Variation Over Time🕰 Flashcards
When will the texts be from in the exam?🕰
1550 - present day
What is a good phrase to use in order to be tentative?🕰
As a modern reader…
When is the Early Modern English period?🕰
1550 - 1800
When is the late modern English period?🕰
1800 - present
What is it important to mention in the GAP?🕰
The time period - is it early or late modern English period?
What group of people helped create standardisation?🕰
Lexicographers and grammarians
What is a broad way of mentioning two different morphological features? (AO4)🕰
The morphology differs across the texts
What is standardisation?🕰
- A process where the language became codified and uniformed
- Effects were most prominent in the 18th century
- Can mention whether the text is pre standardisation or post standardisation (or undergoing standardisation)
In early modern English times, what was the inflectional morpheme used instead of our modern day morpheme s? (Morphology)🕰
Th
What do we refer to the th and s morphemes as linguistically? (Morphology)🕰
Third person singular morphemes
- Written as “s” and pronounced as /s/: gets, laughs, helps, thinks
- Written as “s” and pronounced as /z/: brings, plays, seems, tells
- Written as “s” and pronounced as /ɪz/: changes, increases, closes
- Written as “es” and pronounced as /z/: studies, tries, vetoes
- Written as “es” and pronounced as /ɪz/: focuses, pushes, reaches
‘Write’ as ‘writ’, ‘wrate’ and ‘wrote’ is an example of what? (Morphology)🕰
A variety of past tense forms
What can you say about different sentences? (Syntax)🕰
The syntax differs across the texts
In early modern English times, what syntactic feature did we se a lot of? (Syntax)🕰
Complex sentences and polysyndeton
Why did we se lots of complex sentences and polysyndeton in early modern English times? (Syntax)🕰
Longer sentences carried greater prestige
How can complex sentences and polysyndeton link to Grices Maxims? (Syntax) (AO2)🕰
As a modern reader we often value clarity over prestige; this means modern texts often adhere to the maxim of manner and quality
What did researcher Romaine say? (Syntax) (AO2)🕰
The discourse of the texts during the early modern English period were built on Latinate prestige forms, where lengthy and complex sentences were used
What can we say about the pronoun form ‘ye’? (Grammar)🕰
- In early modern English, we saw the use of ‘you’ and ‘ye’ as pronoun forms
- Ye is now archaic
What does archaic lexis mean? (Lexis)🕰
Old language, e.g. thou, thee and whence
What does obsolete lexis mean? (Lexis)🕰
Language/meanings that have died/no longer exist
What can be said about double negatives? (Grammar)🕰
- Evident during the early modern English times
- Only became a stigma in the 17th/18th centuries
- Old English used many double negatives, so this remained in the language as a standard form
What do we mean by changing attitudes? (Pragmatics)🕰
How views and ideas change across time
What pragmatic feature can link with presupposition and semantic field? (Pragmatics)🕰
Changing attitudes
What is a good point to discuss if you notice a change in beliefs over time and how language changes as a result of this? (Pragmatics)🕰
Changing attitudes
If texts are linked by theme, what language feature could be a good linguistic feature to discuss? (Pragmatics)🕰
Changing attitudes
How will the texts be linked?🕰
Genre or theme
Example of changing attitudes (Pragmatics)🕰
- 2 texts about theatres
- Theatres were often frowned upon in the 16th century
- Today, we see them much more positively
How can you broadly discuss lexis features? (Lexis)🕰
The lexis/prestige (etc) has changed across the texts
Explain the use of polysyllabic lexis (Lexis)🕰
Early modern English often made use of latinate lexis as this was seen as the language of prestige
What are features of latinate lexis? (Lexis)🕰
- Polysyllabic
* Lengthy
Explain the use of religious lexis (Lexis)🕰
The language often had many religious allusions as the majority of Britain was Christian during this time period
How can you approach unknown words? (Lexis)🕰
- Deduce them
- Tentatively suggest etymology
- Possibly apply semantic change (especially if definition is given)
What are the processes of semantic change? (Lexis)🕰
- Amelioration
- Pejoration
- Generalisation
- Specialisation
Give an example of amelioration (Lexis)🕰
Dizzy
•Used to mean stupid
•Now means to have a whirling sensation
Give an example of pejoration? (Lexis)🕰
Spinster
•Used to mean a female spinner of thread
•Now negatively used for unmarried women
Give an example of generalisation (Lexis)🕰
Dog
•Used to be a specific breed
•Now applied to all breeds
Give an example of specialisation (Lexis)🕰
Deer
•Used to mean all animals
•Now used for a certain type of animal
Give examples of interchangeable graphemes (Orthography)🕰
- <u> and v, e.g. deuil for devil</u>
- <i> for j, e.g. periury for perjury</i>
- y for /i:/, e.g. gylty for guilty and tyme for time</i></u>
What is the terminal e? (Orthography)🕰
e on the ends of words that are no longer present today, e.g. wee for we and sicke for sick
How is the terminal e often an accent indicator? (Orthography/phonology)🕰
Pronounced using the schwa on some words
When was the printing press established and by whom? (Context)🕰
15th century by William Caxton
What can we say about the printing press? (Context)🕰
- It was technological feature
* It contributed to standardisation as it created uniformity
What may we see in the 16th century? (Context)🕰
Variations of spelling and grammar rules
What do we mean by the term standardised?🕰
Creating a uniformed language
When was the first dictionary created and by whom? (Context)🕰
18th century by Samuel Johnson
When was the Renaissance? (Context)🕰
- Happened from the 14th century
* Reached height during the 15th and 16th centuries
What effect did the Renaissance have? (Context)🕰
- It enriched the English language
- Borrowed many words from Latin, French and Greek
- Also borrowed from classical mythology
How can type of semantic drift vary?🕰
- Old meanings can be forgotten
- Context such as technology and wars, can impact a word’s meaning and production
- Current slang can alter a word, e.g. a particular social group can take ownership of an existing word and change its meaning, e.g. ‘wicked’
Clipping (Lexis)🕰
•Apheresis: first part of a word is clipped
-e.g. phone for telephone
•Apocope: second part of the word is clipped
-e.g. exam for examination
Derivation and Affixation (Lexis)🕰
- About building word’s through morphemes
- Suffixing, e.g. happy -> happiness
- Prefixing, e.g. happy -> unhappy
Example of derivation and affixation analysis🕰
The derivation of the abstract noun ‘happiness’ is made up of the root adjective ‘happy’ with the suffix ‘ness’
Blending/portmanteau (Lexis)🕰
- Fusing two words together to make a new one
* E.g. Oxford and Cambridge = Oxbridge
Compounds (Lexis)🕰
- Process of combining two words to create a coinage
- Mainly involves noun + noun, e.g. football
- Expect to see other variants, e.g. adjective + noun (blackboard) and preposition + verb (undercut)
- New compounds often have hyphens - compounds may not last
Borrowing/loan words (Lexis)🕰
•Words we have taken from other languages, e.g. karaoke is a Japanese word
•Many words are often food related, e.g. korma, sushi and feta
-infer if given a recipe - suggest a possible country
Eponym🕰
- Name of a person after whom something is named
- British monarchs are examples of this term because they are used throughout the English language for time periods, fashions, etc.
- E.g. Victorian
Proprietary names (Lexis)🕰
- Associating a product with a brand name
- A type of broadening associated with brands
- E.g. calling all glue pritt-stick
The long /s/ (Orthography)🕰
- Demonstrates a change in orthography
* Now obsolete in the English language and was probably lost after the process of standardisation - printing press
How to apply the subjunctive mood to language change🕰
- Subjunctive seems to be dying out of the language
- Expect to see its form in older texts to add greater formality, e.g. if the sauce be too thick
- However contemporary English often chooses not to use it, e.g. I wish I WAS able to attend instead of I wish I WERE able to attend
Grammarian examples🕰
- Jonathon Swift
- Samuel Johnson
- Robert Lowth
- Lindley Murray
What did we use the oblique stroke for?🕰
Replaced with the comma during the 16th century - may see texts using it as a comma
Use of apostrophes in the 19th century🕰
- Applied to possession
- Missing letters/vowels in words when not pronounced, e.g. work’d
- Applied to loan words such as banana’s
- Last punctuation marker added to the language
Contractions🕰
- Varied
- Proclitic contractions such as tis were common
- In the 18th century there was a gradual shift to enclitic contractions such as it’s
Punctuation in today’s language🕰
•Texting, punctuation may be used to mark prosodic features
-capitalisation may also produce this effect
•Sometimes apostrophes are omitted in contractions particularly within the textese medium
•Often limited capitalisation
How can texting show synchronic change🕰
Now have further technological advances such as autocorrect and apps like grammarly
Prescriptive grammar🕰
Prescribes rules governing what people should/shouldn’t say
Descriptive grammar🕰
Describes the rules that govern what people do or say
Samuel Johnson🕰
Made the dictionary in 1755
The doctrine of correctness🕰
•In the 18th century, rules began to be formulated, efforts began to be made to ‘fix’ the language
-to determine what was right and what was wrong
•We refer to this process of standardisation as the doctrine of correctness
Jonathon Swift🕰
- Proposed an authoritarian plan to improve, correct and ascertain the English tongue
- There were several other grammarians of this time that held a very prescriptive approach like Swift
- Links to Labov’s changes from above
