Chapter 7 Aice Eng Vocab

Early Modern English: From 1500 CE-1800 CE. European language influenced by Latin and Greek.

Late Modern English: From 1800 CE onwards. Noted by scientific and social developments alongside a desire to establish rules of language.

Old English: The main language spoken until 1100 CE pushed by the Anglo-Saxon settlers in Britain.

Middle English: Spoken and written language after the Norman invasion. Developed into Early Modern English.

Great Vowel Shift: Changes affecting vowels lasting approximately 200 years from 1350 CE onwards.

Estuary English: 20th century English accent used by younger people that is a mixture of Received Pronunciation and London speech. Originated in the River Thames in London.

British English: The variety of English spoken by people in Britain.

Prefix: Group of letters added to the beginning of a word to form a new one.

Root/stem: Unchangeable part of a word where its meaning gets adjusted depending on an added prefix or suffix.

Suffix: Group of letters added to the end of a word to form a new one.

Derivation: Forming a new word by adding a prefix or suffix.

Amelioration: A word becoming more positive over time.

Pejoration: A word becoming more negative over time.

Broadening: The meaning of a word becomes broader over time, shifting to include more things.

Narrowing: The meaning of a word becomes narrower over time, shifting to be more specific/exclusive.

Prescriptivism: The view of language needing to abide by its strict set of rules in speech and writing.

Descriptivism: The view of language not needing to be by the rules all of the time. Variation is acknowledged and recorded rather than corrected.

Graphology: Study of writing forms

Pragmatics: Study of the ways in which language is used in social contexts.

Semantics: Study of the meanings of words.

Grammar: The rules for the appropriate use of a language. Includes word order and meaning.

Colonialism: A country forcibly claiming ownership/control of another land with the accompanied intent of gaining wealth from that country’s products.

Archaic: Belonging to the past.

Obsolete: No longer used and the meaning is not understood.

Lexis: All the words in a language.

Coinage: The creation of a new word that people start to use.

Neologism: A newly invented word.

Eponym: A word that takes the name of its creator.

Conversion: Creating a new word or word class from an existing word or different word class.

Telescoping: Contracting a phrase, word, or part of a word.

Blending: Forming a new word by joining the beginning of one to the end of another.

Coalescence: The merging of two sounds.

Compounding: Forming a new word through joining two or more standalone words together.

Backformation: Forming a simpler version of a word that appears to be derived from it.

Reduplication: A sound that is repeated identically or with only slight change: characteristic of infant speech.

Neuter: Neither female or male: “It”

Inflection: Any form or change of form that distinguishes grammatical forms of the same lexical unit; ‘-s’

Archaism: In English language it means words which are no longer in use or have lost a particular meaning in current usage.

Etymology: Study of the historical relation and development between a word and its earlier forms.

Discourse Genres: Styles of written and spoken communication

Computer-mediated discourse: The specialized form of language between online users.

Transmission: Learning and passing on of information between people in a group.

Language family: Group of languages related in structure that have evolved from a common protolanguage.

Protolanguage: A common language ancestor of modern languages.

Pidgin: Simplified mix of languages used to communicate between people that do not share a common language.

Creole: A natural language developed from a blend of languages that is then spoken by native speakers.

Hypothesis: Statement of what a researcher is trying to investigate by carrying out a study.

N-gram: A sequence of items from a sample of text which can be different in length according to the phrase being studied.

N-gram graph: A line graph based on data displaying the change in frequency of use for particular words or phrases over a given time period.