Language change

Information taken from: Language Change: Progress or Decay. 3rd Edition

(2008 (1981)) by Jean Aitchison. Cambridge University Press.

“…large numbers of intelligent people condemn and resent language change,

regarding alterations as due to unnecessary sloppiness, laziness or
ignorance. Letters are written to newspapers and indignant articles are
published, all deploring the fact that words acquire new meanings and new
pronunciations.” (Aitchison, 2008 (1981), p. 4)

“Around 1700, English spelling van usage were in a fairly liquid fluid state.
Against this background, two powerful social factors combined to convert a
normal mild nostalgia for the language of the past into a quasi-religious
doctrine. The first was a long-standing admiration for Latin, and the second
was powerful class-snobbery.” (Aitchison, 2008 (1981), p. 9)

“…Lowth insisted on the pronoun I in phrases such as wiser than I,

condemning lines of Swift such as ‘she suffers hourly more than me’, quite
oblivious of the fact that many languages, English included, prefer a different
form of the pronoun when it is detached from the verb: compare the French
plus sage qui moi ‘ wiser than me’, not *plus sage qui je. In consequence,
many people nowadays believe that a phrase such as wiser than I is ‘better’
than wiser than me. To continue, Lowth may have been the first to argue that
a double negative is wrong, on the grounds that one cancels the other out.
Those who support this point of view fail to realize that language is not logic or
mathematics, and that the heaping up of negatives is very common in the
languages around the world. It occurs frequently in Chaucer (and in other pre-
eighteenth-century English authors. For example, in the Prologue to the
Canterbury Tales, Chaucer heaps up negatives to emphasize the fact that the
knight was never rude to anyone:

He nevere yet no vileynye ne sayde

In all his lyf unto no maner wight
He was a verray, parfit gentil knyght.

Today, the belief that the double negative is wrong is perhaps the most widely
accepted of all popular convictions about ‘correctness’, even though stacked
up negatives occur in several varieties of English, without causing any
problems of understanding: ‘I didn’t know nothin’ bout gettin’ no checks to
(=for) nothin’, no so (=social) security or nothin’.’ The 65-year-old black
woman originally from the Mississippi River area of America was clearly not
getting the social security payments due to her.” (Aitchison, 2008 (1981), pp.
11-12)

“All European (Germanic) languages lost many of their old word-endings.

Aitchison suggests: “…languages might be slowly evolving to a more efficient
state. We might be witnessing the survival of the fittest, with existing
languages adapting to the needs of the times. The lack of a complicated
word-ending system in English might be a sign of streamlining and

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sophistication, as argued by the Danish linguist Otto Jesperson in 1922: ‘In
the evolution of languages the discarding of old flexions goes hand in hand
with the development of simpler and more regular expedients that are rather
less liable than the old ones to produce misunderstanding.’” (Aitchison, 2008
(1981), pp. 6-7)

“Purism … does not necessarily make language ‘purer’. Nor does it always
favour the older form, merely the most socially prestigious.” (Aitchison, 2008
(1981), p. 13)

Changes in language:
 geographical variation
 social variation
 stylistic variation (different forms for different occasions)

Why language change takes place:

-external sociolinguistic factors: social factors outside the language system.
-internal psycho-linguistic factors: linguistic and psychological factors which
reside in the structure of the language and the minds of speakers.

Infiltration of external foreign language elements is extensive, e.g. due to

immigration
Borrowing (words from other languages)
Functional view: language alters as the need of its users alters (politeness)

Inherent causes of language change:

 “Overall.. it is normal for consonants to disappear at the ends of words
over the ages.” (Aitchison, 2008 (1981), p. 156)
 Assimilation and omission
 Natural developments in syntax, there is “a natural tendency to
maintain object-verb closeness, and a natural tendency to delete
repetitions” – this destroyed the earlier Germanic pattern to place verbs
at the end of sentences (in modern English, where the verb became
mobile and became standard to place it in the middle of sentences,
between the subject and the object).
 Iconicity: languages shadow the world: consider metaphors: the head
of an organization; the neck of a bottle.

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EXAMPLES OF CHANGES in ENGLISH

449 Germanic invasions  Old English (Germanic languages)

Angels, Saxons, Jutes and Frisians
597 Arrival of Christianity (cultural revolution that changed the
language)
750-1050 Viking invasion  Old Norse influenced Old English (Germanic)
1066 Norman invasion  Norman French (Romanic/Romance
language) Middle English

Sound changes involving consonants  Grimm’s Law (early 19th

century)

“These far ranging consonant changes occurred at some unknown date in

Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages, which includes English.
They split the Germanic branch off from other languages, and were certainly
complete before our first written records of this branch of Indo-European.”
(Aitchison, 2008 (1981), pp. 183-5)

Proto-Indo-European  >>>>>>>>  >>>>>>>  >>>>>>>

[bh] [b] [p] [f]
[dh] [d] [t] [θ]
[gh] [g] [k] [h]

[bhero:] ‘I carry’ bear

[dedhe:mi] ‘I place’ do
[ghans] goose

--- ---
[dekm] ‘ten’ ten
[genos] ‘tribe’kin

[pater] father
[treyes] three
[kornu] ‘horn’ horn

First Germanic sound shift

Indo-European voiced stops [b, d, g] lost their voicing and became [p, t, k].
Indo-European ‘lubricus’ underwent a change that became [p] in English
slippery. Likewise [d] became [t] as in the pair Latin ad and English at. And [g]
as in jugum became [k] as in yoke.
“This would have led to a merger with words that already had /p/, /t/ and /k/
except that the latter three themselves changed to the corresponding
fricatives /f/, /θ/, and [h]. As a result IE /p/ as in Latin pisces became /f/, as in
English fish; the stop /t/ (tres) shifted to the fricative /θ/ as in three, and the /k/

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of Latin cordis was pronounced as /h/ in English heart.” (Gramley 2012. Pp. 8-
9)

Exceptions: for why did /t/ in pater not change into voiceless /θ/ as well, but
into voiced /ð/?
Here Verner’s Law is an addition to explain this, for word stress plays a role in
the changes. Both pater and father originally carried their stress on the
second syllable, and voiceless fricatives (/f, s, θ, ∫/ became voiced if the
preceding syllable was unstressed, as was the case in the earlier
pronunciation of father.

Extra information is to be found at:

http://cw.routledge.com/textbooks/gramley-9780415566407/downloads/
chapters/01/links-01.pdf
This document can be found at: http://cw.routledge.com/textbooks/gramley-
9780415566407/
This website accompanies The History of English: An Introduction, by
Stephan Gramley, 2012, Routledge.

The Great Vowel shift

A second example of language change occurred in English long vowels.
The great vowel shift started around the fifteenth century. All the long vowel
changed places.

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Great Vowel Shift
Middle English became Early modern became Modern English
English
[a:] [na:mə] ‘name’  [ɛ:] [nɛ:m]  [eɪ] [neɪm]
[ɛ:] [mɛ:t] ‘meat’  [e:] [me:t]  [i:] [mi:t]
[e:] [me:t] ‘meet’  [i:] [mi:t]  [i:] [mi:t]
[i:] [ri:d] ‘ride’  [əi] [rəid]  [aɪ] [raid]
[ɔː] [bɔːt] ‘boat’  [o:] [bo:t]  [əʊ] [bəʊt]
[o:] [bo:t] ‘boot’  [u:] [bu:t]  [u:] [bu:t]

Figure 13.4 The Great Vowel Shift: examples

From: Aitchison, 2008 (1981), p. 186

Information below taken from The History of English: An Introduction, Stephen

Gramley, 2012, Routledge.

http://www.oldenglishtranslator.co.uk

http://www.ucalgary.ca/UofC/eduweb/engl401/
Online course by Murray McGillivray, U of Calgary

“Early Germanic was a language which marked nouns, adjectives, and

demonstratives (words like this and that) for case, number, and gender.
These are categories of grammar which have a very much reduced precence
in ModE. Number is still marked for count nouns like apple(s), banana(s), and
cucumber(s) though not normally for abstract ones like beauty,intelligence,
and secrecy or mass nouns like snow, milk, and dirt. Gender is marked
grammatically only in the third person singular pronouns (he, she, it). Case, a
marking of such sentence functions as subject (nominative), direct (causative)
or indirect (dative) object, and possessor (genitive), is marked today most
clearly in the system of personal pronouns (e.g. possesive my/mine, your(s),
her(s), his, its, our(s), their(s)), but the {-s} ending is also used to mark the
possessive case of nouns (the book’s cover, my family’s summer plans, two
guys’ brilliant ideas).
In Germanic as in other Indo-European languages there was a complex
system of inflectional endings. (…) By the time Old English came to be written
the process was well underway in which inflectional endings were no longer
being clearly distinguished. (…)
As both the Germanic and the Romance languages lost more and more
endings, there must have been difficulties in making the necessary
grammatical distinctions. (…) the system of demonstratives was used to mark
(…) case and gender in Old English. This was done by placing a
demonstrative in front of the noun. (…)
In the case of English the demonstrative also began to function as the definite
article (…).” (Gramley, S. 2012: 9-10)
Excerpt of The Wanderer (c. 600) Old English

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“The poem contains reminiscences of past pagan warriorhood, but is
tempered about halfway through by thoughts of Christian salvation.” (Gramley
(2012, p. 38):
(from http://www.ucalgary.ca/UofC/eduweb/engl403/wanderer.htm)
Source: The Exeter Book. Ed. George Philip Krapp and Elliott van Kerk
Dobbie. New York: Columbia University Press, 1936. 134 - 137.

"Oft ic sceolde ana         uhtna gehwylce

mine ceare cwiþan.         Nis nu cwicra nan
10 þe ic him modsefan         minne durre
sweotule asecgan.         Ic to soþe wat
þæt biþ in eorle         indryhten þeaw,
þæt he his ferðlocan         fæste binde,
healde his hordcofan,         hycge swa he wille.

Translation from: Gramley (2012, pp. 38-39):

Often I had, alone each dawn,

To speak of my trouble Nor is now anyone living
To whom I dare my innermost thoughts
Openly to speak I in truth know
That it is in men a noble custum
That he [a men] is breast holds fast,
Guards his treasure chest thinks as he wants.

Glossary from http://www.ucalgary.ca/UofC/eduweb/engl403/wanderer.htm

oft adv: often
ic pron
sceolde: had to, was obliged to, should have had to, might have been
obliged to (sculan)
ana adj: alone
uhte f: dawn, twilight
gehwylc pron and adj: each

min poss adj: my

cearo f: care, sorrow, anxiety
cwiþan: lament, bewail
nis: is not (beon + ne)
nu adv: now
cwic adj: living, alive 9 (as noun)
nan: not one, none

þe rel pron: that, which, who

ic
him pron: him, to him, for him; it, to it, for it; them, to them, for them
(dat. of he, hit, or hie)
modsefa m: mind, spirit
min
durre: dare (durran)

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sweotule adv: clearly
asecgan: express, tell, explain
Ic
to prep or adv: to, into, for, from, as a; too, excessively, besides, also
soþ n: truth (to soþe: in truth, truthfully, truly)
wat: know, knows (1st or 3rd pers sing pres indic of witan)

þæt conj or pron: that, the

bið, biþ, beoð: is, will be
in prep: in, on, into, at, to, for
eorl m: man, warrior, leader, noble
indryhten adj: noble, excellent
þeaw m: usage, custom, conduct, virtue

þæt
he pron: he
his pron: his, its, of it, of him
ferðloca m: breast, body (lit. spirit-enclosure)
fæste SEE BELOW
bindan: bind, fetter, fasten, restrain

healdan: hold, hold fast, retain, keep, guard, defend, lock up

his
hordcofa m: treasure chamber; closet for a hoard
hycgan: think, consider, meditate; determine, purpose; remember; hope
swa adv conj or pron: so, as, in this way, thus, as if, just as, such
wille: will, should want to (willan)

http://www.oldenglishtranslator.co.uk
Consider the irregular noun ‘book’ in Old English:

Long Feminine Athematic noun

book
bóc Singular Plural
Nominative (the/that séo) bóc (the/those þá) béc
Accusative (the/that þá) bóc (the/those þá) béc
Genitive (the/that þære) béc (the/those þára) bóca
Dative (the/that þære) béc (the/those þæm) bócum

For more information:

An Old English Grammar by Randolph Quirk and C. L. Wrenn, Routledge,
1955

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