Language Change

No language as depending on arbitrary use and custom can ever be

permanently the same, but will always be in a mutable and
fluctuating state; and what is deem’d polite and elegant in one age,
may be accounted uncouth and barbarous in another.

BENJAMIN MARTIN (1704–1782)

How languages evolve
 Old English

▪ 449–1100 CE

Wolde guman findan þone þe him on sweofote sare geteode.

‘He wanted to find the man who harmed him while he slept.’
 Middle English

▪ 1100 – 1500

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote

The droght of March hath perced to the roote . . .
‘When April with its sweet showers
The drought of March has pierced to the root . . .
Chaucer
Early Modern English

▪ 1500–present
▪ Shakespeare’s Hamlet:

A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the
fish that hath fed of that worm.
What kind of changes?

▪ all parts of the grammar are subject to change

▪ phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic components

Middle English Modern English

mūs [muːs], mouse [maʊs]
hūs [huːs], house
[uːt] [suːθ], out [aʊt] south [saʊθ]
 Semantic Changes
Old English Modern English
Hund - dog hound - a particular type of dog.
gume - jaw, palate, inside of the mouth gum - gum
Acorn - fruits Acorn - fruit of an oak tree
Courage - heart, mind, disposition, nature, Courage - bravery, valor
bravery, valor

dogge- a particular type of dog Dog - domestic canines

Bridd – young bird Bird - fowl of any age
Twist - twig, tendril, or branch Twist - the action of twisting something, and
anything that has been twisted

Decimate for the Romans - to kill every ten Decimate - destroy, utterly wipe out, annihilate
soldiers
 Semantic Changes

▪ Amelioration
– Croon - sing softly, comes from Dutch kronen - to groan
or lament

▪ Denotation
– blush - look/gaze, in Early Modern English - to redden in
the face (from shame or modesty).
– moody - brave, now - changeable emotional states
Lexical Changes

▪ A change in the meaning or use of a word

▪ a generational shift in preference for one word or phrase over
another
▪ the most frequent type of language change and the easiest to
observe
▪ Examples: courting, fit
Lexical Changes - Commonisation

▪ Brand names that turned into generic names

▪ Lamington - name of the chocolate covered pieces of sponge cake
rolled in coconut, came from Baron Lamington, a previous Governor
of Queensland.
▪ Jeans - named after the town of Genoa, where a heavy fabric closely
resembling denim was made.
▪ Hoover
▪ Can you think of other examples?
Lexical changes - Blends

▪ words that are created from joining two different words,

incorporating the meanings of both of them
▪ Examples:
– Smog from smoke + fog
– brunch, from breakfast and lunch
– motel, from motor + hotel
– infomercial, from info + commercial
– and urinalysis, from urine + analysis
Lexical Changes – Reduced Words

▪ Abbreviation of words in various ways to shorten messages

▪ three reduction phenomena: clipping, acronyms, and alphabetic
abbreviations
▪ Clipping is the abbreviation of longer words into shorter ones by
leaving out one or more syllables
– fax for facsimile, telly for television, flu for influenza, porn for pornography, and
droid for android
– Clippings may occur at the beginning of a word (phone for telephone), most
commonly the end of a word (prof for professor), or both ends (fridge for
refrigerator)
– Blog (from weblog) - the most successful clip of the current millennium,
functions as both a noun and a verb with all the related morphology: blogs,
blogging, blogged, blogger
 Find out what these
acronyms mean: jpeg,
Lexical Changes – Reduced Words GUI, pda, mp3 and
mpeg
▪ Acronyms - words derived from the initials of several words, pronounced
as the spelling indicates
– NASA [næsə] from National Aeronauticsand Space Administration
– UNESCO [junɛsko] from United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural
Organization
– UNICEF [junəsɛf] from United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund.
– radar from radio detecting and ranging
– laser from light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation
– scuba from self-contained underwater breathing apparatus
– RAM from random access memory
– AIDS (1980s), from the initials of acquired immune deficiency syndrome
– SARS (2000s), from severe acute respiratory syndrome

▪ What about acronyms like UCLA, NFL and MRI? These are alphabetic
abbreviations.
Lexical Changes – Borrowing/Loan Words

▪ words ‘borrowed’ from another language mostly French, Greek and

Latin
▪ American media - TV shows and music
▪ products and inventions: Karaoke machines (Japanese) word, Vodka
(Russia)
▪ food-related words: Korma, Sushi and Feta
▪ Other words: feast (French), Algebra (Arabic)
Let’s recap
https://norse-mythology.org/indo-europeans-matter/indo-european-language-family-tree/
https://www.slideserve.com/natala/where-are-other-language-families-distributed
References

▪ https://teachling.wwu.edu/lessonplans/notes-language-change
▪ http://
the-language-cru.blogspot.com/2013/05/lexical-and-semantic-chang
e.html