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A-level English Language > Paper 2 : Language diversity and change > Flashcards

Paper 2 : Language diversity and change Flashcards

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Proverbs and Idioms flashcards
1
Q

Dates for Old English

A

450 - 1066 CE

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2
Q

Dates for Middle English

A

1066 - 1476 CE

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3
Q

Dates for Early Modern English

A

1476 - 1800s CE

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4
Q

Dates for Late Modern English

A

1800 CE -

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5
Q

Six Driving forces of language change

A

Movement of people, technological change, war, politics, youth culture, expressiveness

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6
Q

Diachronic change

A

Historical development of language

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7
Q

Synchronic variation

A

Study of language variation at a given moment of time

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8
Q

What type of language is English?

A

Germanic branch of the great Indo-European language tree

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9
Q

What are the Indo-European languages thought to have evolved from?

A

The language of Anatolian farmers, eastern Turkey, circa. 6500 BCE

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10
Q

What is the ‘wave of advance’?

A

Spread of the Indo-European languages through peaceful expansion, not war and conquest

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11
Q

When did the Germanic tribes (Angles, Saxons, Jutes) come to Britain?

A

CE 450

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12
Q

Example of language change through war in Old English

A

Eradication of the Celts, with the Anglo-Saxon’s Germanic language forming the basis of English today

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13
Q

Lexemes adopted by the Anglo Saxons from the Celts

A

Coombe, whiskey, clan, bog, slew, brat

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14
Q

Impact of the Viking invasion on language (CE 865)

A

Danelaw line divided territory of the country - people eventually intermarried, and Old Norse and Old English merged, but both were mutually intelligible anyway

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15
Q

What is the function of most Anglo-Saxon origin words?

A

Grammatical

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16
Q

Influence of Old Norse on synonyms

A

Saxons had ‘craft’, Vikings had ‘skill’ - adopted both and had slightly different meanings rather than replacing, therefore lexicon grew and specified

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17
Q

Influence of Old Norse on phonemes

A

Consonant cluster /sk/, gutteral /g/ sound

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18
Q

Why is English heterogeneously composed?

A

Anglo Saxon, Old Norse, Norman French, Latin and Greek -> borrowed from all these

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19
Q

Impact of Norman Invasion, 1066CE

A

English became the tertiary language and the language of serfdom - French or latin was spoken in churches, cities and courts

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20
Q

How was English re-established following the Normans?

A

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

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21
Q

French influence on the language

A

Softer sounds and stressing syllables differently meant more varied intonational qualities, equal stress to all syllables rather than Anglo Saxon habit of forward stress

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22
Q

Greek and latin loan words in the Middle Ages

A

Mostly religious terms from Christian missionaries

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23
Q

When did William Caxton bring the printing press to Britain?

A

1476 CE

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24
Q

Importance of the printing press for the masses

A

Reading English translations was prohibitively expensive and required hiring a scribe / Monk - PP could mass produce text quickly and bring costs down

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25
Q

Impact of the printing press on the costs of books

A

Cost fell by 80% - reachable for the middle class

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26
Q

What did Caxton base the spelling and grammar in his books on?

A

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

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27
Q

How did Caxton’s printing press kickstart standardisation?

A

Mercian dialect as seen in print became the basis for standard English

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28
Q

How many new words entered the lexicon during the English Renaissance?

A

10 - 12,000 new words entered the vocab between 1590 - 1610

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29
Q

How did standard English gain overt prestige?

A

Writing has a greater degree of permanence than speech, and is associated with education / power / employability

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30
Q

Examples of terms from other languages during the English Renaissance

A

‘coffee’, ‘alcohol’ from Arabic, ‘curry’ from Tamil, ‘violin’, ‘balcony’ from Italian

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31
Q

Where did the biggest influx of new terms come from in the English Renaissance?

A

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

32
Q

When was the Inkhorn controversy?

A

16th / 17th century

33
Q

Notes on the Inkhorn controversy

A

John Cheke - Felt English should be reclassified as Germanic, refused Greek and Latin imports (‘Inkhorn’ terms), ‘bankruptcy of the English language”

34
Q

Contribution of Philip Sidney

A

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

35
Q

Influence of vernacular English during the English Renaissance

A

Playwrights eg. Shakespeare fused high-brow vocab with street language therefore language becomes universal, ability to code switch

36
Q

Influence of Shakespeare on language

A

First used over 2000 new words -> neologisms influenced by the latin of his schooling + the English of his church

37
Q

Societal influence of Shakespeare

A

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

38
Q

Influence of Samuel Johnson’s dictionary

A

Crystallised semantic and orthographic aspects of the language

39
Q

Robert Cawdrey’s Table Alphabeticall

A

A ‘glossary’ of sorts to react to renaissance influx of new words concerning philosophy, religion and high culture

40
Q

What was English Language reform?

A

Conscious attempts to codify the language and apply prescriptive suggestions - began with Caxton and standardisation, reinforced through dictionaries and glossaries

41
Q

Successful example of English Language reform

A

James Howell, ‘Grammar’, 1662 - successful minor changes to spelling eg. logique -> logic

42
Q

Linking of English words to Graeco - Latin counterparts

A

16th century onwards - adding letters to reflect their Greek or Latin counterparts eg. ‘det’ became ‘debt’ to reflect the latin ‘debitum’

43
Q

Typical features of Early Modern English

A

proclitic morphemes (twas), periphrastic grammar (‘he did go yesterday’), archaic pronouns

44
Q

How many words are in the English vocabulary?

A

Between 650,000 and 1 million

45
Q

What percentage of English words are borrowed?

A

Around 70%

46
Q

What is the functional theory of language change?

A

Language changes to suit the needs of users, changes because society does, often aligns with technological development

47
Q

Examples of tech-driven language

A

MP3 (initialism), Texting (synecdoche), Cyber bullying (compound term)

48
Q

What is amelioration?

A

Semantic shift gains a positive denotation and connotations over time

49
Q

What is pejoration?

A

Semantic shift gains a negative denotation and connotations over time

50
Q

What is semantic broadening?

A

Word gains new meaning on top of original meaning

51
Q

What is semantic narrowing?

A

Word loses some of its associated meanings

52
Q

What is an archaism?

A

A word that falls out of usage over time and feels old-fashioned

53
Q

What is a malapropism?

A

Word usage based on mishearing eg. the world is your lobster

54
Q

What is linguistic determinism?

A

Language determines the way we think and behave

55
Q

What is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis?

A

Language constructs our world view

56
Q

What is linguistic relativity?

A

Language shapes our thinking, but does not completely control it

57
Q

What is linguistic reflectionism?

A

Language reflects the society that produces it

58
Q

What is semantic reclamation?

A

Negative words can be re-appropriated by the groups they were used against eg. queer

59
Q

Example of a semantic shift

A

Verb ‘navigate’ used to exclusively apply to ships

60
Q

Example of semantic broadening

A

‘Dog” originally applied to only one breed of dog

61
Q

Justyna Robinson’s ‘awesome’ study (2010)

A

Two age extremes have different interpretations of the meaning of the word, highlights semantic shift

62
Q

Grammatical development in LME

A

Written language is picking up some characteristics of informal spoken modal communication eg. must have - must’ve - must of, creates modern acceptable usage

63
Q

What was the Great Vowel Shift?

A

14th to 17th centuries - vowel sounds changed

64
Q

What differentiates online social media communication and face-to-face communication?

A

Online communication is asynchronous at times, and proximally different (person you’re speaking to can be far away)

65
Q

What is random fluctuation theory?

A

Language change is not an ordered / logical process

66
Q

David Crystal’s commentary on functional theory?

A

‘The only languages that don’t change are dead ones’
‘All living languages change’

67
Q

Supporting example of random fluctuation theory

A

‘pwnd’ slang expression : believed to be derived from a typo

68
Q

Two stages of language change

A

Innovation and diffusion

69
Q

Example of language innovation and diffusion

A

‘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)

70
Q

What does the S-curve model show?

A

When a term is slow to take off, increases rapidly, and then the innovation becomes dominant

71
Q

What does the wave model show?

A

Language starts at a centre (eg. a geographical place) and expands outwards, possibly reducing in usage due to age, class, gender etc.

72
Q

Examples of the impact of war on language creation and adoption

A

Shell Shock (WW1), Blitz (WW2), Kamikaze (WW2 from Japanese)

73
Q

Examples of the impact of politics on language creation and adoption

A

-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

74
Q

Deutscher (2006) ‘s commentary on language for expressiveness

A

Users attempt to achieve greater effect with their utterances and extend meaning - constantly search for new ways of saying things, common example is ‘no’

75
Q

Language and communities of practice

A

Different youth subcultures and communities of practice use particular terms as markers of social identity

76
Q

Deutscher (2006) notes on communities of practice

A

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

A-level English Language (1 decks)

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