Unit 5

Processes of Language Change

Lexical Change

• Coinage – new words are created. These are called neologisms eg. wugs.

• Borrowing – words from other languages are borrowed (aka loan words) eg:

- Italian – soprano; French – prince, restaurant; German – lager.

Borrowing often occurs when a new idea or product is introduced eg. Russian ‘vodka’.

Lexical Change

Words formed from existing words:• Affixing – words added by using prefixes and suffixes

eg. microwave, multimedia, sexism, ageism, Watergate and Camillagate.

• Compounding – combination of existing words to make one new word which refers to a specific person, object, etc, eg. laptop, blackbird, blue-eyed.

• Blends – only parts of existing words are blended together to create new words eg. smog, slanguage, motel (motor + hotel).

• Conversion: one word class changes to another. For eg. noun to verb (to bottle), verb to noun (a contest) and adjective to verb (to open).

Lexical ChangeWords formed by shortening• Abbreviation: shortening existing words eg. ‘ad’ or ‘advert’ from

‘advertisement’ and ‘bus’ from ‘omnibus’.• Back formation: Word of one type (usually a noun) shortened to

form another type (usually a verb) eg. ‘edit’ from ‘editor’, ‘donate’ from ‘donation’ and ‘burgle’ from ‘burgle’.

• Acronyms: Specific to the 20th century. Words formed from the initials of words. Eg. Radar (radio detection and ranging) and scuba (self-contained underwater breathing apparatus). NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.

• Initialisms: Initial letters of words, but these do not form words eg. MP (Member of Parliament(, BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) and CD (Compact Disk).

• Eponyms: words from names. ‘Hoover’ was a product name but became universally known for all vacuum cleaners. ‘Sandwich’ was derived from the ‘Earl of Sandwich’.

Lexical Change

LOSING WORDS FROM THE LEXICON

• ARCHAISMS: words and phrases which become obsolete. Shakespeare’s plays from Early Modern English contain many archaisms (enow – enough), (forsooth – truth) and (bark – ship).

Semantic Change

• Broadening or Generalisation: Meaning of a word broadens as well as taking on new meaning eg. ‘holiday’ originally meant Holy Day symbolising religious importance. ‘Dog’ originally meant only one type of dog.

• Narrowing or Specialisation: Word develops a more specific meaning eg. ‘meat’ used to refer to food in general and ‘girl’ in the Middle Ages referred to young people in general.

Semantic Change

• Amelioration: The semantics becomes more pleasant and positive eg. ‘pretty’ once meant sly and cunning, but not means attractive and ‘wicked’ used to mean evil and now means superb, brilliant.

• Pejoration: The semantics becomes less favourable eg. ‘cowboys’ connotes dishonesty as in ‘cowboy builders’ and ‘impertinent’ once meant ‘irrelevant’ but now means ‘rude’.

Semantic Change

• Weakening: Words lose some of their orginal force and strength eg. ‘soon’ used to mean ‘immediately’, but now means in the near future.

• Metaphor: ‘Hawks and doves’ refers to politicians favouring war and peace respectively as well as birds. ‘Onion bag’ refers to the net of a goal in football as well as a bag containing onions.

• Idioms: Commonly used phrases constructed from existing words eg. ‘in the doghouse’, ‘under the weather’ and ‘wake up and smell the coffee’ is a more recent example suggesting that people should get in touch with reality.

Semantic Change

• Euphemisms: a mild or inoffensive way of describing something distasteful or unpleasant. New euphemisms are constantly been invented eg. in business a lack of money is a ‘cashflow problem’, redundancy is known as ‘downsizing’. In modern warfare, bombing raids are called ‘surgical strikes’. Other examples are ‘collateral damage’ (civilian casualties).

Semantic Change

• Political Correctness: A drive to remove words which are considered offensive or demeaning to social minority groups eg. ‘people with learning difficulties’ (formerly mentally handicapped) and ‘mixed race’ replaces ‘half-caste’.

PHONOLOGICAL CHANGE

Over a period of 200 years, the pronunciation of long vowel sounds changed, replacing them with sounds similar to those we have today. This was known as the GREAT VOWEL SHIFT. Here are some words which were affected:

PHONOLOGICAL CHANGEGREAT VOWEL SHIFT

MODERN ENGLISH WORD

1. To

2. Wife

3. Mouse

4. Been

5. Her

MIDDLE ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION

1. Toe.

2. Weef

3. Moos

4. Bayn

5. Heer

GREAT VOWEL SHIFT

MODERN ENGLISH WORD

1. To

2. Wife

3. Mouse

4. Been

5. Her

MIDDLE ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION

1. Toe.

2. Weef

3. Moos

4. Bayn

5. Heer

Stages of Phonological Change

• Social factors play an important part in phonological change. We imitate the speech of people we admire or respect in some way. Aitchison identified four staged to phonological changes of the kind found by Labov in Martha’s Vineyard:

Stages of Phonological Change

• Stage 1: The speech of a particular social group differs in some way from the usual pronunciation of the area in which they live.

• Stage 2: A second social group begins – possibly unconsciously – to imitate the speech of the first group.

• Stage 3: The new pronunciation becomes established among the second group – it is now part of their usual accent.

• Stage 4: A third social group now begins to model itself on the second group and the process repeats itself.

Grammatical Change

• Inflections: Loss of inflections used in Old English. Inflections reflect the grammatical form of a word – these involve the ends of words.

• To show plurals we add –s or -es or –ies to the ends of words, but in Old and Middle English this was more varied eg. ‘handa’ for ‘hands’ and ‘eyen’ for eyes.

Grammatical change

• The pronouns ‘thee’, ‘thou’ and ‘thine’ (2nd person singular pronouns) have generally disappeared from English. Some regional dialects contain ‘youse’ as a plural form of ‘you’ which is non-standard.

• During Old and Middle English double negatives were acceptable eg. ‘I don’t want nothing’.

• Syntax (word order) signifies grammar as opposed to inflections.