Language change

Language changeLanguage change is the phenomenon whereby phonetic, morphological, semantic, syntactic, and other features of language vary over time. Language is always changing. We've seen that language changes across space and across social group. Language also varies across time.

Language change Sociolinguists have tried again and again to adress a longstanding question: can linguistic change be observed while it is actually occurring? In modern linguistics the answer to that question has usually been a resounding negative. Following the example of two of the founders of the modern discipline, Saussure and Bloomfield, most linguists have maintained that change itself cannot be observed.

Language change In what we will call the traditional view of language change, the only changes that are important in a language are those that can be demonstrated to have structural consequences.

How and why does language change?

Language learning: Language is transformed as it is transmitted from one generation to the next. Each individual must re-create a grammar and lexicon based on input received from parents, older siblings and other members of the speech community. The experience of each individual is different, and the process of linguistic replication is imperfect, so that the result is variable across individuals.

How and why does language change?

Social differentiation. Social groups adopt distinctive norms of dress, adornment, gesture and so forth; language is part of the package. Linguistic distinctiveness can be achieved through vocabulary (slang or jargon), pronunciation (usually via exaggeration of some variants already available in the environment), morphological processes, syntactic constructions, and so on.

How and why does language change?

Natural processes in usage. Rapid or casual speech naturally produces processes such as assimilation, dissimilation, syncope and apocope. Through repetition, particular cases may become conventionalized, and therefore produced even in slower or more careful speech. Word meaning change in a similar way, through conventionalization of processes like metaphor and metonymy.

How and why does language change?

Assimilation: the process by which a sound is modified so that it becomes similar or identical to an adjacent or nearby sound. Dissimilation: a linguistic process by which one of two similar sounds in a word becomes less like the other; "the Old French marbre became the English marble by dissimilation"

How and why does language change?Syncope: The shortening of a word by omission of a sound, letter, or syllable from the middle of the word; for example, bos'n for boatswain. Apocope: The loss of one or more sounds from the end of a word, as in Modern English sing from Middle English singen.

How and why does language change?Metaphor: A figure of speech in which a word or phrase that ordinarily designates one thing is used to designate another, thus making an implicit comparison, as in "a sea of troubles" or "All the world's a stage" (Shakespeare). Metonymy: A figure of speech in which one word or phrase is substituted for another with which it is closely associated, as in the use of Washington for the United States government or of the sword for military power.

How and why does language change? The analogy with evolution via natural selection Darwin himself, in developing the concept of evolution of species via natural selection, made an analogy to the evolution of languages. In particular, the basic sound structure and morphology of languages usually seems to "descend" via a tree-structured graph of inheritance, with regular, lawful relationships between the patterns of "parent" and "child" languages.

Types of Change

Sound Change: a special and conspicuous success has been achieved in modeling changes in phonological systems, traditionally called sound change. - In the cases where we have access to several historical stages, the development of the modern Romance Languages from Latin, these sound changes are remarkably regular. - Sound change that occurred between Middle and Modern English known as the Great Vowel Shift - a length distinction in the English vowels that altered the position of all the long vowels.

Types of Change Vocabulary change. Slang terms, in particular, come and go every few years. In a 1990 Beetle Bailey cartoon, for instance, Sarge chews Beetle out with a string of symbols ending in #!!, and Beetle laughs, "#?? Nobody says # anymore!" Sarge, deflated, sighs, "Gee, I always thought # was all-time classic cussing." Sarge is embarrassed because with a very few exceptions using last year's slang spells social disaster.

Types of Change Meanings of words change, too. English and German both inherited a word that refers to a person of high rank in English ('knight') but to a servant or even a slave in German ('Knecht'). (Thanks to evidence from other Germanic languages, we know that the German meaning is closer to the original.)

Types of Change Grammatical constructions also change. A passage in the Old English Lord's Prayer reads, in literal translation, 'not lead thou us into temptation', in sharp contrast to Modern English 'don't lead us into temptation'. Nowadays, 'not' must follow an auxiliary verb 'do' (often contracted to 'don't'), there is no pronoun subject in the sentence, and if there were one it would be 'you' as 'thou' has entirely disappeared from the modern language.

The Mechanisms of Change After conducting a number of investigations of sound changes in progress, Labov proposes a rather detailed outline of what he considers to be the basic mechanism of sound change has thirteenth stages, and Labov points out that the first eight deal with what he calls change from below, that is, change from below conscious awareness, whereas the last five deal with change from above, that is, change brought about consciously.

The Mechanisms of Change Stage 1 The sound changes usually originated with a restricted subgroup of the speech community, at a time when the separate identity of this group had been weakened. . . The linguistic form which began to shift was often a marker of regional status with an irregular distribution within the community. At this stage, the form is an undefined linguistic variable.

The Mechanisms of Change Stage 2 The changes began as generalizations of the linguistic form to all members of the subgroup; we may refer to this stage as change from below, that is, below the level of social awareness. The variable shows no pattern of stylistic variation in the speech of those who use it, affecting all items in a given word class. The linguistic variable is an indicator, defined as a function of group membership.

The Mechanisms of Change Stage 3 Succeeding generations of speakers within the same subgroup, responding to the same social pressures, carried the linguistic variable further along the process of change, beyond the model set by their parents. We may refer to this stage as hypercorrection from below. . ..

The Mechanisms of Change Stage 4 To the extent that the values of the original subgroup were adopted by other groups in the speech community, the sound change with its associated value of group membership spread to these adopting groups.

The Mechanisms of Change Stage 5

The limits of the spread of the sound change were the limits of the speech community.

The Mechanisms of Change Stage 6 As the sound change with its associated values reached the limits of its expansion, the linguistic variable became one of the norms which defined the speech community, and all members of the speech community reacted in a uniform manner to its use (without necessarily being aware of it). The variable is now a marker, and begins to show stylistic variation.

The Mechanisms of Change Stage 7 The movement of the linguistic variable within the linguistic system always led to readjustments in the distribution of other elements within phonological space.

The Mechanisms of Change Stage 8 The structural readjustments led to further sound changes which were associated with the original change. However, other subgroups which entered the speech community in the interim adopted the older sound change as a part of the community norms, and treated the newer sound change as stage 1. This recycling stage appears to be the primary source for the continual origination of new changes.

The Mechanisms of Change Stage 9 If the group in which the change originated was not the highest-status group in the speech community, members of the highest-status group eventually stigmatized the changed form

The Mechanisms of Change Stage 10 This stigmatization initiated change from above, a sporadic and irregular correction of the changed forms towards the model of the highest status group - that is, the prestige model. This prestige model is now the pattern which speakers hear themselves using.

The Mechanisms of Change Stage 11 If the prestige model of the highest-status group does not correspond to a form used by the other groups in some word class, the other groups will show a second type of hypercorrection, shifting their careful speech to a form further from the changed form than the target set by the prestige group. We may call this stage hypercorrection from above.

The Mechanisms of Change Stage 12 Under extreme stigmatization, a form may become the overt topic of social comment, and may eventually disappear. It is thus a stereotype.

The Mechanisms of Change Stage 13 If the change originated in the highest- status group of the community, it became a prestige model for all members of the speech community. The changed form was then adopted in more careful forms of speech by all other groups in proportion to their contact with users of the prestige model, and to a lesser extent, in casual speech.

Language change Labovs earliest work was based on the assumption that change could begin anywhere in the social spectrum. However, that work showed that innovating groups are usually located centrally within the social spectrum and not at the ends. Particularly involved in lingusitic change are the upper working class and the lower middle class.

Language change While current theories are quite unable to predict the exact changes that will occur, they do nevertheless serve to rule out those that cannot possibly occur. According to Labov, the key problem in explaining linguistic change is ascertaining the relevant data in both language and society, and then integrating the resulting observations into a theory of change which will allow us to see where and why change is occurring and plot its course.