Dr.

Rachael-Anne Knight
Language Change

rachaelanne@cantab.net
Inset Session University of Reading

www.rachaelanne.co.uk
July 2004

How do changes spread thorough a language?

Activity: Discuss how you think changes spread through a language. For example are all
words affected at once or do some change before others?

Might some words remain

unaffected? What is the speed of change is it always constant?

An example from sound change.
In English we have number of nounverb pairs that are now distinguished by their stress
pattern such as `record (n) and re`cord (v). However in the 15 th centaury these pairs would
both have been stressed on the 2nd syllable. By 1570 the stress on the nouns outlaw, rebel and
record had moved to the first syllable while the corresponding verbs were still stressed on the
second. By 1582 5 more words were added and by by1660 there were 24, with 35 by 1700,
70 by 1800, and 150 by 1934. Presently there are still around 1000 that the change hasnt
reached and some such as finance are wavering with some people using one form and some
people another, although Wells survey found 81% of people preferred stress on the first
syllable.

50

100

Number of Words

150

Activity: a. Plot the numbers above on the following graph. What sort of shape do you get?
b. Can you think of any pairs that are still unaffected?

Number of Words

An example from grammatical change

We return to the progressive aspect to see an example of syntactic change. As weve seen the
progressive was hardly ever seen in OE
and rare
EME 1900
however
the progressive
1500
1600in ME.
1700 By1800
2000
was being used for an ongoing action and has now spread to many other verbs.
Time
Changes do not affect all likely words at the same time. In fact it seems that changes in a
language start with a few words then more rapidly spread to many other words before
slowing down again and maybe even leaving some words unaffected. This can be described
by an /s/ shaped curve.

20
Time