Morphological Change

  • morphology of a language can change (new word forms, new morphological processes and rules)
  • closely associated with analogical change
    • proportional analogy is a big factor in reducing irregularity in language
    • there are many cases of changing a series of forms to fit all existing pattern
  • paradigm leveling: analogy reduces allomorphs and makes everything rule based (makes everything simpler)
  • lesser types of morphological changes
    • affixation
    • compounding
    • zero derivation: changing the word into a new lexical category
    • also adds a stress shift
    • back formation: normal process of derivation is reverse
    • can also happen with pluralization
    • folk etymology: speakers incorrectly make analyses because they don’t have the historical knowledge
    • clippings: using only part of the word form
    • blends: guesstimate ➝ guess and estimate
    • acronyms: just use letters. asap, ok, (not like usa)
    • coinages: word formations from literature or elsewhere
  • syntactic change
    • reanalysis: speakers words are interpretable in different ways and listener takes wrong meaning
    • co-occurrence: changes the syntax of a language by changing what needs to occur in a sentence