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Language change

Language change. The Language Detective Villiers Park 9-13 July 2007. Kinds of change (1). PHONOLOGICAL CHANGE: AN OLD EXAMPLE Latin piscus ~ English fish Latin pater ~ English father Latin pes ~ English foot Latin centus ~ English hundred Latin caput ~ English head

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Language change

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  1. Language change The Language Detective Villiers Park 9-13 July 2007

  2. Kinds of change (1) PHONOLOGICAL CHANGE: AN OLD EXAMPLE Latin piscus ~ English fish Latin pater ~ English father Latin pes ~ English foot Latin centus ~ English hundred Latin caput ~ English head Latin canis ~ English hound These correspondences (among others) allow us to suggest a series of sound changes which took place as Proto Indo-European developed into Proto Germanic, at some point beginning in the first millennium BC (e.g. PIE *p > PGmc *f). This series of changes is known as Grimm’s Law.

  3. Kinds of change (1) PHONOLOGICAL CHANGE: A NEW EXAMPLE RP [bath] ~ Cockney [baf] RP [thin] ~ Cockney [fin] RP [brother] RP [breathe] Earlier records of Cockney, along with contemporary study of age-based variation, suggest that this is a phonological change in progress, a merger of two phonemes.

  4. Kinds of change (2) SEMANTIC CHANGE What do the following words mean to you? starve; nice; knight; hussy; cretin; gay ModE starve = either ‘to be hungry’ or ‘to die of hunger’ OE steorfan = ‘to die’ (cf. German sterben) SPECIALISATION

  5. Kinds of change (2) Nice (check OED for quotes and dates)

  6. Kinds of change (2) OE cniht = boy OE huswife = housewife Fr crétin ‘Christian’ The change in meaning of cniht is an example of AMELIORATION The changes in meaning of the lexicalised form hussy, and of cretin, are examples of PEJORATION

  7. The gay debate Gay [get OED dates] Chris Moyles and the ringtone: “I don’t want that one, it’s gay” Is this a reflection of an on-going semantic change, or an instance of homophobia, or both?

  8. Kinds of change (3) SYNTACTIC CHANGES OE

  9. EModE Saw you not his face? (Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1601)

  10. Why do languages change? LANGUAGE INTERNAL REASONS (e.g. markedness and analogy) LANGUAGE IN USE (e.g. frequency of use of a particular form) SPEAKER FACTORS (e.g. identification with social groups; projection of identity) In other words, a combination of FORMAL and FUNCTIONAL factors

  11. AN ONGOING CHANGE? Quotative verbs in English: I said “He’s a really nice person” An old one: Give eg with quoth A new one: And I was like “What are you talking about?” What other quotative verbs do you use, or do you know that other speakers of English use?

  12. Sort and kind What do the words sort and kind mean in the following examples? What grammatical category do they belong to? Are there any that are hard to classify? Why? • I don’t like that sort of pasta • What kind of a piano is it? • He’s sort of a football coach • They’re kind of my favourite band • I got annoyed with him, sort of • A: Do you like fish and chips? B: Kind of.

  13. Grammaticalization An early definition of grammaticalization was that of Meillet (1912): “l’attribution du caractère grammatical à un mot jadis autonome” [the attribution of grammatical character to a word which once was autonomous]

  14. A classic example of gzn: be going to Duke: Sir Valentine, whither away so fast? Valentine: Please it your grace, there is a messenger That stays to bear my letters to my friends, And I am going to deliver them. (c. 1595, Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona III.i.51)

  15. Reanalysis I [am going] [to deliver them] – verb of motion I [am going to] [deliver them] – marker of futurity cf. He is going to love London He’s gonna love London

  16. The grammaticalization of way [All examples taken from OED Online www.oed.com] 1460Paston Lett. I. 525 As for tythyngs here, the Kyng is way at Eltham 1891Anthony's Photogr. Bull. IV. 29, I would have sold at a very low price, way below cost. 1959Times Lit. Suppl. 16 Oct. 589/3 You are feet deep in snow and the temperature is way below zero. 1988Freestyle BMX June 25/2 The guys behind the bar were way cool, flowing free beers to the visiting skaters.

  17. Some googled ways (1) (1) Via Virginia Postrel comes this nice profile of the NYT's John Tierney, and speculation that he may be Safire's replacement at op-ed. Make it so! And then fire Maureen Dowd. Not because she's liberal, but because she's an embarassment. Fiftyish women should not use phrases like “way harsh” (http://www.affbrainwash.com/genehealy/archives/015686.php) (2) Math Becomes Way Cool (http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_11_98.html)

  18. Some googled ways (2) (3) In case you're trying to amass a majority, I'd vote for the Cleveland Heights/Shaker area. Keep in mind, I grew up in Parma and now live in Garfield, so I'm way not cool (http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/14342) (4) jo(e), you only have to type in ISBNs or some little bit of the book -- a few words from the title, for example. It looks up the rest of it for you. It is so way cool. You can type a few in while you're waiting for other pages to load...(http://www.haloscan.com/comments/becceratoo/112947877449751687/)

  19. A cline for (a)way Adverb of motion or state (complement or verbal modifier) > adverb of extent (adjectival modifier) > degree adverb (adjectival modifier) > intensifier A change arising from language use (speakers using linguistic forms in specific contexts for particular functions) which involves grammatical, semantic and phonological changes (e.g. on weg > away > way; a kind of (NP) > kind of > kinda; going to > gonna)

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