Week 13 Flashcards
Which processes reduce the local diversity of dialects within the UK? What is this due?
Levelling and diffusion. This has been partly due to the great development of communications (aircraft, telegraph, internet, radio).
Terms from Australia and New Zealand adopted by English
Australia: bush telegraph, uni.
New Zealand: zorbing.
What is a feature which is heard in speech of young people from a wide range of ‘inner circle’ countries?
High Rising Tone, Australian Question Intonation and Uptalk. These labels refer to a pattern of speech in which the final syllable(s) of a declarative utterance have the rising tone usually associated with a question.
What is diffusion and what are examples of this?
A process whereby features spread from a specific point of origin over a wide area.
Examples of ‘diffusing’ features are glottalisation, especially of medial and final /t/ and the use of /f/ and /v/ where RP would have /θ/ and /ð/.
The expansion of the vocabulary is expanding quickly. Where/how do these new words come from?
- New words are coined from Greek and Latin morphemes for use in science, medicine and technology (cosmonaut).
- Compounding (spell-check, homepage).
- Shortening (weblog to blog).
- Conversion (noun Google to verb Google or Googled).
- Loanwords (limoncello from Italian).
What is a common cause of semantic change?
Formal influence: the form of a word causes it to be confused with another word, which influences its meaning. An example is the word format (technical term for bibliography, but now people use it for layout/design).
What is colloquialisation?
The shift towards informal language, seen in less formal media and loss of traditional grammar rules like “whom.”
How does the internet facilitate new writing spaces and practices?
Platforms like Scottish Twitter create informal spaces for regional dialects and spellings (e.g., “gony,” “wanty”).
