Scribd
Upload
80 views4 pages

Language-Change - CIE-English-Language Revision Summary

Uploaded by

Jacint Howard

The document discusses the history and evolution of the English language from Early Modern English to Late Modern English. Key developments include the introduction of the printing press, Johnson's dictionary, and the loss of inflectional endings. The Great Vowel Shift changed pronunciation. New words were added through various processes like borrowing, derivation, and blending. Grammar and meaning also changed over time as English adapted to different contexts like the digital world. Theories of language change include functional, cultural transmission, and random fluctuation theories. Language change can be measured using corpora and n-grams to track frequency changes over periods.

Copyright:

© All Rights Reserved
Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
Download as doc, pdf, or txt

Language-Change - CIE-English-Language Revision Summary

Uploaded by

Jacint Howard
80 views4 pages
The document discusses the history and evolution of the English language from Early Modern English to Late Modern English. Key developments include the introduction of the printing press, Johnson's dictionary, and the loss of inflectional endings. The Great Vowel Shift changed pronunciation. New words were added through various processes like borrowing, derivation, and blending. Grammar and meaning also changed over time as English adapted to different contexts like the digital world. Theories of language change include functional, cultural transmission, and random fluctuation theories. Language change can be measured using corpora and n-grams to track frequency changes over periods.

Original Description:

Summary notes for Language Change Cambridge A level English Paper 3 q1

Original Title

Language-Change--CIE-English-Language revision summary

Copyright

© © All Rights Reserved

Available Formats

DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

The document discusses the history and evolution of the English language from Early Modern English to Late Modern English. Key developments include the introduction of the printing press, Johnson's dictionary, and the loss of inflectional endings. The Great Vowel Shift changed pronunciation. New words were added through various processes like borrowing, derivation, and blending. Grammar and meaning also changed over time as English adapted to different contexts like the digital world. Theories of language change include functional, cultural transmission, and random fluctuation theories. Language change can be measured using corpora and n-grams to track frequency changes over periods.

Copyright:

© All Rights Reserved
Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
Download as doc, pdf, or txt
80 views4 pages

Language-Change - CIE-English-Language Revision Summary

Uploaded by

Jacint Howard
The document discusses the history and evolution of the English language from Early Modern English to Late Modern English. Key developments include the introduction of the printing press, Johnson's dictionary, and the loss of inflectional endings. The Great Vowel Shift changed pronunciation. New words were added through various processes like borrowing, derivation, and blending. Grammar and meaning also changed over time as English adapted to different contexts like the digital world. Theories of language change include functional, cultural transmission, and random fluctuation theories. Language change can be measured using corpora and n-grams to track frequency changes over periods.

Copyright:

© All Rights Reserved
Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
Download as doc, pdf, or txt
You are on page 1/ 4

Periods of English Language

Things to keep in mind when analysing a text:


 Graphology
 Grammar
 Orthography (spelling)
 Phonology
 Pragmatics (how context affects their meaning)
 Morphology
 Lexis
 Semantics (meaning of words)
 Syntax

Early Modern English (EME):


From 1500-1800

Key developments:
 Introduction of the printing press: helped standardise spelling,
punctuation, and system of writing. Printed word was now more
available, and more people started to write
 Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language (1765): recorded English
as it was used at that time, useful to see how language has changed
 Loss of grammatical patterns of Old and Middle English and became
more flexible
Many Old English grammatical features were simplified; for examples, noun,
verb, and adjective inflections were simplified in Modern English so as the
reduction of many grammatical cases. While Old English had four distinct noun-
endings for different cases (the nominative, accusative, genitive, and dative),
Middle English had only two such patterns: The distinctive dative case – ending
in -um – was lost during the early Middle English period.
 Words from Latin + Greek + European languages
 Developments in science, medicine and art led to invention of new
lexis/adapted from Italian + French

The Great Vowel Shift:


 Changes in pronunciation
 Started towards end of Middle English
 Causes: movement of people to different regions with different accents +
desire to sound different from ruling class

Shakespeare's Language:
 Introduced new lexis and idioms still used today
 Ex: "scuffle", "vanish into thin air"

Late Modern English (LME):


From 1800-present

Big difference is in lexis which expanded due to the Industrial Revolution and
colonialism
Industrial Revolution:
 18th+19th century
 Need for neologisms ("factory", "aspirin") which have dropped out of use
now
Colonialism, travel and empire-building:
 Colonial expansion in 1700s made language spread
 Borrowed words from colonies

Process of Language Change

Formation of new words:


 Coinage: creation of new word
 Derivation: formed from existing word (prefix/suffix)
 Neologism: new word with no origin
 Eponyms: word named after discoverer (Sandwich)
 Conversion: meaning/function of a word changes without altering its form
(adj "clean" to verb "to clean")
 Telescoping: acronyms that form new words (UNESCO, scuba)
 Compounding: new word from joining 2 separate words (flowerpot) can
have hyphen
 Blending: combination of words ("spanglish", "slithy")
 Clipping: shortening of a long word ("mathematics" to "maths")
 Coalescence: sounds are clipped ("whine" pronounced as "wine")
 Backformation: long word/phrase shortened, giving a new word in a
different form (noun "babysitter" to verb "babysit")

Changes through borrowing from:


 Latin
 Greek
 French
 Spanish
 German
 -and others!

Changes in grammar and style:


 Nouns to verbs
 "do" became auxiliary verb instead of "speakest thou"
 "thou" disappeared
 Verb ending "-s" replaced "-th" (speaketh - speaks)
 Its + it's appeared
 Nouns became neutral
 Double negative became seen as incorrect

Changes in meaning:
 Amelioration: word changes meaning to become more positive ("nice"-
meant stupid)
 Pejoration: word changes meaning to become more negative ("silly"-
meant blessed)
 Broadening: process by which the meaning of a word expands from its
original meaning ("business"- meant being anxious, now can be all kinds
of work)
 Narrowing: word takes more restricted meaning ("meat"- meant all food,
now only animal flesh)

Language change in digital world:


 Assisted by social media
 Words become viral
 Drop archaisms
Prescriptivist vs Descriptivist:

Prescriptivist:
 Language change is considered a decline in standards of English

Descriptivist:
 No right or wrong way to use language, language evolves

Language Change in the Digital World

Online communication and language change:

New forms of English:


 Meaning change ("pin", "troll")
 Lexis ("selfie", "google")
 Abbreviation ("omg", "lol")
 Graphology (emojis, caps=shouting)

Computer-mediated discourse:
 Unplanned + spontaneous

Theories of Language Change

Functional theory (Halliday):


Language changes according to the needs of its users

Cultural transmission theory:


As our values change, so does our language

Random fluctuation theory:


Words/phrases are perceived as more desirable than traditional form so they
change

Substratum theory:
Words added to English from other Englishes (refers to globalisation of
language, influenced by different Englishes)

Theory of lexical gaps:


Looks for new lexis for advertising to attract attention

Also think about Jean Aitchison and the Damp Spoon and Crumbling
Castle theories.

Measuring Language Change through Data

Corpus:
Large, structured set of texts comprised of written texts and transcriptions of
spoken language

N-gram:
Graph based on data from a particular corpus displaying the change in the
frequency of use for particular words or phrases over a period of time.

You might also like