Section B: Variation over Time

Question 1

Why does language change?

Answer 1

Technology and new inventions
Historical reasons like being subjected and colonisation and war
Mixing populations and interactions with other places through trade or other reason
Religion
Changes in education
People being given more opportunities depending on their class and the way they speak

Question 2

Etymology

Answer 2

The study of the origins of words and how their meanings have changed throughout history

Question 3

What is the historical progression of English?

Answer 3

Old English - 5th century to 11th century
Middle English - 11th to 14th century
Early Modern English - 15th to 17th century
Late Modern English - 18th century to present day

Question 4

What was Middle English?

Answer 4

The mixing of French with English after the Norman Conquest

Question 5

What is Late Modern English?

Answer 5

The age of standardised English

Question 6

What are the origins of English?

Answer 6

-Lie with the arrival in the British isles of Germanic tribes from p Europe in the 5th century
-8th and 9th century, Viking invaders from Scandinavian countries colonised eastern parts of England
-11th century, Norman invasion brought the french language to the existing mix of Germanic, Latin and Celtic languages
-These influences are still present today with 139 words used from the Scandinavians and 7000 french words

Question 7

What events impacted English?

Answer 7

Celt migrations
Roman occupation
Germanic settlements
Viking invasion
Norman invasion
Renaissance
British Empire

Question 8

Borrowing

Answer 8

Words that are adopted into English from other languages, their spelling or pronunciation may sometimes be anglicised

Question 9

Example of a word that was borrowed then anglicised?

Answer 9

Shampoo - it entered the English language from India during the colonial era, dates to 1762, derived from Hindi chāmpo which is derived from Sanskrit root Chapati (means to press, knead, soothe)

Question 10

What does lexical change refer to?

Answer 10

New words being created
Words being dropped from the language

Question 11

What are the 6 ways that lexical change occurs?

Answer 11

1. Words can be borrowed in their entirety into English (e.g. words relating to science)
2. Calque
3. Neologism
4. Eponyms and propriety names
5. Abbreviations e.g. acronyms, initialisms, clippings
6. Existing words can be adapted through compounding or blending

Question 12

Calque

Answer 12

A foreign word or phrase that is translated element for element into English e.g. Adam’s apple came from the French pomme d’Adam and loan came from German lehnwort

Question 13

Neologism

Answer 13

A brand new English word invented

Question 14

Eponyms and propriety names

Answer 14

Words named after things, for example after the inventors name e.g. eponym = sandwich or propriety name = hoover

Question 15

Blending

Answer 15

Meaning can be extended, through semantic broadening e.g. ‘dog’ can be used to refer to particular breeds

Question 16

Compounding

Answer 16

Words can be merged together to create one meaning e.g. ‘sidewalk’ since you can walk on the side of a road - common in American English

Question 17

Semantic change

Answer 17

The meanings of words change but the words themselves stay the same

Question 18

What are the 6 types of semantic change?

Answer 18

1. Amelioration
2. Pejoration
3. Weakening
4. Narrowing
5. Broadening
6. Metaphorical changes

Question 19

Amelioration

Answer 19

-a word that takes a more positive meaning or gains status
-e.g. Guy - comes from the name Guy Fawkes and it meant someone who looked grotesque and now its used generally to mean a male or a group of people

Question 20

Pejoration

Answer 20

-a word takes a more negative meaning over time
-e.g. awful used to mean someone you were in of, were in wonder of, or in fear of and now it means horrendous

Question 21

Weakening

Answer 21

-weakening of the definition or significance of the intensity of the word - they have taken other semantic values and its original definition isn’t as powerful or significant
-e.g. terribly and awfully are no synonyms of very but weren’t before
-e.g. shit has been derived from its original of faeces and is used in a lot of contexts now

Question 22

Narrowing

Answer 22

-consolidating the specificity of the term from broader to more descriptive parameters
-e.g. meat used to mean any type of food but now it means food from an animal - reason why mince pies are called mince pies even though they’re vegetarian
-e.g. girl used to mean young person but now refers to a young female person

Question 23

Broadening

Answer 23

-the expansion of meaning from a singular parameter to a broader definition like through propriety names
-e.g. cool used to be used as professional jargon (language of a profession) of jazz musicians, it referred to a particular artistic style of jazz and now has expanded to being sed to refer to something acceptable or favourable

Question 24

What are the 3 types of metaphorical changes? With definitions and examples.

Answer 24

1. Metaphor - a word acquires new meaning because it is used metaphorically e.g. bug means creepy crawly but can be used as ‘you’re bugging me’ - created new meaning of bug as in annoying
2. Euphemism - a way of describing something in a more pleasant way e.g. passed away is used to refer to death
3. Idiom - an expression that cannot be understood through its literal translation of its parts e.g. ‘bite the bullet’ means to get something over and done with if it’s unpleasant, or ‘once in a blue moon’ refers to something infrequent

Question 25

What are the 2 ways how pronunciation of words can change over time?

Answer 25

1. Words can be influenced by their spelling
2. Words can be influenced by the grammatical choices

Question 26

An example of a word that had its pronunciation change over time due to spelling?

Answer 26

-nephew
-most people today pronounce it nefyew
-traditionally it was pronounced nevyew but this is now rare among young speakers
-due to education, greater literacy means the way the word is spelt has influenced the way its said

Question 27

Examples of words that have had its pronunciations changed due to grammatical choices?

Answer 27

-an (h)istoric moment or a historic moment
-an (h)otel or a hotel
-the grammatical standard is becoming more common (where in these examples the h is pronounced and the use of an has changed to a), particularly among the young
-regional variation can affect this e.g. Americans pronounce herb as erb

Question 28

What is yod?

Answer 28

A y sound or /j/ is present between certain constants as well as oo sound or /u:/ in English - most speakers in the UK put it after the consonant sounds like p, b, d etc. like beauty

Question 29

What is yod coalescence? Examples?

Answer 29

-where the yod is merged with other sounds such as /d/ or /t/ or /z/ or /s/
-after /t/ and /d/ some use the yod like in tube where it may sound like tyoob- common in upper class
-the young mainly combine /t/ with the yod to produce /ʧ/ and the d with the yod to make /ʤ/
-occurs with /s/ like in assume where some use the yod in a glide ‘tisyoo’ but some merge the yod with the /s/ to produce a sh sound - RP typically uses the first but its more common to use the latter
-speakers with an East Anglian accent typically avoid the yod and pronounce tune as ‘toon’

Question 30

What are the 4 reasons why speech styles have changed?

Answer 30

1. Ease of articulation
2. Social prestige and changes in society
3. Accommodation theory
4. Fairclough

Question 31

What is meant by ease of articulation as a reason why speech styles have changed? Example?

Answer 31

We make things easer to say for example in abbreviations - some see this as laziness - e.g. like saying btw instead of by the way

Question 32

What is meant by social prestige and changes in society as a reason why speech styles have changed? Example?

Answer 32

Less regional variation due to more movement
Informalisation of media from RP in early days of radio has changed speech - Received Pronunciation - prestige form of english pronunciation has lost is popularity
Research in 2000s reported that the Queens accent changed from 1950s to the 1980s as she rhyme ‘had’ with ‘bad’

Question 33

What is meant by accommodation theory as a reason why speech styles have changed?

Answer 33

Comes under pragmatics
Speaker adjusts their speech to accommodate others in convergence (adapt towards others) or divergence (move away from them) - these can be upwards (to RP) or downwards (to regional or societal variation)
Downwards convergence happens in the media and in the younger people

Question 34

What is meant by Fairclough as a reason why speech styles have changed?

Answer 34

Believed that these moves and changes are part of conversationalisation and there’s been shifting boundaries between written and spoken discourse practices and a rising prestige and status for spoken language
Links with informalisation - the perceived standard mode of communication is more universally accepted to be informed by spoken rather than written English

Question 35

What are the 3 judgments about regional accents? Who were they developed by?

Answer 35

Developed by Freeborn

1. Incorrectness view - links to RP being viewed as the accent of Standard English - Freeborn argues this is purely linked to fashion and prestige - prescriptivism - modern prescriptivism is often centred around spoken English
2. Ugliness view - often said that some accents dont sound nice, but this seems to be linked to stereotypes and negative social connotations - the ugly accents are often those form the poorest or urban areas
3. Impreciseness view - some accents are seen as sloppy or lazy but actually many changes are logical

Question 36

What may accents do?

Answer 36

Accents may be represented in written texts in ways that encode judgement about social status or prestige

Question 37

What was the John Wells’s pronunciation survey?

Answer 37

-1988 - a pronunciation survey was created to investigated BrE preferences in a hundred or so items of fluctuating or disputed pronunciation
-The questionnaire was targeted at a self selected sample of those who are speech conscious - native speakers of British English who were interested in language and speech
-Example of a question: ‘absorb’ and provided two options to choose from whether it is said as ‘absorb’ or ‘abzorb’
-Another example: ‘Asia’ with two options to choose from ‘ayshuh’ or ‘ayzhuh’
-This survey highlighted the different ways that the older generation and the younger generation pronounce words for example with words like gigabyte and mall (shopping mall)
-Showed how spelling influences the way some words are pronounced like forehead is typically split into two words rather than as one which rhymes with horrid

Question 38

Linguafranca

Answer 38

Universal language in politics, commerce, business etc. e.g. English

Question 39

Standardisation

Answer 39

The process of making something conform to a standard, it creates consistency

Question 40

What was English before standardisation?

Answer 40

-there were lots of different dialects spoken in different parts of the country
-meant that different words for the same things, different pronunciations of the same words, and spelling, was a free for all

Question 41

Why can standardisation be positive and negative?

Answer 41

Standardisation can be positive: easier to communicate and stops people from inventing words easily
Standardisation can be negative: creates hierarchy in language - entry point into discrimination if one deviates from the standard

Question 42

What was the biggest era of standardisation in the history of English?

Answer 42

The creation of the Oxford English Dictionary

Question 43

What are the 4 aspects of the English Language that have been standardised?

Answer 43

1. The graphology and orthography of the English language - it reinforces consistency in spelling
2. Syntax of the English language
3. Lexis and semantics of the English language
4. Spelling and morphology of the English language