Language Change

Front 1

Samuel Johnson

Back 1

OED - 1752/1755

Front 2

William Caxton

Back 2

Printing Press - 1475

Front 3

Jean Aitcheson

Back 3

Damp Spoon - Language being lazy/sloppy, cause of language change.

Infectious Disease - Language change is brought about by social contact - normal human behaviour.

Crumbling Castle - Treats English Language as beautiful building that should be preserved.

Front 4

Ferdinand De Saussure

Back 4

Signifier and Signified - study of semiotics

Front 5

Howard Giles

Back 5

Accommodation Theory

Convergence - Speakers adjust their speech to accommodate others, showing their need for approval

Divergence - Speakers become more individualised and less like those of the other person e.g. doctor uses medical jargon instead of 'dumbing down'

Front 6

Norman Fairclough

Back 6

Synthetic Personalisation

Conversationalism - shifting boundaries between spoken and written languages

Spoken language fault that written language changes - 'text speech'

Front 7

Dennis Freeborn (Regional Accents)

Back 7

1. Incorrectness view

2. Ugliness view

3. Impreciseness view

Front 8

Incorrectness View

Back 8

All accents are incorrect compared to Standard English

Front 9

Ugliness View

Back 9

Some accents don't sound nice

Front 10

Impreciseness View

Back 10

Some accents 'sloppy', 'lazy' - Estuary English - omits letters

Front 11

Synchronic

Back 11

Looks at language at a point in time without considering the historical context.

Front 12

Diachronic

Back 12

Study of language change occurring over a span of time

Front 13

Old English

Back 13

5th - 11th Century

Development of English from the linguistic influence of Germanic and Viking invaders.

Front 14

Middle English

Back 14

11th - 14th Century

Mixing of French with English after the Norman conquest.

Front 15

Early Modern English

Back 15

15th - 17th Century

Continual process of change as English discarded older forms of word order and word endings and added Latin words for new concepts and ideas.

Front 16

Late Modern English

Back 16

18th Century - Present Day

The age of standardised English.

Front 17

Overt Prestige

Back 17

The status that speakers get from using the most official and standard form of a dialect

Standard English, RP

Front 18

Covert Prestige

Back 18

The status that speakers who choose not to adopt a standard dialect, get from a particular group within society.

Regional accents/dialects, slang.

Front 19

Loan Words

Back 19

Introduction of a word from another language, can be changed or remain the same as original spelling.

E.g. Anglicised - Chocolate from French

E.g. Non-Anglicised - Curry from India

Front 20

Eponym

Back 20

A product named after a person e.g. 'sandwich' and 'braille'

Front 21

Propriety name

Back 21

A product commonly referred to by the name of the company instead of its actual name 'hoover', 'tampax'

Front 22

Abbreviation

Acronym

Back 22

A word made up of initials but pronounced as one - 'RADAR', 'TARDIS'

Front 23

Abbreviation

Initialism

Back 23

Each letter in the word is pronounced separately - 'CD', 'DVD'

Front 24

Abbreviation

Clipping

Back 24

A new word produced by shortening an existing one 'edit' from 'editor'

Front 25

Affixation

Back 25

Prefix - A bound morpheme put before the main word.

Suffix - A bound morpheme put after the main word.

Front 26

Conversion

Back 26

Word changes word classes e.g. 'text' - noun and verb.

Front 27

Back Formation

Back 27

The removal of an imagined affix from an existing word - editor became edit.

Front 28

Blend

Back 28

Two words fusing together to make a new one e.g. 'smog'

Front 29

Amelioration

Back 29

A word takes on a more positive meaning thereby gaining status.

Front 30

Pejoration

Back 30

A word takes on a more negative meaning thereby losing status.

Front 31

Weakening

Back 31

A word loses the strength of its original meaning

Front 32

Narrowing

Back 32

A word becomes more specific in its meaning - 'wife' used to refer to 'any woman' and is not 'married woman'

Front 33

Broadening

Back 33

A word becomes more generalised by keeping its original meaning as well as acquiring others - 'place' used to mean 'a broad street' but now refers to just an 'area'.

Front 34

Semantic Shifts

Back 34

Occur when words expand/contract and the settle for meanings very different to the original

Front 35

18th Century

Back 35

Long 's' was still used until 1800s when it was replaced by the short 's' - no longer needed because of printing practices.

Front 36

19th Century

Back 36

More consistent and standardised spelling - drive for a more literate society.

Front 37

20th/21st Century

Back 37

Standardised spelling rules

Development of technology and educational practices.

Front 38

Punctuation (17th Century Onwards)

Back 38

Commas more liberally used, full stops a little random.

Colons and semi-colons common features to separate clauses out, creating more complex sentences.

Apostrophes signify missing letters in contractions and the possessive.

Speech marks began to be used to differentiate speech

Contractions - appear in different ways depending on nature of text.

Front 39

Capitalisation (18th Century)

Back 39

Standard capitalisation

Front 40

Negation

Back 40

Constructing a negative in 18th century is unlike the modern use of dummy auxiliary verb 'do' which is used to form questions and negatives or to add emphasis in a statement.

Front 41

Syntax

Back 41

Syntax differs from modern usage as the word order changes

Front 42

Pronouns

Back 42

Employs a pronoun that we not view as archaic and representing an RP type accent.

Front 43

Prepositions

Back 43

Choices seem odd.

Front 44

Contractions

Back 44

Lack on contractions throughout the text seems noteworthy, could connote a more formal style or a change in practice in Late Modern English to adopt more conversational tone.

Front 45

Modern Grammatical Change

Back 45

Adverbs being replaced by adjectives e.g. you've done great.

Prepositions - bored of/down to/talk with.

Irregular verbs - still altering e.g. I've wrote it down for you

Pronouns - 'whom' is disappearing being placed with 'who'

Front 46

Omission

Back 46

Leaving out a phoneme in a group of phonemes cluttered together.

Front 47

Assimilation

Back 47

The influence exercised by one sound upon the articulation of another, so that the sounds become more alike.

Front 48

Informalisation

Back 48

The way in which language is becoming increasingly informal in society.

Front 49

Received Pronunciation

Back 49

The prestige form of English pronunciation, sometimes considered as the accent of Standard English.

Front 50

Ease of articulation

Back 50

Often make spoken words and phrases easier to say - abbreviation.

Front 51

Social prestige and changes in society

Back 51

People move around, along with the increase of mass communication creates less regional variation.

Desire to create cultural identity is a move against 'correct speech' which popularised the descriptive approach.

Front 52

Eye Dialect

Back 52

Dialectal representations of speech

Charles Dickens - gives realistic, distinctive 'voices' to characters through writing - represents way character would pronounce words.