U2AoS1 - English through History Flashcards
What is lexical change?
Word loss and formation processes
What are word loss processes?
Obsolescence and Archaism
What is Obsolescence?
Gradual loss of lexical items from a language until they no longer exist
Example of Obsolescence
Carving a chicken “to frush”
What is Archaism?
Words that have some current use but linked to specialised old-fashioned contexts.
Examples of Archaisms
- thine
- doth
- methinks
What are the word formation processes?
Borrowing, Neologisms, Commonisation
What is Borrowing?
Process of adopting linguistic features from other languages
Examples of borrowing
Doctor, shampoo, government, beer, BBQ
What has occurred due to Borrowings?
Foreign language creates prestigious connotations, system, of stylistic levels
What are Neologisms?
Creation of a newly coined word where some are created from scratch and others from pre-existing words.
Examples of Neologisms
Selfie, Wi-Fi, spam, Bluetooth, photobomb
What do Neologisms reflect?
Social development and invention
What is commonisation?
A form of broadening where proper nouns (names) enter the language as new words (common nouns)
Examples of commonisation
bandaid, panadol, facetime, esky
What is Semantic change?
Refers to denotation and connotation and how meaning changes over time
What is denotation?
literal/standard meaning found in a dictionary
What is connotation?
Associated meaning (non-literal)
What is Etymology?
Study pf the origin and history of words
What are the denotative word change processes?
- Broadening
- Narrowing
- Shifting
What is Broadening?
Semantic boundaries widen/increase
- retains original meaning and more
Examples of broadening
mouse (animal) - computer mouse
sweet (candy - good)
barn
bird
What is Narrowing?
Semantic boundary decreases, more specific meaning
Examples of Narrowing
Meat used to be used for any food, now just animal flesh
- starve
- liquor
- apple
- girl
What is Shifting?
Semantic boundary changes completely
Examples of Shifting
nice - from ignorant to pleasant
- gay
- sad
What are the conative word change processes?
- elevation
- deterioration
What is elevation?
Connotations become more positive
What is deterioration?
Connotations become more negative
e.g. accident, villain
Examples of elevation
wicked - from very bad to very good
- awfully
- pretty
Why do meanings of words change?
- social change + attitudes
- taboo and insults
- morphological misinterpretation
- prestige and status
- cultural importance
What are the morphological change processes?
- abbreviations
- shortenings
- compounding
- affixation
- backformation
- blends
- contractions
- conversion
What are abbreviations?
A series of words reduced to a string of letters that can be said.
What are the types of abbreviations?
Initialisms and Acronyms
What happens to abbreviations after a while?
Loose dots/capital letters and enter the language as ordinary words eg. laser
What are acronyms?
Words that evolve as a result of using the first letter of a series of words pronouncing this as a new word.
Examples of Acronyms
- ANZAC
- EFTPOS
- GIF
What are initialisms?
Made up of the beginning letters in a sequence of words but continue to be said as letters.
Examples of Initialisms
- DIY
- UFO
- RSPCA
What are shortenings?
Dropping the beginning/ending s from a word to create a shorter word that often replaces longer forms
Examples of shortenings
Examination/exam
Gymnasium/gym
Application/app
What is compounding?
Combination of two or more free morphemes to form a new word
How are compounds written?
- separately
- solid
- hyphenated
Examples of compounding
Hamburger
Seatbelt
Carpark
Driveway
What is affixation?
Bound affixes are attached to the base of a word to create a new word
Examples of affixation
- Proactive
- Transgender
- Servo
- Submarine
What is Backformation?
Opposite of affixation, speakers remove what is believed to be an added bound morpheme
Example of Backformation
Editor/edit
Projection/project
Addicted/addict
Versus/verse
Injury/injure
What are blends?
Combination of two existing words where one or both words are shortened (incorporates meaning from both)
Examples of Blends
- smog
- workaholic
- spork
- jorts
- motel
What are contractions?
Words made by shortening and combining two words
Examples of contractions
- can’t
- wouldn’t
What is conversion?
Word changes word class
Examples of conversion
market: noun = verb
mail: noun = verb
note
dialogue
fool
key
When was Early Modern English?
1450 - 1800
When was the Old English Period?
450 - 1150
Differences in Old English compared to now
- many lexemes obsolete
- others archaic or shifted
- pronunciation change
- word structure change
- loss of endings
What is standardization?
Development of a common standard from among a range of dialects
How are languages classified?
According to genetic relatedness
What is genetic relatedness?
Shares properties with languages related to it, evolved from the same parent language
Who suggested the idea of genetic relatedness?
18th Century Sir William Jones
What is the parent language?
Original Language
What is the parent language of English?
Proto-Indo-European
What are the factors affecting language development?
- Time
- Geographical/social separation
- language change processes
When is the earliest evidence of English?
8th Century
When did the Plague occur?
1346CE
What was the impact of the plagues on English?
- weakened french stronghold
- reduced linguistic diversity
- accelerated change
Why is the English Spelling System inconsistent?
- inadequacies of the roman alphabet
- borrowed spelling conventions eg. coffee
- printing (user variation, lines)
- phonological change eg. Knife
What are the historical influences on English?
- The Canterbury Tales
- Viking Raid
- Norman Invasion
- The Printing Press
- Samuel Dictionary
- Mobile Phone
The Conquerors
5th/6th centuries Germanic tribes from Europe settle in Britain
Marks beginning of Old English
Celtic people were inferior
Power of Religion
597CE - Christianity brings Latin, viewed as the language of educated
When did the Viking Invasion occur?
793CE and brought Old Norse
What happened in 886CE?
Danlaw Treaty
What is the significance of the Viking Invasion?
- Rise to syntactic fixed order due to increased number of prepositions
OE used case endings to indicate the relationship between words
What is Beowulf?
1000CE
- literary poem
- first record of OE
- illustrates creative English use
Battle of the Hastings
1066
William Normandy defeats King Harold
- French becomes language of power
- lexemes borrowed
Caxton Printing Press
1476 CE
- London dialect emerges as most accepted
- Established Oxford/Cambridge
- Standardized and codified English
The Canterbury Tales
1388CE
- Geoffrey Chaucer wrote in English not French
- brought literary to people
- establish London dialect as standard
The Great Vowel Shift
- between 1350/1700 BC
- affect long vowels of pronunciation
- affected spelling system
- marks shift from middle to early modern English
Shakespeare
1620
- published after death
- coined new words/phrases e.g. idioms
- huge impact on literature (popularity)
Samuel Johnsons Dictionary
1755
- most comprehensive
- 40000+ entries
- did not include words he couldn’t explain/like
- subjective
Cultural Revolution
1950
- move away from hierarchy, formality, uniformity values
- status defended by prescriptivists
Electronic communication
1951 - 1st working computer
1983 - 1st commercial working phone
- e-varieties of English
What is a fixed word order?
Indicates grammatical information
Important Incursions
- Vikings
- Christianity
- Battle of Hastings
Phonological Change
- ‘sc’ changed from ‘sh’ to ‘sk’ in scone or ‘s’ in science
- OE clusters died out eg. ‘hn’
- final e became silent
- latin b silent in ‘doubt’
Syntactic Change
From expressive to fixed word order
Prescriptivist
Lays down rules of correctness about how language should be
Descriptivist
Observes language use
When was the typewriter patented?
1868CE
When was the typewriter available to the public?
1874CE
What was the purpose of the QWERTY keyboard?
To avoid jamming of commonly used letter bars.
When was the electric typewriter/first computer invented?
1950CE
What was invented in 1961?
Spherical type carrier typewriter
What was the invention of the typewriter useful for?
Business Domain
Who invented the QWERTY keyboard?
Christopher Scholes
Examples of language developed as a result of the typewriter invention
Affixation - typist
Compounding: keyboard, typewriter
Neologisms - QWERTY
When was the world wide web invented?
1990s
What/when was the first social media platform invented?
Six degrees invented 1997CE
When was the first smartphone invented and what was created?
2007 Steve Jobs
Emojis - borrowed from japanese
- abbreviations
When was the first mobile phone invented?
1980s
What are some features of a mobile phone?
- physical number pad
- emoticons
- initialisms eg. “u” “r”
What was the invention of the internet responsible for?
Increased/wave of neologisms
eg. webcam, firewall, email, trolling, meme
Examples of semantic broadening associated with the invention of the internet
Original words had new functions
eg. spam, post, wall, page, home, hashtag
How did social media and gaming influence?
- language use attitudes
- standard not usually upheld
- many users have a descriptivist attitude
Digital discourse
Language change reflect evolution of digital technology
Examples of digital discourse
- keyboard to interactive keyboard
- smiling face to skull
- fruit emojis
- abbreviations such as wtf
