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°˖✧ The History of Language Change ✧˖° - Coggle Diagram
°˖✧
The History of Language Change
✧˖°
Timeline
The Evolution of English
Before English began - up to 450AD
British (Celtic) tribes
Language related to modern Welsh, Scots Gaelic, and Irish
Only real connection with Modern English is in lexis
Mostly place names
Romans invade in 55BC and Latin is introduced
leaves a mark on the English language
Origins of English
450AD to 1066
Anglos and Saxons arrive from North Germany
Old English is spoken (notable work: Beowulf)
About half of common vocabulary terms in Modern English comes from Old English
Only writing is runes
Written form of language comes from Latin-speaking monks who use the Roman alphabet with new letters (æ, ð, þ-spoken as "ash","eth" and "thorn")
Middle English Period
1066 - 1485
Writers concerned about language change want to stabilize language
The printing press
1458 - Gutenberg invents the printing press
1475 - Caxton introduces the printing press to England
The press enables some standardising to begin, however there is no standard form of spelling or punctuation
-Printing is at first reserved for books (although for sometimes many books are still written by hand)
The press provides the technical means to guarantee standardising of spelling (but this will still take a further 300 years)
The 'Great Vowel Shift'
1300 - 1500
(overlaps with the Tudor Period)
A radical change in pronunciation during the 15th-17th Century
The major factor separating Middle English from Modern English
Causes of the shift are still debated
-> The large intake of loanwords from the Romance languages of Europe (required a different kind of pronunciation) may be an important factor
Long vowel sounds began to be made higher and further forward in the mouth (short vowel sounds were unchanged)
In Middle English, the long vowels were pronounced like the Latin Deuved Romance languages of Europe
The Shift comprises a series of connected changes, with changes in one vowel pushing another to change
The changes proceeded at different times and speeds in different parts of the country
Tudor Period (The Renaissance)
1485 - 1603
the
Renaissance
- the next wave of innovation in English vocabulary that came with the revival of classical scholarship
a rise in nationalism -> the desire for more expressive language. However, Latin was perceived to be a superior language
a flowering of literature and experiments in style
-> in line with a preference for elevated diction
vocabulary was enlarged by imports from Greek and Latin - ideas seeped into Maths and Science
Words from Latin or Greek were imported wholesale, either intact
However, they're commonly altered
Many words ending with the Greek-based suffixes '-ize and '-ism' were introduced
Scholars who revered Latin and ancient Greek became spelling reformers; tried to re-model English spelling on classical patterns
End of the 16th century - Latin was still used but hundreds of words had fallen out of use
Lexis expanded by travel
to New World:
English settlers began to found colonies in North America
Trade and discovery brought about rapid change, especially in the lexicon, and while
Some settling down of spelling may appear, but is far from being standardised
'Inkhorn Controversy'
Spelling (orthography) - there was no generally accepted system in the 16th century
Most writers wrote phonetically
Common features of language: use of interrogative form without an auxiliary; double negatives - used for emphasis, stronger negative and intensive
Inkhorn
pedantic writers who borrowed the classics to create obscure and opulent terms, many of which have not survived
Sydney Smith
- one writer of the period with a penchant for inkhorn terms
20th Century
and
beyond
Influences of overseas forms grows
US and International English become dominant
English becomes global language
Computer technology - spell-checking, grammar-checking (powerful means for the encouragement of standard written forms)
Americanisation of English language is now prevalent
Spellings - generally fixed and resistant to change, but there's still a degree of uncertainty about spellings
Pronunciation - least resistant to change; more flexible (as it varies to speech); greater tolerance of a regional accents
Prescriptivists - language is constantly changing but is criticised by them; they try to prevent these changes
Descriptivists (David Crystal, Jean Aitchison) - argue that language change isn't a bad thing
'there is a widely held belief that change must mean deterioration and decay and standards have fallen'; believes language change is inevitable
18th Century
'Age of Reason' - ideas of order and priority prevailed
Language acquired a great deal of prestige
There was a great deal to standardise spelling
Dictionaries - the arbiters of correct spelling
Classical languages were seen as paradigms (ideal models) for English
Samuel Johnson's 'Dictionary of the English
Language (1755)
Seen as an impressive academic achievement - with 43,000 words
It remained the pre-eminent English dictionary until the 'Oxford English Dictionary'
17th Century
Influences of
Puritanism and Catholicism
(Roundhead, Cavalier) and of
science
Puritan ideas of clarity and simplicity influence writing of prose -> language = less verbose
English was preferred to Dutch as the official language in the New World
The Bible
had a huge influence on English
1384 (John Wycliffe) 1549 ("Book of Common Prayer") - The first English translation of the Bible was introduced into English churches
1611 - King James Version of the Bible was the culmination of efforts to produce a Bible in the English native language
The 'King James Bible' (1611)
compiled by a committee of 54 scholars and clerics
an attempt to standardize the plethora of new Bibles
deliberately conservative in its vocabulary and grammar
presents many forms which had fallen out of use/in the process of dying out
"-eth" ending is used for third person singular verbs, even though "-es" was becoming more common by the early 17th Century, and ye (rather than you) is used for the second person plural pronoun
The Influence of Shakespeare
(
late 16th and early 17th Century
)
William Shakespeare single-handedly changed the English language to a significant extent
took advantage of the relative freedom and flexibility of English at the time, and
played with the liberal grammatical rules (in his use nouns as verbs, adverbs, adjectives and substantive) - an early instance of the "verbification" of nouns which modern language purists often decry
had a vast vocabulary (around 34,000 words; coined an estimated 2,000 neologisms)
Some of Shakespeare's neologisms: majestic, radiance, puking, countless, excellent, lonely
almost one in ten of the words used by Shakespeare were his own invention
however, not all of these were necessarily personally invented by Shakespeare himself:
they appear for the first time in his published works -> he made use of other people's neologisms and local dialect words
'
A Table Alphabeticall
' - Robert Cawdrey (
1604
)
The first English dictionary published
contained 2,543 of what he called "hard words”, especially those borrowed from Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and French
not actually a very reliable resource (the word 'words' was spelled in two different ways as wordes and words)
19th Century
a renewed interest in the past and a keen interest in the use of archaic words
huge lexical growth as a result of the British Empire - English travels to other counties and imports loanwords
James Murray, 1879 - compiles the New English Dictionary (later becomes the Oxford; takes 5 years to reach completion)
Noah Webster, 1828 - published the American Dictionary of the English Language
Differences from Johnson's:
few but notorious
variants on the affixes '-our' and '-re'
Reasons
for Language Change
Individuals
- Chaucer and Shakespeare
Technology
- Internet needing new lexis
Society
- Cultural changes and shifts in attitudes requiring new lexis, (e.g. Political Correctness)
Foreign Influence
- E.g. through film or trade
Science
- new inventions requiring new lexis
Travel, trade, and colonization
- require new lexis and shared lexis to barter and trade
Globalisation
- English becoming language of trade and business
Different Ways
Language Changes
Lexical Change
Borrowings - Loans taken from foreign languages
Affixation - Adding an affix (prefix or suffix) to an existing word (racism, sexism)
Compounding - Two words are combined in their entirety to make a new word (lap-top, happy-hour)
Blending - Two words parts moulded together to form a new word (smog - smoke & fog, motel - motor & hotel)
Conversion - Changing of word class (e.g. noun to verb)
Shortening or abbreviation - Clipping part of a word (omnibus to 'bus', public house to 'pub')
Acronym - Taking initial letters of words and making them into a combination of pronounceable as a new word (NATO, NASA, AIDS)
Initialism - Words abbreviated to initial letters (B.B.C, F.B.I, U.S.A)
Words from proper names - Derived from names or places synonymous with the product
Semantic Change
Broadening or generalization - Meaning of words broadens to as it retains old meaning but takes on new meanings as well
Narrowing or specialization - The opposite of broadening; when a words becomes more specific in its meaning, but it can also retain the original meaning
Amelioration - Word has taken on a more pleasant or positive meaning than originally held
Pejoration - Word has taken on a negative meaning
Metaphor - Words take on new meanings when they begin to be used metaphorically
Idioms - Formed from existing words but assumes a new meaning in the specific context it is used in; can only be properly interpreted by learning the context
Euphemisms - Polite way of describing something unpleasant, embarassing, or socially undesirable; more politically correct