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Language change - Coggle Diagram
Language change
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Semantic shift
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Semantic broadening, semantic narrowing, semantic weakening, metaphor, metonym, idiom, euphemism, cliché
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Dr Samuel Johnson
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Attempted to define and fix orthography for all lexemes using over 114,000 quotations including those from Milton and Shakespeare
Took 8 years, listed 40,000 words
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Criticisms: imposed personality on the book, decided which words were good enough and missed some, full of euphemisms and jokes rather than being linguistically descriptive
Jean Aitchison
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Crumbling castle (English language was once a castle signifying standard English but has since decayed), infectious disease (changes are 'caught' through contact), damp spoon (laziness causes change)
Criticisms: 'Standard English' is a myth, picking up language from other people isn't bad but can show solidarity, we're not lazy but diverse and language is an intergral part of identity
Robert Lowth
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Criticisms: only accessed by limited audience who are already likely to be prescriptivist/educated/literate, the guide is complicated and technical
Determined English shouldn't include multiple negation, plural verb forms must agree with second person pronouns, etc.
Lexical gap theory
Consonant, vowel, consonant structure
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David Crystal
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Changes naturally and progressively, not for worse or for better
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Jonathan Swift
Wrote to the Earl of Oxford to propose a structure for 'correcting improving and ascertaining' the English language
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William Ollier
19th century journalist suggested 'ghoti' as a potential spelling of 'fish' to illustrate seemingly absurd English spellings in Victorian era
Henry Sweet
Prominent descriptivist grammarian in the late 19th century focusing on actual usage and relying on facts of how people actually communicate rather than creating rules
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Aitchison (1991)
Suggests phonological change is a process caused by contact and influence (spheres as MLE is the crossover between Cockney and Jamaican/Nigerian Englishes) and MUBE is the crossover between MLE and other regions