Language Change

What factors cause or influence language change?

Global events - climate change, COVID

Trends - youth culture

Technology

Social change - behaviours

Lexical change processes

Coinage

Borrowing

Compounding

Clipping

Blend

Acronym

Initialism

Affixation

Conversion

Eponym

Back formation

Coinage

The deliberate creation of a new word

Coinage examples

meh, widget, blurb

Borrowing

Borrowing of words/concepts from other languages

Borrowing examples

Latte, mukbang, panini, karaoke

Compounding

Words are combined together to form new words

Compounding examples

Lockdown, photobomb, laptop, hashtag

Clipping

Words are shortened and the shortened form becomes the norm

Clipping examples

Insta, bi, dis

Blend

A combination of clipping and compounding - words are abbreviated and joined together to form a new word

Blend examples

Bromance, wifi, shopaholic, mansplain

Acronym

First letters are taken from a series of words to create a new term which can be pronounced as one

Acronym examples

FOMO, chav

Initialism

The first letters from a series of words from a new term but each letter is pronounced

Initialism examples

Omg, DVD, BBC

Affixation

One or more free morphemes are combined with one or more bound morphemes

Affixation examples

Influence, unmute

Conversion

A word shifts from one word class to another, usually from a noun to a verb

Conversion examples

Tweet, jokes

Eponym

Names of a person or company are used to define particular objects

Eponym examples

Hoover, brio, uber

Back formation

A verb is created from an existing noun by removing a suffix

Back formation examples

Edit from editor

Explet from expletives

Semantic change processes

Generalisation/broadening

Specialising

Amelioration

Pejoration

Weakening/bleaching

Metaphor

Euphemism

Generalisation/broadening

The meaning of a word broadens so that it retains its old meaning but also takes on added meanings

Generalisation/broadening examples

Mouse, window, icon

Specialising

Opposite of broadening - a word becomes more specific in meaning

Specialising examples

Girl - referred to young people in general

Amelioration

A word acquires a more pleasant or positive meaning

Amelioration examples

Pretty - once meant cunning or sly but now means attractive

Pejoration

Opposite of amelioration - a word becomes less favourable

Pejoration examples

Gay - used to mean happy

Snowflake

Grooming

Weakening/bleaching

The loss or reduction of the force of meaning of a word

Weakening/bleaching examples

Shit, iconic, awesome, epic

Metaphor

Words acquire additional meanings as physical ideas are extended to abstract ideas

Metaphor examples

High, cuckooing

Euphemism

The creation of polite, but indirect expressions for things that may be considered unpleasant

Euphemism examples

Collateral damage, friendly fire

Archaic

A word from earlier period of English usage that is rarely used in contemporary English - would be deemed old-fashioned

Obsolete

A word that no longer has any use in the language

Who presented the theory of the wave model?

C.J.Bailey in 1973

The wave model

A model of language change that likens spread of language to throwing a stone into a pond, with ripples representing change spreading from a central point. The ripples are felt most by those closest (socially and geographically) but least by those further away.

Who proposed the theory of the S curve model?

Chen in 1968/1972

The S curve model

Changes in language start slowly, then a change takes off and the rate of change spreads quickly, only for the rate of change to then slow and stabilise

Evaluations of the wave model

Is geography so key now to understanding language change? Contact through social media more modern way so geography isn’t really relevant

Even if geography were key, features won’t span out neatly e.g. language of cities more likely to show a change

Regional forms/dialects still exist - model might imply these would gradually become similar if changes in language develop everywhere

Not specific to any area of language change (grammar, phonology, lexis…) - surely these can’t all be regarded in the same way?

Is it really possible to fully track any language change?

What happens to change at the top of the model? The idea explains the creation of a change but not what happens next

Evaluation of the S curve model

Not specific to any area of language change

In some cases, a change may be much more sudden than the model suggests - language change can go ‘viral’ now - age of social media - model does not really account for this

The model itself does not explain a great deal - only the speed of changes but not much on why it happens

Is it really possible to fully track any language change?

Time is quite vague - some noticeable differences in the time that features may take to increase in use

Different types of typographical change

Long S

Ligature

Ampersand

Non-standard capitalisation

Long S

Varied versions of the modern letter S

Ligature

Joining together of 2 letters into a single character - most often ct, st

Ampersand

Shortening for ‘and’ - & - a ligature of ‘et’ (Latin ‘and’) which is of course still used today

Non-standard capitalisation

Initially, capitalisation was just as today - just proper nouns and sentence starts

Then it became more a means for writes to give emphasis to key words in texts as they saw fit

But with printers trying to make sense of handwritten material, a system of capitalising all nouns emerged like in modern German

Then it eventually like today

Examples of punctuation change

x for kisses

!! for exaggeration

@

No full stops

Standardisation

Making all variations of language conform to an agreed set of rules

This is a gradual process and in the case of English, happened over a period of a hundred years, beginning as early as the 14th century.

How long did it take Samuel Johnson to compile his dictionary?

9 years - from 1746 to 1755

When did Samuel Johnson publish his dictionary?

1755

How many words were included in the first edition of Johnson’s dictionary?

42,773

What kinds of words were left out of the dictionary?

French loanwords

Impolite/rude words

Slang

What is one criticism that has been made of Johnson’s approach to compiling the dictionary?

His personal biases and opinions influenced many of his definitions

Rather than being objective, some entries reflect his wit, prejudices and whims

Grammatical change

Loss of inflections

Pronouns and determiners

Syntax

Contractions

Adverbs

Who and whom

Negation

Loss of inflections

Inflections indicate the grammatical form of a word

Verbs/nouns - inflections (suffix) could indicate tense -ed, -s, -ing, person -s, gender -ess, or number (-s)

Pronouns and determiners

Thou - subject pronoun

Thee - object pronoun

Thy - possessive

Thine - possessive pronoun

Syntax

More inflections in Old English meant that the word ordering was much more free and showed more variation than nowadays

Different syntax can produce different meanings

Contractions

Generally older texts use fewer contractions - link to formality

They also used different contractions e.g. ‘tis rather than it’s’

Adverbs

Various adverbs are no longer in common usage

e.g. hither, whither, thither - obsolete 

e.g. hence, thence, whence - archaic

Who and whom

Use of whom is increasingly regarded as excessively formal in modern English though its usage is kept alive due to its continued use after propositions e.g. with whom

Negation

I know not - rather than the use of dummy auxiliary verb ‘do’ in late modern English

Causes of language change

Society and culture

Politics

Invasion and war

Technology

Travel

Inventions

Media

Euphemisms

A mild or indirect word or expression substituted for one considered to be too harsh or blunt when referring to something unpleasant or embarrassing

The Euphemism Treadmill

Introduced by Canadian psychologist Professor Steven Pinker

The idea that new words will be thought up for different subjects that can be sensitive to talk about in society - sex, education, aging, disease - to make them seem less offensive or negative.

Guy Deutscher - economy, expressiveness, analogy

Deutscher argues that there are 3 major forced driving change in all language all the time which reflect societal and cultural behaviours towards language - the desire for economy, expressiveness and analogy.

Economy

Speaker’s tendency to save effort drives their search for more economical ways of speaking, including simplifying, morphology, dropping phonemes and substituting easier phonemes for tricky or effortful one.

e.g. AC for air-conditioning

Expressiveness

Speakers want to express themselves powerfully and this drives the adoption of new expressive forms

e.g. over-exaggerated

Analogy

Tendency towards simplifying and standardising anything irregular

e.g. binded

Who' proposed the theory of The Principle of Least Effort?

George Kingsley Zipf

The Principle of Least Effort

Ease of articulation

Omission

Neatening or regularisation

Ease of articulation

Like Deutscher’s force of economy

Handbag and sandwich - through the process of assimilation, we tend to omit the /d/ phoneme and use /m/ for /nd/

Omission

Like Deutscher’s force of economy

The Old English for ‘neck’ used to be said ’hnecca’ but the /h/ and the final schwa are omitted

Neatening or regularisation

Like Deutscher’s force of analogy

The Old English for ‘shoes’ used to be ‘shooen’ but we have regularised the language making most of our endings using the -s plural inflection.

The only -en endings left are ‘children’ and ‘oxen’

New words tend to use the regular ending -ed

Political terms

First past the post

Majority

Marginal seat

Red wall

Blue wall

Swing

Losing a deposit

Tactical voting

Manifesto

Hung parliament

First past the post

In every area of the country that is represented, candidates with the most votes win

Majority

By how many votes a candidate wins

Marginal seat

The previous winner only managed to secure a small majority

Red wall

Areas in the North of England that traditionally vote Labour

Blue wall

Areas in the south of England which traditionally vote Conservative

Swing

The extent of the shift in support if a constituency changes party

Losing a deposit

If a candidate gets very few votes (less than 5%), they lose the £500 it costs to stand

Tactical voting

Voting for a different candidate to the one you might want but to stop someone else winning

Manifesto

Document setting out what a party would do in government

Hung parliament

If no one party gets an overall majority

Anglo-Saxon language introduction

house, women, loaf, cow

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday - after angle-saxon gods

Viking language introduction

drag, ransack, die, pillage

Norman French language introduction

judge, jury, evidence

beef, mutton, pork - french

Caxton’s printing press

Historically, one of the biggest impacts on English was the creation of the printing press.

Caxton introduced the printing press to England in the 15th century

Latin - printing books in English as Caxton made information much more accessible to people 

Lexis/semantics technology change from my blackberry is not working

Lots of examples of broadening - old words given new technological meaning

Blackberry, juice, frozen, desktop, mouse, drag, trash, launch, windows - some are metaphors