is amelioration?
Semantic shift gains a positive denotation and connotations over time
What is pejoration?
Semantic shift gains a negative denotation and connotations over time
What is semantic broadening?
Word gains new meaning on top of original meaning
What is semantic narrowing?
Word loses some of its associated meanings
What is an archaism?
A word that falls out of usage over time and feels old-fashioned
What is a malapropism?
Word usage based on mishearing eg. the world is your lobster
What is linguistic determinism?
Language determines the way we think and behave
What is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis?
Language constructs our world view
What is linguistic relativity?
Language shapes our thinking, but does not completely control it
What is linguistic reflectionism?
Language reflects the society that produces it
What is semantic reclamation?
Negative words can be re-appropriated by the groups they were used against eg. queer
Example of a semantic shift
Verb ‘navigate’ used to exclusively apply to ships
Example of semantic broadening
‘Dog” originally applied to only one breed of dog
Justyna Robinson’s ‘awesome’ study (2010)
Two age extremes have different interpretations of the meaning of the word, highlights semantic shift
Grammatical development in LME
Written language is picking up some characteristics of informal spoken modal communication eg. must have - must’ve - must of, creates modern acceptable usage
What was the Great Vowel Shift?
14th to 17th centuries - vowel sounds changed
What differentiates online social media communication and face-to-face communication?
Online communication is asynchronous at times, and proximally different (person you’re speaking to can be far away)
What is random fluctuation theory?
Language change is not an ordered / logical process
David Crystal’s commentary on functional theory?
‘The only languages that don’t change are dead ones’
‘All living languages change’
Supporting example of random fluctuation theory
‘pwnd’ slang expression : believed to be derived from a typo
Two stages of language change
Innovation and diffusion
Example of language innovation and diffusion
‘you’re toast’ - illocutionary declaration made by Bill Murray on the set of ‘Ghostbusters’ (Innovation), used in the movie and appeared to be a part of vernacular (diffusion)
What does the S-curve model show?
When a term is slow to take off, increases rapidly, and then the innovation becomes dominant
What does the wave model show?
Language starts at a centre (eg. a geographical place) and expands outwards, possibly reducing in usage due to age, class, gender etc.
Examples of the impact of war on language creation and adoption
Shell Shock (WW1), Blitz (WW2), Kamikaze (WW2 from Japanese)
Examples of the impact of politics on language creation and adoption
-The lib-fix /-gate/ re-appropriated from the Watergate hotel to apply to any form of scandal
-Rise of -isms
-Attempt to control language by politicians eg. universal credit > job seekers allowance
-Neologisms eg. HS2, levelling up
Deutscher (2006) ‘s commentary on language for expressiveness
Users attempt to achieve greater effect with their utterances and extend meaning - constantly search for new ways of saying things, common example is ‘no’
Language and communities of practice
Different youth subcultures and communities of practice use particular terms as markers of social identity
Deutscher (2006) notes on communities of practice
Language changes for reasons of ECONOMY and ANALOGY
-Economy : save effort in communication
-Analogy : tendency to regularise language use eg. new nouns also gain pluralised forms
