Theory: Language Change, Historical Change Theorists, Experiments and Studies Flashcards
General, Lexical: Lexical Invention
Using completely new words.
General, Lexical, Lexical Invention: Borrowing/ Loan Words
New words are brought in from other languages. For example, ‘Blitz’ from German.
General, Lexical, Lexical Invention: Eponymisation
Using someone’s name to form a word. For example, ‘to google’, after the search engine.
General, Lexical, Lexical Invention: Neologisation
A completely new word is invented. For example, ‘Mx’ as a new pronoun.
General, Lexical, Lexical Innovation
Using words we already have to form new ones.
General, Lexical, Lexical Innovation: Affixation
Adding a prefix or a suffix to an existing word. For example, ’Remainers’.
General, Lexical, Lexical Innovation: Blending
Taking parts of two existing words. For example, ‘Brexit’.
General, Lexical, Lexical Innovation: Clipping or Abbreviating
Removing part of a word. For example, ‘exam’ instead of ‘examination’.
General, Lexical, Lexical Innovation: Conversion
A word changes class. For example, ‘email’ – a change from a noun to a verb.
General, Lexical, Lexical Innovation: Compounding
Combing two existing words. For example, ’football’.
General, Lexical, Lexical Innovation: Reduplication
Combining two similar sounds. For example, ‘walkie-talkie’.
General, Lexical, Lexical Innovation: Acronymisation and Initialisation
Taking the first letters in a phrase and forming a word. For example, ‘BBC’ and ‘laser’.
General, Semantic: Almelioration
A word gains a more positive meaning, For example, ‘nice’ used to mean ignorant (from the Latin ‘nescire’ meaning ‘to not know’).
General, Semantic: Bleaching
A word loses power, for example, ‘crap’.
General, Semantic: Derogation/ Pejoration
A word gets a worse meaning over time. For example, ‘cunning’ used to mean knowledgeable.
General, Semantic: Expansion
A word’s definition expands to cover more. For example, ‘bird’ used to refer to more to just small birds.
General, Semantic: Metaphor and Metonymy
A word/phrase become a metaphor or metonym and so its meaning changes. For example, ‘doghouse’.
Metonymy is a figure of speech where one word or phrase is substituted for another with which it is closely associated. For example, saying “the White House announced” instead of “the President announced” uses “the White House” as a metonym for the U.S. government.
General, Semantic: Narrowing
A word loses some of its meaning. For example, ‘gay’ has lost it meaning of ‘happy’.
General, Semantic: Neosemy
A word gains a completely new meaning. For example, ‘surf’ the waves – ‘surf’ the internet.
Lexical, Anglos, Saxons and Jutes
When they invaded, the Anglos, Saxons and Jutes brought large amounts of their language within them and as such, imported lots of their language into Old English. Including:
- Words for family like ‘son’ and ‘daughter’.
- Verbs like ‘drink’ and ‘go’.
- Prepositions.
Lexical and Grammatical, Vikings
The Vikings brought with them new words like ‘sky’, ‘skull’ and ‘anger’ (and a simplified grammatical system)
Lexical, Normans
The invasion of the Normans and subsequent domination lead to a huge amount of (Norman) French terms into the language, vastly increasing the Middle English lexicon.
Lexical, Shakespeare
Shakespeare introduced over 400 new words into English.
Lexical, The British Empire
The British Empire started colonising and acquiring new words from places they visited.