Week 2 Flashcards
What kind of language did English used to be? And what did it change to?
Synthetic, analytic
What kind of language was Old English?
Synthetic, which means that languages rely on inflectional morphology to convey grammatical relationships, such as;
Nouns, adjectives, articles are inflected for case (nom, acc, genitive, dative), grammatical gender and number.
What kind of language was Latin?
Synthetic
What are analytic languages?
Languages that rely more on syntax (word order, prepositions).
The History of English is categorised by…
A typical move from synthetic to analytic.
What are some sources of language change?
- Incrementalism through transmission
- Phonetic processes
- Analogy (economising brain processing power)
- Changes in the lexicon (semantic shifts, polysemy, word formation)
- Language “external” pressures (contact, social prestige, accommodation)
- Taboo
- New inventions/cultural practices
- Pragmatic: e.g. the use of literally
Transmission and incrementation
- We never produce the exact same sound twice.
- Adult language varies a lot due to physical and processing constraints.
- Children have to deduce rules of language.
- Children introduce minute changes because of variation;
• SVO pattern already very frequent in OE -> pattern incrementally reinforced.
• Co-articulator tendencies: kirk -> church.
What is a complication for transmission and incrementation?
Variation is also socially conditioned.
How did the English language experience the minimising of articulately effects?
Sound changes:
1. Assimilation
2. Epenthesis
3. Metathesis
4. Haplology/deletion
5. Dissimilation
Morphological changes:
1. Analogy
Analogy
Inventing a new element in conformity with some part of the language system that you already know.
• Help, holp, holpen
• dive, dove, dived
But also overgeneralisation of plurals:
• Deer, deers
Metathesis
The switching around of (mostly) adjoining phonemes, rearrangement of sounds.
Example: “ask” is sometimes pronounced as /æks/.
Assimilation
Sounds becoming more similar to those in their surroundings: AmE = voicing assimilation.
Example: sink /n/ to /ŋ/
Dissimilation
A specific sound becomes more different to the neighbouring sounds, or there’s omission of one or two identical sounds.
• Epenthesis /filem/
• Metathesis /aks/
Haplology/deletion
Reduction of a sequence of very similar syllables; a syllable is deleted, usually when it is reduplicated or very similar to the following syllable.
Example;
• ME “Englaland” to “England”.
• library pronounced as /libry/
Syncope
Haplology/deletion
Epenthesis
The insertion of a phoneme in order to break up consonant clusters.
Example:
• PDE film pronounced as /filem/
How can you define a variety of a language?
A regionally, socially, situationally or otherwise specific subtype of language
What is a standard language?
A standard language can be defined as in terms of consistency, for instance the degree of variation is low in terms of spelling and inflectional morphology.
Which percentage of the world speaks English?
20%
The growth of English
- 5th c.: 400 speakers
- 16th c.: 4 million
- Today: 427 million mother tongues
- Today: over 1 billion 2nd or foreign language
What is an example of the rise of new Englishes?
Dunglish
Synthetic languages
They rely on inflection/morphology to convey grammatical relationships. In OE, nouns and adjectives are inflected for case (nom, acc), grammatical gender and number.
Cultural/social changes in vocabulary
The death of a word, shift or addition in meaning (polysemy).
* Odour vs. stench
* Veal vs. calf
* Pork vs. pig
Four ways of semantic change
- Broadening is where the meaning of a word evolves over time to represent a more general concept or thing than it did before (e.g. dog).
- Narrowing is where the meaning of a word becomes less general or inclusive than its original meaning (e.g. hound).
- Taboo (e.g. ass).
- Pejoration is semantic change where a word acquires unfavourable connotations (e.g. ladies and gents, mistresses, madam).
- Amelioration: an improvement in the meaning of a word; it acquires more positive connotations (‘knight’ is a military follower of the king).
Reasons for a lack of dialect contact: language divergence:
- Migration
- Political boundaries
- Social boundaries
- Geographical boundaries
What are the results of language contact?
- Cross linguistic influence
- Language may acquired later in life
- Interlanguage phenomena
Particularly with large communities.
Already fragile/irregular systems break down more quickly, such as the grammatical gender in Dutch.
What are language internal and external devices?
Internal: affixation, compounding, conversion, coining.
External: borrowing, cultural and social changes (death of a word, shift/addition in meaning = polysemy; odour vs. stench). But also semantic change; shift, narrowing, taboo, pejoration, amelioration.
Pejoration (semantic change)
Semantic change whereby a word acquires unfavourable connotations; ladies and gents, mistresses, spinster, madam.
Amelioration (semantic change)
An improvement in the meaning of a word; it acquires more positive connotations. Knight (Dutch = knecht, military follower of King).
