Language change

Language Change
(Historical Linguistics)
Level-8

Introduction
• Language change is the phenomenon by which permanent alterations
are made in the features and the use of a language over time.
• All natural languages change, and language change affects all areas of
language use. Levels of language change include sound
changes, lexical changes, semantic changes, and syntactic changes.
• It is studied by both historical linguists and sociolinguists.
 Diachronic Change – (Historical Linguists) the change in languages
over time.
e.g. Old English > Middle English > Modern English
 Synchronic Change – (Sociolinguists) the origins or the causes of
language changes how language changes with society or in particular
period.
e.g. Punjabi in Pakistan and Punjabi in India

Types of changes
1. Incremental Change Is the creation of new vocabulary used to
designate some physical invention, new social motivation or new
items of knowledge.
e.g. “Selfie”, “emoji” etc. added in dictionaries
2. Decremental Change words that are not used anymore since the
object is not longer used.
e.g. Cassette, floppy disk etc.

Language Change Overview
Jean Aitchison is one of the biggest contributors to this area
through her book “Language Change: Progress or Decay?”
(1991). Within this she posits that there are 3 ways of viewing the
phenomenon of language change:
1. Decay (Could be both Conscious and Unconscious)
e.g. Loss of Rhotic ‘r’ – Unconscious
2. Progress (Could be Natural or Social)
e.g. /b/ sound lost in ‘thumb’ – natural
3. Neither progress nor decay, but inevitable.

Jean felt that changes could be both conscious and unconscious.
1. In William Labov’s New York study, his elicitation of spontaneous
versus careful speech highlighted that New Yorkers were consciously
moving towards the use of a rhotic /r/, as this occurred more in careful
speech. This can therefore be associated with overt prestige, moving
towards the most desirable(standard) variety.
2. Language change comes about through a variety of causes. Some are
natural and some are social.
An example of a natural cause is the phenomenon of Ease of
articulation whereby language changes because people try to make
combinations of sounds easier to say. E.g. the word „thumb‟ lost the /b/
sound due to omission/elision by dropping the final consonant.

Theories of language change
1. Functional theory proposed by M.A.K. Halliday, posits that
language changes according to the needs of its users. This
mainly covers lexical change. This tends to take the form of:
1. new discoveries/learning/inventions.
2. Technological words
3. Slangs
Eval: this theory makes a lot of sense but cannot account for
all language change as it focuses only on lexical change.

2. Random fluctuation theory was supported by 2 linguists.
I.Paul Postal said that language is as unpredictable as fashion and
therefore changes in language are totally random.
II.Charles Hockett proposed a different angle, that random “mistakes‟
lead to language changing.
Eval: 1. This would lead to linguistic chaos; 2. Changes that occur in
different languages are too similar to be random; Not all elements change
(e.g. grammar)
3. Substratum theory explains changes in language coming through
language contact. In the past this happened mainly through trade and
invasion. Nowadays it might happen through social networking and
immigration.
Eval: 1. Again this theory accounts for some aspects of language change
but cannot be the sole reason for it.

4. S-Curve theory by Chen
(1972) & Bailey(1973) mainly
explains the more social
changes within a linguistic
community.
Language change resembles
an S-Curve as it starts by
gradually being used to being
hugely used and then
dropping down to a stable
level of use.
Potential
Implementation
Diffusion

5. The wave theory (German Wellentheorie) or the wave model was first
suggested by Johannes Schmidt (1972). This theory suggests that
linguistic innovations spread from one language or dialect through contact
on the part of speakers of neighboring languages and dialects; languages
often share innovations that cannot be attributed to a common ancestor.

Routes to language change
There are many different routes to language change. Changes can take
originate in language learning, or through language contact, social
differentiation, and natural processes in usage.
1. 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. However, a
bias in the learning process -- for instance, towards regularization -- will
cause systematic drift, generation by generation. In addition, random
differences may spread and become 'fixed', especially in small
populations.

• Language contact: Migration, conquest and trade bring speakers of
one language into contact with speakers of another language. Some
individuals will become fully bilingual as children, while others learn a
second language more or less well as adults. In such contact
situations, languages often borrow words, sounds, constructions and
so on.
• 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.

• Natural processes in usage. Rapid or casual speech naturally
produces 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.
• Internal and external sources of language change
Some linguists distinguish between internal and external sources of
language change, with "internal" sources of change being those that
occur within a single linguistic community, and contact phenomena
being the main examples of an external source of change.

Levels of language change
Changes occur on the following levels of language.
1.Phonological (sounds)
2.Syntactic (structure)
3.Semantic (meaning)
4.Lexical (words)

1-Phonological (sounds) change
• Over time, the sounds of languages tend to change.
• An understanding of sound change is truly important for historical
linguistics in general, and this needs to be stressed - it plays an
extremely important role in the comparative method and hence also in
linguistic reconstruction, in internal reconstruction, in detecting
loanwords, and in determining whether languages are related to one
another.
• Sound change is the most thoroughly studied area of historical
linguistics.

Terms for changes in pronunciation
In historical linguistics, a number of traditional terms designate types of phonetic change, either
by nature or result. Some of them are as follows;
Assimilation is a common phonological process by which one sound becomes more like a
nearby sound. This can occur either within a word or between words. It occurs in normal speech,
and it becomes more common in more rapid speech. In rapid speech, for example, "handbag" is
often pronounced /ˈhæmbæɡ/. The pronunciations /ˈhænbæɡ/ or /ˈhændbæɡ/ are, however,
common in normal speech, whereas the word "cupboard", for example, is always
pronounced /ˈkʌbərd/, never /ˈkʌpbɔːrd/, even in slow, highly articulated speech.
Dissimilation is a phenomenon whereby similar consonants or vowels in a word become less
similar. For example, when a /r/ sound occurs before another in the middle of a word in rhotic
dialects of English, the first tends to drop out, as in "suprise" for surprise, "paticular" for particular,
and "govenor" for governor.
Metathesis Two sounds switch places. Example: Old English thridda became Middle
English third. Most such changes are sporadic, but occasionally a sound law is involved. The
process has shaped many English words historically. Bird and horse came from Old
English bridd and hros.

 Elision: (1) aphaeresis, (2) syncope, and (3) apocope all loose sounds. Elision
is the loss of unstressed sounds, aphaeresis the loss of initial sounds, syncope
is the loss of medial sounds, and apocope is the loss of final sounds.
1. Aphaeresis is the loss of one or more sounds from the beginning of a word,
especially the loss of an unstressed vowel, for example, Old French estable >
English stable and Old English cneo > English knee → /ˈniː/.
2. Syncope is the loss of one or more sounds from the interior of a word,
especially the loss of an unstressed vowel. English soften, hasten, castle, etc. (t
is lost in all these words).
3. Apocope is the loss of one or more sounds from the end of a word,
Proto-Germanic *landą → Old, Middle, and Modern English land
Old English lufu → Modern English love (noun)
 Vowel change in a language refers to the any of various changes in the
acoustic quality of vowels, which are related to the changes in stress, sonority,
duration, loudness, articulation or position in the word. Based on vowel change.

The Great Vowel Shift
 The term “The Great Vowel Shift” is used to describe a time period between the
mid 1300s and 1700, when the English language began to change.
 Before the shift, the spelling and pronunciation were flexible and inconsistent.
While it began to be consistent during this period, it’s also responsible for some
of the unusual spellings and pronunciations we have.
 The Great Vowel Shift was first studied by Otto Jespersen (1860–1943),
a Danish linguist and Anglicist, who coined the term.
 Great Vowel Shift altered the position of all the long vowels "long i“ /i:/ "long u"
/u:/
 Nucleus started to drop and the high position was retained only in the off glide.
 Eventually, the original /i:/ became /ai/ - so a "long i" vowel in Modern English is
now pronounced /ai/ as in a word like 'bite‘ /bait/.
 Similarly, the "long u" found its nucleus dropping all the way to /au/ the earlier
'house' /hu:s/ became /haus/.

Great Vowel Shift
Word
Vowel pronunciation
Late Middle English
before the GVS
Modern English
after the GVS
bite /iː/ /aɪ/
meet /eː/
/iː/
meat /ɛː/
mate /aː/ /eɪ/
out /uː/ /aʊ/
boot /oː/ /uː/
boat /ɔː/ /oʊ/

2- Syntactic (structure) Change
It occurs in the grammatical notions that govern languages, it is a low process and
in need for further investigation.
 Word order
• Old English: SOV and SVO language
• Modern English: An SVO language
 Double negation – no longer part of English
• Old English - ne aux – not never
 Contracted negatives – Old English
• knew not – didn’t know
 Comparatives – Old English
• most shamefullest, more happier

3-Semantic (meaning) Change
Semantic changes in word meanings - semantic shift. There are four
common types of change are broadening, narrowing, amelioration, and
pejoration.
 Broadening: (generalization or extension) Broadening is the process
by which a word's meaning becomes more inclusive than an earlier
meaning.
• In Old English dog referred to just one particular breed, and thing
meant a public assembly. In Contemporary English - dog can refer to
any hairy, barking, four-legged creature.
 Narrowing: (specialization or restriction) The opposite of broadening
is narrowing in which a word's meaning becomes less inclusive.
• For example, in Middle English, deer could refer to any animal, and
girl could mean a young person of either sex.

 Amelioration: refers to the upgrading or rise in status of a word's
meaning.
• For example, meticulous once meant "fearful or timid," and
sensitive meant simply "capable of using one's senses”.
 Pejoration: More common than amelioration is the downgrading or
depreciation of a word's meaning.
• For example, the adjective silly, for instance, once meant "blessed"
or "innocent," officious meant "hard working," and aggravate meant
to "increase the weight" of something.

4-Lexical (words) change
Lexical change refers to a change in the meaning or use of a word, or a generational
shift in preference for one word or phrase over another.
For example:
“ we couldn’t listen to the latest tunes because we hadn’t a wireless ”
• From the word wireless, we would probably assume this statement was made by
an older person, as radio is now the more common term. Lexical change is
probably the most frequent type of language change and certainly the easiest to
observe.
• New vocabulary or changes in fashionable usage spread rapidly and evenly
across the country due to our sophisticated communication links. Intriguingly, in
the case of wireless, the word has experienced something of a revival. If you hear
the word wireless used by a younger speaker, they are almost certainly using it
as an adjective rather than a noun and referring to wireless technology,
from WAP phones to blackberries and laptops. This illustrates perfectly how
words can virtually disappear or gradually shift in meaning and usage.

• Vocabulary can change quickly as new words are borrowed from
other languages - words get combined or shortened with multiple
word-formation processes such as blending, backformation, derivation,
acronym, clipping etc.
Conclusion:
 Frequently, the needs of speakers drive language change.
 New technologies, industries, products and experiences simply require
new words.
 By using new and emerging terms, we all drive language change.
 But the unique way that individuals speak also fuels language change.
 That’s because no two individuals use a language in exactly the same
way.

Language change

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