Language Change Flaschards

Flashcards cover key vocabulary from the lecture: historical developments (Great Vowel Shift, pronoun changes), processes of word formation and semantic change, major language-change theories (Halliday, Aitchison, Hockett, Tree/Wave, S-curve), corpus linguistics tools, and core linguistic terminology.

French scribe influence

Medieval French clerks introduced French spelling patterns into English, e.g., qu- for cw- (queen vs. cween).

Printing press (1476)

Caxton’s press began to stabilise English spelling, punctuation and layout by enabling mass-produced books.

Great Vowel Shift

From 1300-1500, a chain shift in long vowels that created modern English vowel qualities (e.g., /i:/ in ‘time’ became /ai/).

Received Pronunciation (RP)

Prestige British accent that preserves post-GVS long vowels like /i:/ in ‘seat’.

‘Thou’/‘you’ distinction

Early Modern pronoun system where singular thou/thee marked familiarity or inferiority; plural you/ye marked respect.

Inkhorn words

Obscure Latin- or Greek-based coinages of the Renaissance, criticised for ‘polluting’ English.

Prescriptivism

18th-century attitude asserting fixed ‘correct’ rules for English grammar and usage.

Prescriptivism in grammar books

Rule-making that stipulates what forms should NOT be used (e.g., no sentence ending on a preposition).

Auxiliary ‘do’

Late Modern development replacing verb-subject inversion in questions and negatives (e.g., Do you know?).

Graphology

The writing system of a language as well as other visual elements on a page

Orthography

The part of the language concerned with spelling

Phonology

The pronunciation and sound pattern which affect understanding of words

Morphology

Structure of words and morphemes and how they create meaning.

Lexis

Total vocabulary of a language.

Semantics

Study of how the context in which words and phrases are used affects their meaning

Derivation

New words are formed as they are changed from existing ones

Coinage

The creation of new words (e.g. Google)

Neologism

Newly formed words that appear to come from nothing, often from advertising or tech innovation.

Eponym

Word derived from a person’s name (e.g., ‘sandwich’).

Affixation

Adding prefixes or suffixes to an existing word (e.g., unhappy, sudden-ly).

Conversion

Word class shift without affix change (e.g., noun ‘chair’ → verb ‘to chair’).

Telescoping

Contracting a phrase, word, or part of a word into a shorter form (biodegradable → biologically degradable).

Compounding

Combining two free morphemes to form a new word (toothbrush).

Blending

Merging parts of two words to create one (brunch, fanzine).

Clipping

Shortening a longer word (exam, photo).

Coalescence

Phonological merger of two sounds, e.g., ‘whine’ pronounced like ‘wine’.

Back-formation

Creating a simpler form by removing perceived affixes (babysitter → babysit).

Borrowing (loanword)

Word taken from another language (croissant, veranda).

Semantic narrowing

Meaning becomes more specific (meat once meant all food).

Semantic broadening

Meaning widens (mouse now also a computer device).

Semantic amelioration

Meaning shifts to more positive sense (knight, nice).

Semantic pejoration

Meaning acquires negative sense (silly, attitude).

Euphemism

Polite substitute for a taboo or harsh term (‘collateral damage’).

Metaphor (semantic)

Meaning extended via figurative comparison (web, mouse).

Idiom

Fixed expression whose meaning is non-literal (‘kick the bucket’).

Political correctness

Lexical change to avoid offence (disabled → differently-abled).

Functional language theory (Halliday)

Language changes because users need new functions; context (field, tenor, mode) shapes form.

Lexical gap

A missing but possible word within a language’s morphological patterns (verb *‘aggress’).

Random fluctuation theory (Hockett)

Language change arises from random errors and unpredictable events (e.g., ‘goodbye’ from ‘God be with ye’).

Substratum theory

Influence of non-native or subordinate groups on dominant language, spreading ‘imperfect’ features.

Cultural transmission

Process of passing language to next generation horizontally, vertically or obliquely.

Tree model

Language change seen as branching splits from a common ancestor (Indo-European family).

Wave model

Innovations spread outward like ripples, intersecting across dialect areas.

Damp spoon model (Aitchison)

Prescriptivist view accusing language change of ‘laziness’ comparable to leaving a wet spoon in sugar.

Crumbling castle model (Aitchison)

Belief that English was once perfect and is now decaying; rejected by descriptivists.

Infectious disease model (Aitchison)

Idea that people ‘catch’ language change like a virus; change spreads socially but isn’t harmful.

S-curve model (Chen)

Pattern where a linguistic innovation spreads slowly, then rapidly, then plateaus.

Progress vs. decay debate

Whether language change is beneficial evolution or detrimental erosion.

Corpus

Large electronic collection of texts used for linguistic analysis.

Corpus linguistics

Study of language via quantitative analysis of corpora.

Diachrony

Examination of language change over historical time.

Synchronic linguistics

Study of language at a single point in time (often the present).

Collocation

Frequent co-occurrence of two lexical items (make + decision).

N-gram

Sequence of n adjacent words or letters used to trace frequency trends over time.

Second-person singular ‘thou’

Archaic pronoun marking singular informal address, lost by 17th c. (Renaissance)

Modern third-person ‑s

Present-tense verb ending (she speaks) that replaced older ‑th (speaketh).

Possessive ‘its’

17th-century innovation distinguishing possessive pronoun from ‘it’s’ contraction.

Industrial Revolution lexis

18th/19th-century coinages for new technology (train, telegraph).

Media influence on accent

Radio, film and TV promote certain pronunciations and reduce regional variation.

Standard English

Prestige written and spoken norm emerging from literacy growth and printed materials.

Received pronunciation long vowels

RP vowels reflecting post-GVS shifts (seat /i:/, lose /u:/).

Progressive aspect scarcity

Early Modern preference for simple present (‘I go’) over present progressive (‘I am going’).

Double negative

Up to and including Renaissance, accepted usage for emphasis, stronger negative and intensive (‘I cannot say nothing’).

Inversion of letters

Inversion of some letters, e.g. shift from ‘hw’ to ‘wh’ spelling (hwat → what), in Middle English as a result of the influence of French scribes

Gu- addition

French influence adding gu- to words (guide, guard).

Proto-Germanic

Hypothetical ancestor of Germanic languages, reconstructed via comparative method.

Indo-European

Proposed prehistoric parent family of most European and many Asian languages.

Field (Halliday)

Register variable indicating subject matter of discourse.

Tenor (Halliday)

Register variable describing participants and their relationships.

Mode (Halliday)

Register variable identifying channel (spoken/written) and rhetorical role of language.

Cultural transmission – vertical

Language passed from parents to children.

Cultural transmission – horizontal

Language features shared among peers of same generation.

Cultural transmission – oblique

Language learned from elders who are not biological relatives.

Aitchison ‘no perfect year’ quote

“No year can be found when language achieved some peak of perfection.”

Deutscher’s shortcut principle

Speakers take phonological shortcuts, driving predictable patterns of change.

Wordiness danger (Deutscher)

Excessive vocabulary can dilute semantic impact, prompting pruning.