Comprehensive Study Notes on Language Change in Sociolinguistics

Fundamental Characteristics of Language Change

• Definition and Nature: Language change is the phenomenon characterized by permanent alterations in the features and usage of a language over time. It is a universal constant; all natural languages change, and this evolution affects every area of language use.

• Evolution vs. Fixity: Language is not a fixed entity; it is always evolving. For example, the English language has undergone dramatic changes over the last millennium ($1,000$ years).

• Academic Classification: The study of language change falls under the branch of historical linguistics, also known as diachronic linguistics.

• Adaptation and Function: Language adapts to reflect changing lives, experiences, and cultures. It enables speakers to accommodate new ideas, inventions, and technologies.

• Structural Scope: Change occurs across all areas of structure, including:

  • Phonology (sound systems).

  • Grammar.

  • Discourse style.

  • Semantics (meaning).

  • Vocabulary.

  • Language shift (how the language is used).

Temporal and Spatial Progression of Change

• Cross-Generational Evolution: Pronunciations evolve, new words are borrowed or invented, the meanings of old words drift, and morphology either develops or decays generation by generation.

• Accumulated Divergence: Small changes build up until a "mother tongue" becomes arbitrarily distant and different from its descendants.

• Timeframes of Intelligibility:

  • After $1,000$ years, the original (ancestor) and the new (descendant) languages will not be mutually intelligible.

  • After $10,000$ years, the relationship between the two will be essentially indistinguishable from chance relationships between historically unrelated languages.

• Linguistic Drift in Subpopulations: In isolated subgroups speaking the same language, most changes will not be shared. This causes subgroups to drift apart linguistically until they eventually cannot understand one another.

Resistance to Change and Prescriptivism

• Stabilization Efforts: There is significant resistance to change through the stabilization of written language via prescriptive grammars and codified orthographies.

• Function of Written Language: Written language serves as a formal model for spoken language to maintain the status quo.

• Discouraged Linguistic Usages: Innovations are often discouraged in both speech and writing, specifically:

  • Slang Vocabulary: For example, using the English word "booze" instead of the formal "liquor."

  • Analogical Simplification in Grammar: Using "he don't" instead of the grammatically prescribed "he doesn't."

  • Pronunciation Departures: Deviating from orthographic norms, such as the merger of the vowels in "bad" and "bared" with that of "beard" ($[bIəd]$) in certain New York City speech patterns.

• Effectiveness of Control: Efforts to control language change have met with only limited success. Since the $18^{th}$ century, changes in vocabulary, grammar, and spelling have occurred steadily despite prescriptivist efforts.

• Individual Lifetime Observations: In spoken language, prescriptivism is even less effective. Numerous changes can be observed within a single human lifetime.

  • Example (Ice Cream): Modern speakers use the form "ice cream" with no awareness that in $1900$, this was considered a vulgar error for "iced cream."

  • Example (Ice Tea): Similar to ice cream, speakers nowadays say and sometimes write "ice tea" for "iced tea."

Mechanisms of Language Change

• 1. Trade and Migration: As cultures mix and trade, language shifts to accommodate interactions. English frequently borrows from other languages, creating "loanwords."

  • Examples of recent loanwords: "Avatar," "tsunami," and "sudoku."

• 2. Technology and New Inventions: New words are invented to describe non-existent items or concepts.

  • New terminology: "Clickbait," "carbon footprint," "selfie," and "podcast."

  • Portmanteau Words: The fusion of two existing words into one. For example, "blog" is the combination of "web" and "log."

• 3. Semantic Shifts (Old Words with New Meanings):

  • "Nice": Over $700$ years, it shifted from meaning "foolish" $\rightarrow$ "shy" $\rightarrow$ "dainty" $\rightarrow$ "delightful" $\rightarrow$ modern "giving pleasure or satisfaction."

  • Internet Shifts: Words like "mouse," "surf," and "web" have acquired entirely new meanings related to digital technology.

• 4. Language Learning (Transmission): Language is transformed as it passes between generations. Each individual must re-create a grammar and lexicon based on input from parents and siblings. Because the process of linguistic replication is imperfect and individual experiences differ, the result is variable across the community.

• 5. Language Contact: Conquest, migration, and trade bring different language speakers together, leading to bilingualism or the borrowing of sounds, words, and constructions.

• 6. Social Differentiation: Social groups use distinctive norms of dress and gesture to define themselves. Linguistic distinctiveness is achieved through slang, jargon, exaggerated pronunciation variants, and specific syntactic constructions.

• 7. Natural Processes in Usage:

  • Assimilation: Rapid or casual speech naturally produces phonetic shifts.

  • Conventionalization: Semantic changes occur through metaphor and metonymy.

  • Internal vs. External Sources: "Internal" sources occur within a single linguistic community. "External" sources refer to contact phenomena between different communities.

Specific Types of Change

• Sound Change: Alterations in phonological systems.

  • Regularity: When looking at historical stages (e.g., Romance languages from Latin), sound changes are remarkably regular; an old sound becomes a new sound across the board.

  • Hawai'ian Example: All "t" sounds in an older form of the language became "k" sounds.

  • The Great Vowel Shift (GVS): An unconditioned sound change occurring between Middle and Early Modern English (around Shakespeare's time).

    • It involved a length distinction in vowels and altered the position of all long vowels in a "giant rotation."

    • It began roughly $500$ years ago and affected seven vowel sounds.

    • Impact: "Geese" once rhymed with the modern pronunciation of "face"; "mice" once rhymed with the modern pronunciation of "peace."

    • The "ay" sound ($pay$) changed to "ee" ($fee$), and the "ee" sound changed to "i" ($pie$).

    • GVS did not occur in most European languages, which is why "ay" is still often spelled with an "e" (e.g., $fianc\acute{e}$) and "ee" with an "i" (e.g., $aria$).

• Syntactic Change (Word Order): A slow evolutionary process.

  • King James Bible ($1611$): Matthew $6:28$ reads "they toil not."

  • Current Translation: Modern English translates this as "they do not toil" because English no longer places "not" after the verb.

• Phonological Mergers: Specific examples include:

  • Whine ($[hwain]$) merging with wine ($[wain]$).

  • Caught ($[k>:t]$) merging with cot ($[kat]$).

  • Pin ($[pin]$) merging with pen ($[p\epsilon n]$).

  • Mary ($[AmeiBi]$), marry ([Am\ae Bi]), and merry ($[Am\epsilon Bi]$) merging into a single pronunciation in broad geographical areas.

Macrolinguistic vs. Microlinguistic Change

• Macrolinguistic Change: Involves entire language structures and often deliberate, conscious decisions through language planning programs.

  • Standardization: Selecting a single dialect as the official norm for a multidialectal area.

  • Large-scale Contact: Such as Spanish and English in the US.

  • Code-switching: Alternating between languages in contact.

  • Pidginization and Creolization: Occur in situations like colonial plantation economies where multiple languages meet, resulting in a new language with a dominant language's vocabulary but a radically simplified grammar.

• Microlinguistic Change: Initiated by an individual or small group and imitated by others who associate social value with the innovation.

  • Conscious Motivation: Innovations that respond to new social needs for vocabulary; the initiator and circumstances are often known.

  • Unconscious Grammar Changes: These are harder to study as the initiator, time, and mechanism are often unavailable (e.g., the replacement of the plural "kine" with "cows").

Systematic and Sporadic Change

• Sporadic Change: Impacts the lexicon minimally.

  • Branding: Using a new word for a product.

  • Phonology: L1 speakers pronouncing "catch" to rhyme with "wretch" instead of "hatch."

• Systematic Change: Affects an entire system or subsystem of the language, influenced by linguistic or extralinguistic context.

  • Wave Model of Language Change: Proposed by Walt Wolfram and Natalie Schilling-Estes in $1998$. It suggests change starts in one locale at a specific point in time and spreads outward in progressive stages, reaching outlying areas much later.

Factors Impacting Change

• Political Factors:

  • Roots in foreign invasion, migration, and colonization.

  • Public debates: Environmental awareness has introduced terms like "tree-hugger," "eco-friendly," "greenwashing," "locavore," and "green-collar jobs."

  • Dictionarial additions: "$9/11$ " ($2001$), "weapons of mass destruction" ($2002$), "red state/blue state/purple state" ($2004$), and "subprime" ($2007$).

  • Gender Equality: Shift toward gender-neutral nouns (e.g., "police officer" instead of "policeman," "firefighter" for "fireman," and "humankind" for "mankind").

• Social Factors:

  • Usage depends on location, age, gender, education, and social status.

  • Social prestige and power: Individuals without formal education or from rural areas may have speech patterns distinct from those of high social standing.

  • Generational gaps: The vocabulary of grandparents differs significantly from that of their grandchildren.

• Cultural Factors: Exposure via mass media (TV, radio, films, music, magazines, and fashion).

• Technological Factors:

  • Rapid advancement in industry and IT drives the need for new words.

  • Speed: The internet has accelerated language change significantly.

  • Examples: "To google," "facebooking," and computer slangs.

  • Obsolescence: Words like "floppy disk" have been replaced by "memory stick."

  • Text Messaging: Abbreviations such as "LOL," "BFF," "IMHO," and "OMG" have been legitimized by entries in the Oxford Dictionary.

• Foreign Influence Factors:

  • Borrowing occurs when a language needs to refer to a new notion (e.g., "pizza" from Italian, "glasnost" from Russian).

  • Duration: Many loanwords are transitory, but those denoting objects with no existing name (like pizza) are usually retained.

Appendix: Common Borrowed Words by Source

• Caribbean: Hammock, hurricane, maize, tobacco.

• Cornish: Gull.

• Czech: Howitzer, robot.

• Gaelic and Irish: Brogue, blarney, clan, plaid, shamrock.

• Hawaiian: Ukulele.

• Hindi: Bungalow, dungarees, jodhpurs, jungle, loot, polo, pajamas, shampoo, thug.

• Hungarian: Paprika.

• Japanese: Bonsai, sumo, origami.

• Malay: Bamboo, ketchup, orang-utan.

• Persian: Paradise, lilac, bazaar, caravan, chess, shawl, khaki.

• Polynesian: Taboo, tattoo.

• Portuguese: Flamingo, marmalade, veranda.

• Russian: Mammoth, soviet, vodka.

• Turkish: Coffee.

• Welsh: Flannel.

Conclusion

• Language change is an inevitable process.

• Language change is influenced by attitudes toward language.

• Linguistic attitudes are themselves influenced by institutional language policies.