Language Change Is the Manner in Which the Phonetic, Morphological, Semantic, Syntactic

Language change is the manner in which the phonetic, morphological, semantic, syntactic, and other features of a language are modified over time. All languages are continually changing. At any given moment the English language, for example, has a huge variety within itself, and this variety is known as synchronic variation. From these different forms comes the effect on language over time known as diachronic change. Two linguistic disciplines concern themselves with studying language change: historical linguistics and sociolinguistics. Historical linguists examine how a language was spoken in the past and seek to determine how present languages derive from it and are related to one another. Sociolinguists are interested in the origins of language changes and want to explain how society and changes in society influence language. (from: Wikipedia)

Question 1: Can you think of examples of language change(s) in English?

Question 2: Can you think of reasons why a langue may change over time?

Language Variation

Synchronic variation consists of the range of accents and dialects, sociolects and idiolects that happen to be in use within one language. Regional variation has long been documented, as has social variation such as Black English in the USA, and Upper-middle class pronunciation in England.

Dialect: A variant of a langue which has different syntax, morphology and / or lexis. For example, in Mancunian English the word “barm cake” means “bread roll” and is not widely understood outside Greater Manchester. Grammar is another aspect in which dialects may differ. In Standard English, a speaker would say: “I was standing at the bus stop”. In many Northern English dialects this is often rendered as: “I was stood at the bus stop”.

Accent: Purely the way in which the language is pronounced. Someone can speak Standard English, but have a North-Western accent for example.

Sociolect: A language spoken by one particular social group. In most Western countries, young people have a distinct vocabulary. In English some examples are: “Well cool”, “snide” etc. In North Manchester, children of Pakistani origin refer to each other as “TP” which is short for “typical Paki”, as this is used only by speakers of this ethnic group, it is an example of sociolect.

Idiolect: Language features that are typical to one unique speaker. You could say that Homer’s “doh” in The Simpsons is an example of idiolect. Other famous examples include Jamie Oliver with his “pukka” for example. Many a family has a word or phrase that is only used in that family and would not make sense in a wider language community.

Literary Language: In some cultures there are distinct “dialects” in use to separate speaking and writing. For example, in ancient India, the people in the North spoke Pakrit, but wrote their literature in Pali – a “dialect” used only for writing. Similarly, Tibetan has a literary language and a spoken, normal day-to-day language. However, in the case of Tibetan, the literary language is in effect an older form of Tibetan. Something similar happened with Latin in Europe. Latin was widely spoken in the Roman Empire (although for the majority of the Western Roman Empire – well into the 3rd century) Greek was the international language. Latin was adopted by the Catholic Church and then by scholars / scientists / writers and was used widely as a literary language, well into the 17th century. For example, Andrew Marvell a 17th century poet, wrote many poems in Latin as well as in the vernacular English. This form of Latin was based on the classical Roman canon and as such was a highly stylized, literary language, probably very different from the Latin spoken by legionnaires in AD300.

Question 3: Do you have an idiolect example from your own experience?

Question 4: Why do you think literary languages developed early on in human civilisation?

Diachronic variation takes place over time. All languages change, just like all languages have dialects, accents, sociolects etc. In fact, it is probably better to think of a language not so much as a monolithic thing, but rather as a heterogenous compilation consisting of a range of closely related dialects and sociolects. Where to draw the line between a dialect and a new separate language is linguistically quite challenging, and in reality it is often a political, economical and social decision to decide to call a dialect a new language.

Language changes:

1.  Lexical / Semantic: changes in words and their meanings, e.g. words that become obsolete such as the verb “to perambulate” or the phrase “to have intercourse with” which has changed dramatically in meaning over the last 100 years. Originally, the word “meat” referred to food, then it came to refer only to one type of food. This explains why mince meat does not have any meat in it at all.

2.  Spellings change – in the last 200 years many European countries have attempted to standardise their spelling. The most famous example is probably modern German, which insisted in dropping letters such as “β” and substitute them with “ss”.

3.  Morphology – endings in particular are prone to changes. Also, some irregular words such as nouns with irregular plurals might become regular over time. In English, the verb “to dream” used to be irregular, however a regular form is now acceptable for use in the past tense e.g. “I have dreamed”.

4.  Syntax – obviously syntactical changes mean that something crucial about the language is changed. These changes take place over a long time, for example as in Old English to Middle English. OE had a much more irregular syntactical structure (the verb phrase for example could appear in several places in the sentence), but ME is more like Modern English with a designated place for the verb phrase.

Question 5: Can you think of reasons why these changes may occur over time?

There are multiple reasons why languages change in particular ways. For example, the change in English syntax mentioned above occurred because of language contact. The change from Old English to Middle English is explained by the Norman Conquest of England. Similarly, the opposite also applies. If a language is split into separate communities, then the two groups will develop their language differently, resulting in ultimately two different, if related, languages. This explains how INDO-EUROPEAN developed into nearly all the languages spoken in Europe and the Indian subcontinent today.

A more recent example is that of Scottish and Irish Gaelic. Contact between Gaelic speakers in Northern / Western Scotland and Ireland was easy up until the 18th century, and Gaelic was the same language on both islands. However, after England defeated the supporters of Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1745, English influence in Scottish affairs (and colonial control mechanisms such as the Highland Clearances) made sure that Gaelic Ireland and Scotland were cut off from each other. Similarly, the Irish potato famine killed off may Gaelic speakers (or forced many of them to flee to the USA etc.), which meant that the Scottish and Irish Gaelic became separated and started to develop in different ways. They are widely regarded as separate languages, although they are mutually understandable to native speakers.

In Gaelic a pronunciation change was taking place in the 17th and 18th centuries. Gaelic is a language with high inflection (it takes case forms). Most case forms cause morphological changes to the beginning of words, so it makes sense that in changing pronunciations, the beginnings of words are a likely place for changes to take place. The change was to add an “h” after the opening consonant, which changes the pronunciation into a fricative sound, which is less energy-consuming to pronounce than a stop or a labial consonant for example. This change was halted in Irish, where only certain consonants have it, but has affected all initial consonants in Scottish Gaelic. For example, the verb “to be” is “tá” in Irish, but “thà” in Scottish Gaelic. Interestingly, Scottish Gaelic has also adopted the accent grave (the accent in à), whereas Irish writes the same vowel sound with an accent acute (the accent in á) – which makes it very simple to distinguish Irish from Scottish Gaelic in writing. Both these changes took place after Scotland and Ireland had their language contact abruptly ended due to English interference.

Language contact: Pidgins and Creoles

A pidgin language is always learnt as a second language and is a simplified form of one basic (socially superior) language and one other. A pidgin language often develops between two communities with no shared language, but who are having to deal with each other. “Deal” is the operative word here, as most pidgins started between groups of people trading.

In some cases, a pidgin language is taken up by a community and becomes a native language for parts of or the entire population. When this happens, it is called a creole language. By the very nature of the subject, the creoleness of a particular creole usually is a matter of dispute. The parent tongues may themselves be creoles or pidgins that have disappeared before they could be documented.

For these reasons, the issue of which language is the parent of a creole — that is, whether a language should be classified as a "Portuguese creole" or "English creole", etc. — often has no definitive answer, and can become the topic of long-lasting controversies, where social prejudices and political considerations may interfere with scientific discussion (as was the case with deciding on what is a dialect and what is a new language).

Global Language

Currently, linguists estimate that just over 6,000 languages are spoken in the world today. More than half of these languages are threatened with extinction in the course of this century. The most common reason for this kind of language change is globalisation: people moving to cities for work, moving away from their minority linguistic community and their language. There is often a sense among minority language speakers that it is better to speak one of the more widely used languages. It is this kind of self-censorship that was partly responsible for the dying out of Manx and Cornish for example. Mass media and internet / tele-communications make access and exposure to global languages more likely, too. However, there seems to be a trend in the world of the internet for more and more content to be produced in “new” languages (Chinese, Hindi, Spanish etc.) slowly replacing English as the language of the web.