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Aspects of Language Change

Aspects of Language Change. Prepared by Mariam Bedraoui. Outline. Lexical Change Borrowing Coining new words Semantic Change Broadening Narrowing Shifts of meaning Sound change Loss of phonemes Addition of phonemes Metathesis Syntactic Change Word order Re-analysis

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Aspects of Language Change

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  1. Aspects of Language Change Prepared by Mariam Bedraoui

  2. Outline • Lexical Change • Borrowing • Coining new words • Semantic Change • Broadening • Narrowing • Shifts of meaning • Sound change • Loss of phonemes • Addition of phonemes • Metathesis • Syntactic Change • Word order • Re-analysis • Grammaticalization

  3. Aspects of language Change

  4. Lexical Change: Borrowing • Languages are avid borrowers • Two-fifths of common words in English are loan words • Direct/indirect borrowing • Phonological and morphological treatment of loans • Rarely borrowed words

  5. Borrowing: Examples • Kayak • Raccoon

  6. Borrowing: Further Examples

  7. Lexical Change: Coining New Words • New words can be formed using the basic resources of the language through a number of processes: • Compounding: Combining two or more words to form new words Blackboard- girlfriend- gingerbread shopkeeper- sky diving laptop- ozone friendly • Derivation: Using affixes to create new words warmth- length- depth- wisdom- freedom- stardom Otherwise- clockwise- moneywise- profitwise miniskirt- mini-budgets- mini-project- mini-wars

  8. Lexical Change: Coining New Words • Clipping:Forming a word by extracting an arbitrary portion of a word of an identical meaning • phone (telephone) • bus • Gym (gymnasium) • Flu (influenza) • Ciggie (cigarette) • Blending: Pieces of existing words are combined to form new words • Motel • Smog • Brunch • Chunnel • Oxbridge • Acronyms: The reduction of long phrases to a few letters • NATO- FBI- BBC • TA- LA • Laser

  9. Semantic Change: Broadening and Narrowing • Broadening: Words acquire more meanings beside the original one • Dog • Holiday • Picture • Mouse • Virus • Narrowing: limiting the semantic scope that words used to have • Meat • Deer • Girl

  10. Semantic Change

  11. Semantic Change: Shift of Meaning • Shift of Meaning: Words cease to mean what they used to, and take on new semantic representations • Silly • Nice • Immoral • With • cheer

  12. Sound Change • Phonetic and phonological • Natural • Ease of articulation

  13. Sound Change: Types Loss of phonemes • Knot- knee- knife-know • Make- time- dive • Lit- gros- murs- aimer- part • Wednesday- Choclate- camera- correct- police Addition of phonemes • Latin: scala- snob- smeralda- spatha • Spanish: escala- esnob-esmerada- espada • Middle English: amonges- amiddes, betwix Amongst- amidst- betwixt

  14. Sound Change: Types • Metathesis: It occurs when two sounds switch places • Old English: Ask- aks • Latin: crepare- parabola- miraculu- pericula • Spanish: quebrar- palabra- milagro- peligru

  15. Syntactic Change: Types • It occurs in the grammatical notions that govern languages • Slow and in need for further investigation • Word order • Old English: SOV and SVO language • Modern English: An SVO language • Reanalysis: a process whereby grammatical notions which has one particular function comes to be perceived by the speakers of a language as having a second. • The perfect tense in English • I have finished my dinner • I have a copy of her new book • She have my hair cut • She has her daughter trapped in war • Old English: Your faith has you healed • Your faith healed you

  16. Syntactic Change: Types • Grammaticalization:The process whereby lexical items are reduced to grammatical items without entirely losing their function as words. • Verbs meaning ‘go’, ‘come,’ want very often develop into grammatical markers of futurity • Going to • Will

  17. Thanks for your attention

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