Theory: Language Change, Historical Change Theorists, Experiments and Studies

Question 1

General, Lexical: Lexical Invention

Answer 1

Using completely new words.

Question 2

General, Lexical, Lexical Invention: Borrowing/ Loan Words

Answer 2

New words are brought in from other languages. For example, ‘Blitz’ from German.

Question 3

General, Lexical, Lexical Invention: Eponymisation

Answer 3

Using someone’s name to form a word. For example, ‘to google’, after the search engine.

Question 4

General, Lexical, Lexical Invention: Neologisation

Answer 4

A completely new word is invented. For example, ‘Mx’ as a new pronoun.

Question 5

General, Lexical, Lexical Innovation

Answer 5

Using words we already have to form new ones.

Question 6

General, Lexical, Lexical Innovation: Affixation

Answer 6

Adding a prefix or a suffix to an existing word. For example, ’Remainers’.

Question 7

General, Lexical, Lexical Innovation: Blending

Answer 7

Taking parts of two existing words. For example, ‘Brexit’.

Question 8

General, Lexical, Lexical Innovation: Clipping or Abbreviating

Answer 8

Removing part of a word. For example, ‘exam’ instead of ‘examination’.

Question 9

General, Lexical, Lexical Innovation: Conversion

Answer 9

A word changes class. For example, ‘email’ – a change from a noun to a verb.

Question 10

General, Lexical, Lexical Innovation: Compounding

Answer 10

Combing two existing words. For example, ’football’.

Question 11

General, Lexical, Lexical Innovation: Reduplication

Answer 11

Combining two similar sounds. For example, ‘walkie-talkie’.

Question 12

General, Lexical, Lexical Innovation: Acronymisation and Initialisation

Answer 12

Taking the first letters in a phrase and forming a word. For example, ‘BBC’ and ‘laser’.

Question 13

General, Semantic: Almelioration

Answer 13

A word gains a more positive meaning, For example, ‘nice’ used to mean ignorant (from the Latin ‘nescire’ meaning ‘to not know’).

Question 14

General, Semantic: Bleaching

Answer 14

A word loses power, for example, ‘crap’.

Question 15

General, Semantic: Derogation/ Pejoration

Answer 15

A word gets a worse meaning over time. For example, ‘cunning’ used to mean knowledgeable.

Question 16

General, Semantic: Expansion

Answer 16

A word’s definition expands to cover more. For example, ‘bird’ used to refer to more to just small birds.

Question 17

General, Semantic: Metaphor and Metonymy

Answer 17

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.

Question 18

General, Semantic: Narrowing

Answer 18

A word loses some of its meaning. For example, ‘gay’ has lost it meaning of ‘happy’.

Question 19

General, Semantic: Neosemy

Answer 19

A word gains a completely new meaning. For example, ‘surf’ the waves – ‘surf’ the internet.

Question 20

Lexical, Anglos, Saxons and Jutes

Answer 20

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.

Question 21

Lexical and Grammatical, Vikings

Answer 21

The Vikings brought with them new words like ‘sky’, ‘skull’ and ‘anger’ (and a simplified grammatical system)

Question 22

Lexical, Normans

Answer 22

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.

Question 23

Lexical, Shakespeare

Answer 23

Shakespeare introduced over 400 new words into English.

Question 24

Lexical, The British Empire

Answer 24

The British Empire started colonising and acquiring new words from places they visited.

Question 25

Lexical, Wycliffe

Answer 25

Translated the Bible from Latin to English.

Question 26

Lexical and Orthographical, The Chancery

Answer 26

Decided to make English changes to standardise the use of English. For example, by removing the use of ‘hath’ and deciding to use ‘I’.

Question 27

Orthographical, Traditionalist Campaigners

Answer 27

Wanted spelling to reflect the history of the language. This includes changing orthography to Latinate spellings. For example, adding the <h> in ‘rhyme’ to match ‘rhythm’.</h>

Question 28

Phonological, The Great Vowel Shift

Answer 28

Long vowel sounds moved from the front of the mouth to further back. Some sounds also became diphthongs. For example, ‘mouse’ was originally pronounced as ‘moose’.

(Occurred primarily between the 15th and 18th centuries).

Question 29

Lexical, Tyndale

Answer 29

Translated the Bible, but with slightly more success than Wycliffe.

Question 30

Lexical and Grammatical, King James I

Answer 30

Ordered a Bible in English which was heavily rhetorical, so could be read out and used archaic lexis and grammatical structures to make it sound older and wiser.

Question 31

Orthographical, Gutenberg

Answer 31

Invented the printing press.

Question 32

Orthographical, Caxton

Answer 32

Brought the printing press to England. Made decisions on which spellings to use - orthography became more fixed.

E.g. ‘night’ instead of ‘nyght’ and ‘love’ instead of ‘luve’.

Question 33

Lexical, Renaissance Thinkers

Answer 33

The rebirth of Greek and Latin ideas led to importation of many Greek and Latinate lexis into English.

E.g. Democracy - From the Greek “demokratia,” which combines “demos” (people) and “kratos” (power or rule). This term was important in political thought.
Art - From the Latin “ars,” meaning skill or craft. This term became more prominent as artistic endeavors flourished during the Renaissance.

Question 34

Lexical, The Inkhorn Controversy

Answer 34

Concern was raised over the high numbers of lexis (Inkhorn terms) which were being imported from Latin and Greek. (Overly elaborate or scholarly).

E.g. Ubiquitous - Meaning present everywhere, derived from the Latin “ubique.”

Sycophant - Originally from Greek, referring to a person who acts obsequiously to someone important in order to gain advantage.

Question 35

Lexical and Orthographical, Cawdrey

Answer 35

Wrote the first dictionary, ‘Table Alphabeticall‘, to provide terms and definitions in 1604. Aimed to try and fix orthography.

It aimed to provide straightforward definitions for difficult or unusual words to help readers understand them better.

E.g. “Felicity” (previously ‘felicite’ or ‘felicitee’) - Cawdrey chose this spelling for the state of being happy, promoting uniformity in how it was written.

Question 36

Lexical and Orthographical, Johnson

Answer 36

Published a dictionary in 1755 containing 40,000 words and provides spellings. However, there is some controversy over the terms he chose not to include and his definitions are biased. He sought to provide ‘regulation’, though admits that trying to control language is like trying to ‘lash the wind’.

Question 37

Lexical, Swift (1667 - 1745)

Answer 37

‘Gulliver’s Travels’.

Thought that English needed to be corrected, improved and ascertained. He felt it was being destroyed. He disliked:
- Contractions.
- Long words.
- New words (neologisms).
- Borrowed words.
- Clipped words.
- Young people changing language.

Question 38

Lexical and Grammatical, Académie Francais

Answer 38

Worked to accept or reject additions into the French Language and to preserve grammar.

Question 39

Grammatical, Lowth

Answer 39

Wrote and influential grammar book, ‘A Short Introduction to English Grammar’ in 1762, for teaching in which he stated (among other things) that multiple negation wasn’t acceptable in English as two negatives in Maths makes a positive. Importantly, this was his own personal opinion, but has become codified.

Question 40

Grammatical, Murray (1795)

Answer 40

Believed that we shouldn’t use split infinitives. For example, it should be ‘to walk proudly’ rather than ‘to proudly walk’.

Question 41

Phonological, The Industrial Revolution

Answer 41

The rise in industry caused mass migration and so new regional accents began to develop. For example, the Liverpudlian accent stems from Irish migration.

Question 42

Lexical and Grammatical, The King’s English Society

Answer 42

The King’s English Society is a charity that aims to keep the English language safe from perceived declining standards.