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.
Lexical, Wycliffe
Translated the Bible from Latin to English.
Lexical and Orthographical, The Chancery
Decided to make English changes to standardise the use of English. For example, by removing the use of ‘hath’ and deciding to use ‘I’.
Orthographical, Traditionalist Campaigners
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>
Phonological, The Great Vowel Shift
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).
Lexical, Tyndale
Translated the Bible, but with slightly more success than Wycliffe.
Lexical and Grammatical, King James I
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.
Orthographical, Gutenberg
Invented the printing press.
Orthographical, Caxton
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’.
Lexical, Renaissance Thinkers
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.
Lexical, The Inkhorn Controversy
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.
Lexical and Orthographical, Cawdrey
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.
Lexical and Orthographical, Johnson
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’.
Lexical, Swift (1667 - 1745)
‘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.
Lexical and Grammatical, Académie Francais
Worked to accept or reject additions into the French Language and to preserve grammar.
Grammatical, Lowth
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.
Grammatical, Murray (1795)
Believed that we shouldn’t use split infinitives. For example, it should be ‘to walk proudly’ rather than ‘to proudly walk’.
Phonological, The Industrial Revolution
The rise in industry caused mass migration and so new regional accents began to develop. For example, the Liverpudlian accent stems from Irish migration.
Lexical and Grammatical, The King’s English Society
The King’s English Society is a charity that aims to keep the English language safe from perceived declining standards.
