The JLC Language Change Reader€¦ · Web viewFor any true stickler … the sight of the plural word “Book’s” with an apostrophe in it will trigger a ghastly private emotional

Aye oop, wilkommen, bienvenue, & welcome to ‘Language Change’

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Language Change

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Aye oop, wilkommen, bienvenue, & welcome to ‘Language Change’Language Change: we’ll call ‘language change over time’ diachronic change

What linguistic variants used by ‘older’ speakers you know ‘appear’ to reveal the time between when those speakers acquired those variants and when you acquired the variants’ contemporary equivalents?

apparent time names the ‘appearance’ that speakers ‘bring their time with them’ – that is, that‘older’ speakers speak an ‘older’ language, so, by studying the differences between ‘older’ and‘younger’ language users, you can study Language Change!

fossilisation names what happens when a speaker or an entire language community retain an older linguistic variant [a lexeme, phoneme, or grapheme, for example], that has become obsolete or deracinated in contemporary English.

What are the differences between…… the significant features of the texts of your grandparents’ youth and those you use now – thediachronic: LEXICAL CHANGES

GRAMMATICAL CHANGES

PHONOLOGICAL CHANGES

Other CHANGES?

…what was happening when your grandparents were your age, and now – theHISTORICAL CONTEXTS?

…what kinds of texts were most popular when your grandparents were your age, and now – theGENERIC CONTEXTS?

…what was important to people & society when your grandparents were your age, and now – theIDEOLOGICAL CONTEXTS?

INFERRED CONTEXTS – we can never know what the actual contexts of a text were, so at A2 we speak of inferred contexts – those contexts that you infer from a text – what can you infer from a1941 newspaper that describes itself as being “the first online newspaper?”BIG IDEAS FROM LANGUAGE STUDY:

Sharon Goodman (1996) claims that we are living in a time of increased informalisation that is

language choices that were traditionally reserved for close personal relationships are now used in wider social contexts.

Fairclough similarly, says that the once-formal professional registers of business or academia have become ‘conversationalised’

Do language changes between the times of your grandparents’ youth and yours support Goodman’s&/or Fairclough BIG IDEAS?


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Language Change – how it worksTo get a feel for Language Change – and to make sure you know what the key processes mean, do this…

1. Think of a name for something that doesn’thave one yet (it could be anything, an abstract noun - a style of clothing or of music, a particular way of kicking a ball or hitting something, a way of feeling, or a concrete noun - an actual thing, like the sticker on an apple that might be called a‘pipple’)

(without lettinganyone see it,

write your neologism here)

(then keep it covered)

Lexical change happens when anew lexical item is introduced to a language, either as a loan word from another language, or as a neologism –

every word in English was once new to the language

2. whisper your word to the person on your left(& if you are the person whispered to, whisper the word you heard to the person on your left)

Phonological changehappens when the way a word is pronounced changes 50% of the words which Shakespeare used are now pronounced differently

3.if you are the last one to bewhispered to – the one on the first person’s right – lean across the person who coined the word, then, on that person’s sheet, write downthe way you think the word should be spelt

…here:Orthographic changehappens when the way a word is writtenchanges

Before printing, everyone wrote as they pronounced, even now we sometimes do, precisely because since standardisation, we cannot read how words sound

4. Your word is a noun. So, make itinto a verb – to put a pipple onto an apple is to pipple the apple – then use it in a sentence…

…here Grammatical change happens when the word order, or word class of wordschanges.

5. Change your meaning, but subtly. By using it in adifferent sentence, either make the verb-form of your word into a bad thing (pejorate it), or into a good thing (ameliorate it), a more precise thing (narrow it), or a more general thing (broaden it)…

…here Semantic changehappens when peoplechange the connotations of a word so much that its denotation

Finally, invade another country. Tell someone else about your word. Do theya) accept it – in which case you have changed their language?b) reject it as unnecessary (they may have their own word for the thing) – in which

case it becomes deracinated or fossilized, a historical relic that only survives because you wrote it down? or

c) change it, semantically, orthographically, grammatically, or phonologically, to fit the rules of their own language – in which case it has developed a variant?

How didtheir

language change

(what happened)?

All you have to do in any text, or data set of texts from the entire history of English isdescribe how these 5 processes have worked within that data, &/or between that data and now.

The best way to do this is to annotate each feature that has changed(using a different colour for each process makes things a lot clearer when it comes to writing about

them)with what has changed (i.ssssssssse. describe it & put it, with related features, into its

LinguisticMethod) so meet AO1,

how the concepts [the ideas from language study] explain its changes so meet AO2,


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how its changes reveal changing contexts, so meet AO3

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“Language change is a game of Broken Telephone”

1. Whose BIG IDEA is this?

2. the apparent time hypothesis

3. Burgess’s necessity hypothesis

4. Giles’ prestige hypothesis

5. the vogue language hypothesis

6. Crystal’s ease of articulation hypothesis

7. Algeo’s external causes hypothesis

[The CLA-specific ideas don’t belong here, but you might note them down elsewhere…+

8. the idea of neologising…

9. …by morphological change

10. the idea of deracination

11. the idea of archaism

12. the principle of regularisation

13. the principle of analogy

14. Pinker’s ‘listeme principle’

15. the idea of covert prestige

16. the idea of informalisation

17. the idea of standardisation

18. the idea of ‘the changing standard’


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Try this:

What’s Changed?

Below are some recent changes to English – that is, changes to contemporary English. To check your AO skills, describe each of the italicised changes in a few sentences, thus;

1. say whether it is a synchronic change, or a diachronic change.2. name each of the italicised features that have changed3. put the change into its Linguistic Method,4. speculate why it might be that the feature has changed over time.5. Contextualise the Linguistic Method, to explain what effect the context has on its use.

& remember – the GASP is usually in the rubric…

Like this:

i) Text X is an extract from a popular detective novel of 1909:

“It’s no good, we’ll have to stay. See if you can find us an hotel in the village, will you?”

Text Y is an extract from a popular detective novel of 1989:

“O.K. How about we get us a hotel for an hour or two?”

1. The two texts are separated by 80 years, so any change between them represents diachronic change. Because the texts are both of the same genre, audience, subject and purpose, there is no synchronic change involved.

2. In the first of these texts, the indefinite article ‘an’ is used before the word ‘hotel,’ but in thesecond text, the indefinite article ‘a’ is used in the same position.

3. As both ‘an’ and ‘a’ mean the same thing, this is an example of phonological change – onlythe pronunciation of the words has changed.

4. ‘An’ is conventionally used for words which begin with a vowel phoneme, so it might be that ‘hotel’ began with a vowel sound in 1909, the /h/ being subject to h-dropping in 1909, as the /h/ in ‘hour’ still is in 2009.

5. The texts are both fictional representations of spoken language, presumably written for similar audiences, using similar registers and having similar levels of prestige, so it is likely that each one is reflecting the spoken language of its period, but representing this in standard written English. The writers are both creating characters, so the speeches could represent their individual ways of speaking or idiolects. On the other hand, the writers could be reflecting the standard pronunciation of their times, so the change implies that the way English is spoken has changed over the last century, particularly the articulation of the initial phoneme /h/ in some words.


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i) Text A is an extract from a January, 1987, edition of the Guardian:

“Usually, when someone asks ‘whose is this?’, she or he means to eat it.”

Text B is an extract from a June, 2007, edition of the Guardian:

“If a candidate wants to, they can put themselves forward for the post”

ii) Text C is a transcript of an excerpt from a 1985 edition of BBC Radio 4’s arts discussionprogramme, Kaleidoscope:

“Genesis are to perform a one-off concert at Milton Keynes Bowl with former singer, Peter Gabriel”

Text D is a transcript of an excerpt from a 2007 edition of BBC Radio 4’s news programme,PM:

“The rock band Genesis is to return to the stage as part of the ‘Live Earth’ event to be held in July”

iii) Text E is an extract from a 1990 6th form student handbook:

“At 8:30, students will attend the first lesson which is listed on their new timetables.”

Text F is an extract from a 2006 Further Education college student handbook:

“As you will see from your special timetable, Block F is the first timetable block today, so you will go straight to the lesson that ordinarily takes place on Wednesday afternoon.”

iv) Text E is a transcript of an excerpt from a 1979 edition of ITV’s News at Ten:

“The Prime Minister, Mr. James Callaghan, announced today that…”

Text F is an extract from the teleprompt script for a 2006 edition of BBC’s Six O’clock News:

“Prime Minister Tony Blair said today that….”

v) Text G is a transcript of an excerpt from a 1999 U.K. sitcom:

“The guys - Neal, Carl, Mike – crashed on the sofa.”

Text H is a transcript of an excerpt from a 2004 U.K. sitcom:

“Hey, Sarah and the other guys have gone to town, so….”


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vi) Text I is a transcript of an extract from a June, 2011 edition of BBC’s Six O’clock News:

“There were more than a hundred anti-war protesters awaiting M.P.s yesterday, when…”

Text J is a transcript of an extract from a June, 2011 edition of ITV’s News at Ten:

“It is reported that there was more than a hundred protesters at the gate.”

vii) Text K is an extract from a 1987 edition of the Daily Mirror:

“Pensions are on the slide, thanks to the Shenanigans of big city moneymen. The FinancialTimes 100 Share Index, or ‘FOOTSIE, has fallen by…”

Text L is an extract from a 2010 edition of the Daily Mirror:

“Your pension is in danger again – this time, it’s American mortgage lenders who seem tobe rocking the footsie. Share dealing yesterday…”

viii) Text M is a transcript from a 2009 BBC Radio 4 sports report:

“Hodge was the top-scorer against Yorkshire…”

Text N is a transcript from a 2009 BBC Radio 5 Live sports report:

“Brad Hodge top-scored for Lancashire with 57”

Then stretch yourself, and try the same analytical method on an extract from the textbookOur Language (1976) by Simeon Potter (this one contains its own rubric!):

When King James II observed that the new St. Paul's Cathedral was‘amusing, awful, and artificial’, he implied that Sir Christopher Wren'screation was pleasing, awe-inspiring, and skilfully achieved.


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You need this:This Language change course covers the period beginning in 1700,

This period is known as the Late Modern English Epoch or LMnE.

It’s known as LMnE because it is the period in which Standard English [SE] was codified.

codification

Before SE was codified, there was no such thing as a spelling mistake or a grammatical error;since SE was codified, people have been divided between those with ‘good’ and those with

‘bad’ English.The 18th Century is known as ‘the Age of Authority’ or the ‘Age of Standardisation.’

All the ‘rules’ of English originate in the 18th century, and they were all made up by a handful of men,

The most famous prescriptivist was a local man, Bishop Lowth whose book, known as ‘LOWTH’S GRAMMAR’ [1780], is the biggest-selling grammar book of all time, and the ultimate source of everything you’ve ever been told is ‘wrong’ with your English…

Among other things, he is credited with prescribing that you should…1. Say ‘my dog and I,’ rather than ‘me and my dog’ *sentences cannot begin with object pronouns]2. Say “It’s Julie who told me,” rather than “It’s Julie’s that told me!” *the referential pronoun – is

‘who’ or ‘whose’ – or ‘which’ for non-humans – rather than ‘that’+3. Say ‘different from,’ rather than ‘different to’ or ‘different than’4. Say ‘I didn’t do anything’ or ‘I did nothing,’ rather than ‘I didn’t do nothing!’ *Avoid double

negatives]5. Say ‘Our mission: boldly to go’ - if the verb is ‘to go,’ you can’t put ‘boldly’ in the middle of it

[Never split an infinitive verb form]6. Say ‘On I can not go,’ rather than ‘I can’t go on’ *Never end a sentence on a preposition]7. Say ‘you were’ rather than ‘you was’ *subject-verb agreement]8. Say ‘lie it down there’ rather than ‘lay it down there’

John WALLIS, back in 1653, set the rule thatLowth wasn’t the first ‘prescriptivist,’ by any means, nor the last:

1. ‘He she or it will,’ but ‘I shall’ - ‘will’ must only be used for second or third person subjects

Thomas COOKE, in 1729, set the rules that2. you can say ‘most tall’ OR ‘tallest,’ but you must never say ‘most tallest’ because the adverb

‘most’ and the grammatical morpheme ‘~est’ are both superlatives3. if you are only comparing two things, neither is the tallest. One is ‘the taller,’ because, Cooke

argued, ‘taller’ is the comparative form – you can’t say which is the ‘most’ tall, only which is the‘more’ tall (obviously, you can’t say ‘more taller’ – see 1. above!)

Some of Cooke’s rules had more limited ‘success’ than some of the others’… for example4. all past tense forms should end ‘~ed’5. all plurals should be marked by a ‘~s’ or ‘~es’


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6. all adverb forms should end ‘ly’


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prescriptivism vs. descriptivismSince there have been prescriptivists, there have been descriptivists

KEY TERMs:

prescriptivist

descriptivist:

[Jean AITCHISON points out that all contemporary linguists have to be descriptivists]

The most famous 18th century ‘descriptivist’ texts are Joseph Priestley’s (1761) & George Cambell’s (1776).

Priestley argued for ‘usage’ as the best guide, and Campbell for context

What did Priestley mean by his Big (and very controversial) Idea:

“Usage is the only arbiter of language”?

The prescriptivism vs. descriptivism divide is a useful rough guide, but it is never as simple as all that.

Stretch yourself:Why might it be useful to have ‘rules’ for English?

Why might it be just as problematic to rely on ‘usage’ as a guide to English?

Hold this thought:

All examples of non-standard grammar – including each of the following ones - have their origins in forms that were perfectly acceptable in ME, and are still perfectly


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acceptable – indeed, prestigious – in some social contexts.


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In pairs, work out1. What the grammatical issue or issues might be for a prescriptive grammarian (i.e. what is non-standard

about each) and, for 1-6 at least, WHICH grammarian ‘prescribed’ the appropriate rule?BEWARE - NOT ALL ‘PRESCRIPTIONS’ HAVE BEEN CODIFIED

– THERE ARE ‘RULES’ ESTABLISHED BY ‘USAGE’

2. Why a descriptivist might argue that each is acceptable3. When a descriptivist might argue that each is acceptable [ALL of your AS ‘ideas from language study’

will be useful here…+

1. I didn’t have no dinner yesterday

2. That was the man what done it

3. Mary’s more nicer than she used to be

4. She spoke very clever

5. If you’re tired, why don’t you lay down?

6. I don’t know where to go to

7. The water was dripping out the tap

8. Leave your things here while you come back

9. Our teacher can’t learn us nothing

10. I want this coat cleaned

11. Andy gave it me

12. Will you go and buy me two pound of apples?

13. We didn’t have them in my day

14. I were going home, and he was coming with us

(The full historical and social explanation of why we use each is in Freeborn’s “Varieties of English”… in the LIBRARY)

On Page 24 of your HANDBOOK is an ‘old specification’ ‘past paper’ question. All such questions had handy bulletpoints, reminding you to write about

1. The appropriate linguistic methods – WHAT changes2. The inferred contexts: GRASP, social and historical – WHY what changes changes3. The explicit and embedded attitudes – how people think & feel about the changes

The question you will get in the exam WILL NOT HAVE ANY BULLET POINTS, so remember everything you have to do *it’s on the first page of this book!]…


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SE & AttitudesJean Aitchison says people’s attitudes to English can be separated into

those that think Language Change is a bad thing, and that language is decaying,’and those that think Language Change is inevitable, and that language is ‘progressing’

Linguists like Aitchison to claim that any linguist is, by definition a descriptivist – it’s not our job to JUDGElanguage, but to DECRIBE it. They claim that 18th & 19th century linguists were often prescriptivists,‘prescribing’ certain ‘good’ forms of English, like a doctor ‘prescribes’ good medicine...

Aitchison uses 3 metaphors to explain the POPULAR ATTITUDES of those who complain about language change:1. The damp spoon syndrome refers to people who say that certain modern usages are down to laziness and

make them feel a queasy distaste, such as you might feel when someone dips a damp spoon into the sugar bowl.

2. The crumbling castle view is based on the notion that English was perfect at some unspecified time in the past and that we should try to preserve it, like a beautiful old building.

3. The infectious disease assumption is the notion that we catch “bad English” from other people, like the transmission of germs.

David Denison of Manchester University says “there hasn’t been a time since the14th century when people didn’t think that the language was getting worse”

The prescriptive age is usually said to begin with the age of standardisation in the 18th

century, and to end towards the end of the 19th century,

but it’s difficult not to think that people who don’t speak like you speak worse or better than you, andLanguage Change is still criticised now…

WHAT ASPECTS OF LANGUAGE CHANGE ARE CRITICISED?

Phonology: Dropped initial /h/ and other examples of elisionRising intonation in statementsPlacement of stress on polysyllabic words Orthography:

SEA [Standard American English] spellings (program, disk) Lexis/semantics:Changes in meaning (does presently mean soon or now?)Confusion between similar words (imply/infer)

Grammar: Grammatical conversion (e.g. nouns becoming verbs) Pronoun usage (my wife and I/me)Split infinitives (to boldly go)Participles (Do you want it wrapped/wrapping?) Modal auxiliaries (will/shall; may/might)

How would you describe the attitudes in the following…?

1. In 1949, The Daily Mail published a list of new American words it irritably


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judged to be "positively incomprehensible" to “the average Englishman.” The list included ‘commuter’, ‘seafood’, ‘living room’ and ‘rare’ (for ‘underdone’).

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2. “If you allow standards to slip to the stage where good English is no better than bad English…people turn up filthy…at school…All those things tend to cause people to have no standards at all & once you lose standards, then there’s no imperative to stay out of crime.

former Conservative minister, Norman Tebbitt, speaking in 1985

3. “Change is one thing. Decay is another. Is British English really changing for the worse, as some people argue? Of course it isn’t. Over a hundred years ago, linguists … realised that different styles of language suit different situations, but that no part of language is ever deformed or bad. People who dispute this are like cranks who argue that the world is flat. Yet flat-earth views about language are still widespread.”

Jean Aitchison, in the 1996 BBC Reith Lecture.

4. A printed banner has appeared on the concourse of a petrol station near to where I live. “Come inside,” it says, “for CD’s, VIDEO’s, DVD’s and BOOK’s.”

For any true stickler … the sight of the plural word “Book’s” with an apostrophe in it will trigger a ghastly private emotional process similar to the stages of bereavement, though greatly accelerated

Lynne Truss, in the book Eats Shoots and Leaves, 2003,

5. Speakers of different languages have different potentialities open to them: that if you belong to a‘primitive’ tribe whose language has a total vocabulary of a few thousand words or less, there are things which you simply cannot say, compared with speakers from modernised societies whose dictionaries list hundreds of thousands of words

John Honey, The Language Trap, 1999

6. There is no need to define standard English speech. We know what it is, and there’s an end on’t. We know standard English when we hear it just as we know a dog when we see it, without the aid of a definition. Or, to put it another way, we know what is not standard English, and that is a sufficiently practical guide. If any one wants a definite example of standard English we can tell him that it is the kind of English spoken by a simple unaffected young Englishman like the Prince of Wales.

George Sampson, English for the English, 1925


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The Pre-history of Modern English

Fæder ureþu þe eart on heofonum,si þin nama gehalgod.

There are a few things you NEED to know about Old English:

1. Old English gives us the most commonly used words in English

2. Old English gives us almost all of the lexemes in the ‘closed’ or‘grammatical’ word classes

3. Old English gives us almost all of the lexemes for the mostcommon semantic fields - what Otto Jespersen called the ‘familiar’or ‘household words’

4. Old English gives us almost all of the lexemes in the ‘closed’ or‘syntactic’ word classes

5. Old English was a highly inflected language – word order was not fixed, as it is in EMnE; instead each word could take numerous inflexions or grammatical suffixes which changed its tense and case. The so-called “final e” found on many nouns was the last of these to be lost. The most common surviving OE case inflexions are the ‘s’ plural marker, the ‘ed’ past tense marker and the ‘ing’ present tense or gerund marker.

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David Crystal says that there have been 3 ‘language revolutions’ in English, and each

has brought ‘INNUMERABLE CHANGES’ to the language, specifically to:

Dialects & sociolects Education Scientific knowledgeThe lexicon of English International relations Standard EnglishPolitical & religious power Orthography

r pa in evan, respect 2 u,may u rain ear as in evan. giv us r needs,

The “third language revolution” arrived with computer-mediated communicationWHY?

Think about it – in what ways might computer-mediated communication have changed English?

Oure fadir þat art in heuenes halwid be þi name;þi reume or kyngdom come to be.Be þi wille don in herþe as it is doun in heuene.

The “first language revolution” changed OLD ENGLISH [OE] into MIDDLE ENGLISH [ME]. It started in 1066

WHY?Think about it – in what ways might the events in and following 1066 have changed English?

Our father which art in heauen, hallowed be thy name.Thy kingdom come. Thy willbe done, in earth as it is in heauen

The “second language revolution” changed MIDDLE ENGLISH into MODERN ENGLISH [MnE]. Many linguists date

the beginning of MODERN ENGLISH to 1500, following the establishment of William Caxton’s printing press.WHY?

Think about it – in what ways might printing have changed English?


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The biggest language change idea of them all:TRIGLOSSIA

Do you speak German or Norwegian? French? Latin and Greek?Think again.

List all the non-semantic words of one syllable that you know …

What WORD CLASSES are they from?

Now, list all the words you can think of ending in the suffixes ‘ment’ or ‘ent’ or ‘ity’ or ‘ance’ or

Then, list all the words you know beginning with the prefixes ‘con,’ ‘bi,’ or ’tri,’ or ending withthe suffixes ‘graph,’ (or ‘graphic,’ ‘graphy’) or ‘tion.’

The first group are , introduced in the epoch;the second group are , introduced in the

epoch; & the 3rd group are & , introduced in the epoch

Think about it: why might triglossia, in particular, come about in England?

And


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Why might English speakers (& writers) not be content with litte old Old English lexemes?tri = three,glossia = tongues (as in 'languages', LIKE "MOTHER TONGUE")In English, we've got at least two and usually three choices when we want to say anything:

"bog", "toilet", "lavatory"

"Germanic" Anglo-Saxon English language choices (shorter, more "household" words) still indicate"spoken" familiar informal low register language

"French" language choices (longer, more "polite" words) still indicate "written" standard formal higher register language

"Latinate" language choices (even longer, more "educated" words) still indicate "learned" unfamiliar academic highest register language

Take time to get the full story - because TRIGLOSSIA ties together ALL the ILS from both years

FIRST cameOur "mother tongue" is GERMANIC ANGLO SAXON = "Old English" = all the "Household Words" (such as "house", "love", "school", "horse", "kitchen", "learn" - think of all the words children learn first!).

So, we already had words for everything we needed to talk about, andwe had all the "function" words we needed {all the pronouns like "he", "she", "it", articles like "the", "that", "these", prepositions like "over", "around", "near", etc.],butTHEN cameThe "French tongue" in the MIDDLE ENGLISH Epoch (1066-1500) = all the HIGHER, STANDARD ENGLISH REGISTER synonyms for those "Household Words" (because the French were in charge, their words became "the language of power", so "house" = "residence" "love" = being "amorous", "school"= "academy", "horse" sports are "equine", what you do in the "kitchen" = "cuisine" & when you"learn" at a higher level you "study").

Think of the difference between

the way children "pick up" their English "mother tongue" at home, partly because we keep it simple for them with CDS,

compared to

the way children have to "study" the French "written standard language" at school, partly because we only give them longer, more abstract words in written form,

While these "French" words often 'look' French [have FRENCH ORTHOGRAPHY - the "ance", "tion", "istic" suffixes, etc], they don't sound it, because we pronounced them with ENGLISH


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PHONOLOGY and we kept all the function words to stick them together in sentences [we didn't learn"j'etude proche mon academy" because we already had "I" and "near my" so we just took the verbs like "study" and nouns like "academy" and stuck it all together].

This is part of the reason CRYSTAL calls this period the FIRST LANGUAGE REVOLUTION - it changed everything - All at once, and right until today,

French = "public" language, overt prestige, elaborated code, upward divergence, instrumental power, etc

so

English = "private" language, covert prestige, restricted code, downward convergence, influential power, etc.

It's the explanation of the whole

register continuum.

When you think about it,

English in this sense still makes up most of our "spoken" language - those nice, simple, short words we use most,

but

French makes up most of our "written" language - newspaper articles, essays, etc.

[this is why informalisation, specifically conversationalisation is such a big deal- it looks like -

for the first time EVER EVER EVERwe are starting to use "informal" spoken language when we write.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves...]

THEN, just when we'd gotten used to this "diglossic" [two tongues] situation,

science and education in general took off, because we could suddenly PRINT BOOKS after

CAXTON brought PRINTING to ENGLAND in 1476This massive growth in education is part of the reason

printing begins the Modern English Epoch [1500-]

This is part of the reason Crystal calls this period the SECOND LANGUAGE REVOLUTION - printing changed everything all over again. Suddenly, there was something more powerful than 'talking proper', and that was being highly educated. Once you knew everything, you could do anything.

Only, to know something "academic" you had to learn a whole new language - LATIN, because LATINwas the original "universal" language of learning - it wasn't spoken by ANYONE anymore as a "first"


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language, so anyone in the world could learn it [as you've spent the last two years discovering, not just in English but in Geography, Psychology, etc. not to mention in Biology, Physics, etc.]: If you want to study

"how people talk"in German = wie Menschen sprechen in French = comment les gens parlent in Italian = come la gente parlain Swedish = Hur människor talar

in Latin = Linguistics

So, we came a long way very quickly when all the people all over the world agreed to use

LATIN as THE LANGUAGE OF EDUCATION.

[most obviously, we developed the idea of field-specific lexis!]

"very quickly" in this case meaning about 200-300 years, so

BETWEEN 1700-1800 this rebirth [literally renaissance] of "Education" had more or less stabilised or

standardised most things, from the study of 'pure' sciences to the 'modern' Legal System & democratic government, and including, of course, ENGLISH, so we call this period the AGE OF AUTHORITY because all those "learned" men [they were almost all men] gained "knowledge power" by "studying," and used the authority this gave them to write STANDARD grammar books,dictionaries, etc.

So 1700-1800 marks the start of the Late Modern English Epoch

- not so revolutionary, but things changed enough to mark a difference from the first couple of hundred years of MnE.

SpecificallyJOHNSON's DICTIONARY = 1755

LOWTH's GRAMMAR = 1760.

By the time we'd got toThe OED, which took from 1858 to 1928

we'd all agreed what was "standard" so using "non-standard"language now meant that if you didn't register shift between Germanic monosyllabic English, polite standard French and educated Latin, either you were doing it on purpose [for 'covert prestige' etc.], or you weren't educated, so were poor & powerless...


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So, when

the BBC started broadcasting [radio, then TV]in 1922

the language it chose to use was this 'new' standard English

Americanisation is, oddly, a reaction AGAINST the 'triglossic' situation. When

Webster began his DICTIONARY OF AMERICAN ENGLISH IN 1806the reason he changed the spellings [like "color"] was to separate American English from its FRENCH roots, in an act of rebellion against the "snobbery" of language marking you out as "better" than other men [he said "men", tho' he might have meant it generically].

He liked "plain talking American" - the words "plain" and "talking", of course,being Old English,

which is to sayGermanic...

& now, in the PRESENT DAY EPOCH of course, "we are living in a time of increased informalisation" - over the last century, we've been using progressively more 'simple" Germanic/Anglo-Saxon informal words rather than the "educated" Latin, because it's progressively less "cool" to sound educated.

The big point is, of course, that triglossia still appliesWHENEVER you choose to write or analyse a text:

"Germanic" Anglo-Saxon English language choices (shorter, more "household" words)still indicate "spoken" familiar informal low register language

"French" language choices (longer, more "polite" words) still indicate "written" standard formal higher register language

"Latinate" language choices (even longer, more "educated" words) still indicate"learned" unfamiliar academic highest register language


22

Read the following text, written by Caxton himself shortly after he set up the first English printing press. Then, Using a different colour for each process, if you have them, annotate, by noting down

what language features have changed [the Linguistic Methods - AO1],how you might explain the changes [the ideas from language study – AO2] and

why you think they’ve changed *the contexts - AO3], or in the words of the exam question:

- Referring to the text in detail [AO1], and to relevant “ideas from language study” *AO2], explore how language has changed over time [AO3+”

[And don’t fret - the oldest text you will be given in the exam will be from 1700!]

þe Booke of Eneydosin my dayes happened that certain merchauntes were in a ∫hippe in tamy∫e for

a haue ∫ayled ouer the ∫ee into zelande/ and for lacke of wynde thei taryed ate

forlonde, and wente to lande for to refre∫he them And one of theym named

∫heffelde a mercer cam into an hows and axed for mete. and ∫pecially he axyd

after eggys And the good wyf an∫wered that ∫he coude ∫peke no fren∫he. and

the marchaunt was angry. for he al∫o coulde ∫peke no fren∫he. but wolde haue

hadde eggys / and ∫he vnder∫tode him not / And thenne at la∫t a nother ∫ayd

that he wolde haue eyren / then the good wyf ∫ayd that she vnder∫tod hym well

/ loo what ∫holde a man in thy∫e dayes now wryte. egges or eyren / certainly it

is harde to play∫e euery man / by cause of dyver∫ite & change of langage. For in

these dayes euery man that is in ony reputation in his country wyll vtter his

commyncaycyon in such maners & termes that fewe men shall vnder∫tonde

theym / And ∫om hone∫t and grete clerkes haue ben with me and de∫ired me to

wryte the mo∫t curious termes that I coulde fynde. and thus between playne

rude & curious I ∫tande aba∫∫hed. but in my judgemente the comyn termes that

be dayli v∫ed ben lighter to be vnder∫tonde than the olde & auncyent engly∫∫e

(Caxton, “Prologue” to Virgils Booke of Eneydos, 1490)

So, what’s changed since the beginning of the MnE epoch…?

23

Note down all of the changes between the beginning of the MnE epoch and present day English revealed…

GRAPHOLOGICAL/PUNCTUATION CHANGES WHAT?

(name and exemplify)WHY

(explain!)

ORTHOGRAPHIC CHANGES WHAT?


(explain!)

PHONOLOGICAL CHANGES WHAT?


(explain!)

So, what’s changed since the beginning of the MnE epoch…?

24

Note down all of the changes between the beginning of the MnE epoch and present day English revealed…

LEXICAL CHANGES WHAT?


(explain!)

GRAMMATICAL CHANGES WHAT?


(explain!)

25

LEXICAL CHANGEOR

Everything you can say about a word…

IF YOU KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING, YOU CAN SAY EVERYTHING THERE IS TO SAY ABOUT LANGUAGE CHANGEJUST BY ANALYSING THE WORDS.

“The major changes within the Modern English period are lexical” (Burgess)or,

LMnE = ME + a tenfold increase in vocabulary

Start in slow:WHY does a language get new lexemes?

&WHERE does it get them from?

Now, think back to the ‘intensive teaching’ period, between the AS exams and that long holiday…HOW do we form new lexemes – what are the processes of lexical &

morphological change?

HOW do lexemes change their connotations & meanings – what are the processes of semantic change? E.g. are they strengthened or weakened?

26

We’ve spent over a thousand years borrowing & coining new words,and each word tells us something about the time it entered the language –that’s what we mean by ‘immanent context’ – you can tell a lot about a period by the words it uses

A vogue word is one which is only in fashion – or ‘vogue’ – for a while (you may find your 80’s-influenced teacher say‘excellent’ in the now-rather-dated style of “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure”). A nonce-word is one‘made up on the spot’ – a vogue word with a very short ‘vogue’

An archaic word is one which sounds ‘dated’ at the time it is used – be careful here, to use the term appropriately,you’d have to know what words were dated when it was written, not when you read it!

A deracinated word is one which, since the time it was used, has stopped being used, although it is still in the language – or else how would you know about it? (OE ‘were’, as in ‘wergild’, or ‘wealth’, has become deracinated; one of the compounds it made - ‘werewolf’ – hasn’t)

So, very few words are coined in isolation. Each neologism holds a clue, however faint, to the time in which it was created.

What do these lexemes - words or collocations tell you about the years they were first recorded - 1904 to 2004? (CHEESEBURGER or MOBILE PHONE may surprise…)

1904 hip1905 whizzo1906 teddy bear1907 egghead1908 realpolitik1909 tiddly-om-pom-

pom1910 sacred cow1911 gene1912 blues1913 celeb1914 cheerio1915 civvy street1916 U-boat1917 tailspin1918 ceasefire1919 ad-lib1920 demob1921 pop1922 wizard1923 hem-line1924 lumpenproletariat1925 avant garde1926 kitsch1927 sudden death1928 Big Apple1929 sex1930 drive-in

1931 Mickey Mouse1932 bagel1933 dumb down1934 pesticide1935 racism1936 spliff1937 dunk1938 cheeseburger1939 Blitzkrieg1940 Molotov cocktail1941 SNAFU1942 buzz1943 pissed off1944 DNA1945 mobile phone1946 megabucks1947 Wonderbra1948 cool1949 Big Brother1950 brainwashing1951 fast food1952 Generation X1953 hippy1954 non-U1955 boogie1956 sexy1957 psychedelic1958 beatnik

1959 cruise missile1960 cyborg1961 awesome1962 bossa nova1963 peacenik1964 byte1965 miniskirt1966 acid1967 love-in1968 It-girl1969 microchip1970 hypermarket1971 green1972 Watergate1973 F-word1974 punk1975 detox1976 Trekkie1977 naff all1978 trainers1979 karaoke1980 power dressing1981 toy-boy1982 hip-hop1983 beatbox1984 double-click1985 OK yah

1986 mobile1987 virtual reality1988 gangsta1989 latte1990 applet1991 hot-desking1992 URL1993 have it large1994 Botox1995 kitten heels1996 ghetto fabulous1997 dot-commer1998 text message1999 google2000 bling bling2001 9/112002 axis of evil2003 sex up2004 chav2005 sudoku2006 bovvered2007 carbon footprint2008 credit crunch2009 simples2010 big society2011 squeezed middle2012 omnishambles

Which were vogue words? Which would be archaic if you used them now? & which have deracinated, such that you couldn’t use them now, because you don’t know what they mean – or even what word class they are…?How many of the above words suggest non-native origins, and what does that tell you about immanent orinferred context?

27

LOAN WORDS: “English from the Outside”A loan morpheme is a morpheme brought in from another language *like ‘tele,’ ‘vision,’ ‘phone,’ ‘ism’ …

Why does ALGEO call these productive morphemes?

A Loan word is a lexeme brought into English from another language.Of course, other languages loan our lexemes too – just as

English contains at least one word from every other language,

so every other language has at least one word from EnglishAs English itself originated abroad, very very few ‘English’ words aren’t loan words.

You’d need a dictionary to know where every word actually originated, but one way of analysing loans is by semantic field: Give me some lexemes from the semantic field of…

Fashion

Food

Government

Law & order

Science

Of course, everyone with an attitude towards English has an attitude towards loan words, and always has

I am of this opinion that our own tung shold be written cleane and pure, vnmixt and vnmangeled with borowing of other tunges, wherin if we take not heed bitijm, euer borowing and neuer payeng, she shall be fain to keep her house as bankrupt. For then doth our tung naturallie and praisablie vtter her meaning, whan she bouroweth no conterfeitness of other tunges to attire herself withall, but vseth plainlie her own, with suche shift, as nature, craft, experiens, and folowing of other excellent doth lead hervnto

Think about it: is such a thing desirable? Or possible?

28

Loaning can stir up all sorts of nationalistic feeling (how do you feel about speaking about your favourite things with foreign words…?)

Throughout EMnE, from the 16th century inkhorn controversy – where people passionately debated the need for new words based on Latinate morphologies – to the so-called age of authority when SE was being, well, standardised, the English have accepted loan words more easily than they have accepted morphological or semantic change.

people became increasingly aware of the limitations of the M.E. wordstock. Colonialism led to the discovery of new things, which need names Complex ideas from Science, politics, philosophy, economics developed, and demanded complex

lexemes. Grammar Schools meant more & more people used Latin, and dropped Latin into their everyday

language

Read p.207 of Anthony Burgess’s brilliant book, “A Mouthful of Air”

1. Identify the semantic or lexical fields discussed in each paragraph, and annotate the article down the left hand side appropriately.

2. Match the semantic field to your impressions of each of the following nations: Dutch, French, Italians, Spanish (Hispanic), Portuguese (Iberian).

3. Insert the relevant nation [or its adjective] into each paragraph (some are used twice). If you are right, the nation will have become the language spoken by its people, and the words in that paragraph’s semantic field will be from that language. Check this by morphology and phonology: do the words ‘look’ and ‘sound’ right?

4. Fill the last gap with the most famous date in English history. What can you now say about when,how & why English borrows foreign loan words?

The , the maritime rivals of the British, were allowed to give the naval lexis

terms like 'buoy’, 'deck', 'splice', 'smack', 'cruiser', 'jib' (extensible to the metaphor 'I don'tThe enabled a British soldier to rise to ‘colonel,’ ‘command’ a

‘brigade’of ‘dragoons,’ fire a ‘barrage’ with ‘carbons,’ examine ‘terrain’ and watch out for The have not been slow to infiltrate into military terminology.

‘Cavaliers’may have disappeared, but there are still ‘squadrons’ and ‘salvos,’ ‘attacks,’ ‘barracks’ and The main influence, however, has been pacific and creative. We can examine

abuilding, appraising ‘cupola’ and ‘cornice,’ a ‘stucco’ ‘portico,’ ‘filigree’ ‘friezes’ on a‘corridor,’ skim over ‘cartoons’ on the ‘balcony’ of a ‘villa,’ say of the landscape …: 'HowWe can go to the ‘opera’ to hear ‘recitatives’ and ‘arias’ from a ‘prima donna,’ or to

a‘concert’ for ‘fugues’ or ‘madrigals,’ ‘sonatas’ or ‘soprano’ ‘solos’ (or ‘soli’), observing how the ‘allegro,’ ‘largo,’ ‘presto’ are managed, to say nothing of gradations from ‘pianissimo’ to has not done badly either. We can tap ‘sherry’ from a ‘cask’ and take

itwith a ‘rusk’ or even a ‘banana,’ …… watching the ‘parade’ of the ‘matadors’ on their way to the ‘corrida.’ Our

nightmarescan be oppressed during the ‘siesta’ by ‘renegades,’ ‘tornados’ and ‘cannibals’. …Let us go to a former colony to see ‘mustangs,’ ‘stampedes,’

‘broncos,’

29

viewing the ‘canyon’ from the ‘patio’ of an ‘adobe’ ‘hacienda.’If we tire of the , the will serve us ‘port’ and

‘madeira’ or even ‘yams.’ We can admire ‘buffalos’ or ‘flamingos’ and wonder how‘pagodas’ and ‘mandarins,’ … on a ‘verandah,’ got into an language. But the travelling British have learned from other travelling peoples, and this is how languages are enriched.The history of English since its pacific establishment as a language with a social and cultural centre in the capital, the tongue of a people not further to be invaded after , is the history of a vastly enlarged vocabulary.

KEY IDEAS FOR LOANWORDS

Colonisation

Globalisation

1. Loan words from other languages into English are often signs of colonisation – how so?

2. Loan words from other languages into English are often signs of globalisation – how so?

30

MINI-INVESTIGATION: dictionariesNo dictionary can ever be up-to-date. That is the lexicographer's paradox- every dictionary tries to get all the lexemes in, then new lexemes arrive...

Here is the title page of the book generally acknowledged to be the first 'English dictionary':

• d •

Table AlphabeticaH,con.teyning and teaching the truevvriring, and vnderflanding of hard vfuall'£ngltfh wordcs, borrowed from the

H,brew, Grecke, Latine,or French.&c.

With the interpr(tation thereof by pi.cine £nglt/h'R'tJrdJ,g tht'r4d for the benefit d helpr of lAateJ ,GentlmfJtnen,no"")other

vnJkj_/fo/1Pn:fonJ.Whereby they may the more taitie . · and bctrer vndeHland may hard Eng dh wordcs, vvhtch they lhaU hcare or read in Scriptures, Sermons, or clfwhere, and alfo

be made able to vfe the fame aptly

. rhemfclucs. '..

Legere,et non intelligert, negl gere tfl.·A$ goodrroc read,as not to

vnderflan•

.AT L 0 D 0 '1{,

Printd by I.R. for Edmund Wea· ucr,&are to be (old at his lhop at the grcac Norttl doore of Paules Church.

.J_6- -0 4·

31

Annotate

1. its significant language features

2. the attitudes it reveals, to society and to language

31

Here is the start of Cawdrey’s “Table Alphabeticall” –

How does Cawdrey handle capitalisation?

How does he handle alphabetical order?

Are the headwords in the same form?

What information is given?

What information isn’t given?

Cawdrey was, after all, writing in a new genre, so he didn’t do all the things we might expect a lexicographer *a ‘dictionary maker’+ to do now that

the genre is STANDARDISED

List all of the things you would expect a dictionary to do, now that the genre is standardised:

32

JOHNSON’s DICTIONARY of the ENGLISH LANGUAGE is usually cited as thefirst ‘full’ dictionary of English. Here’s an excerpt from it:

& here’s an entry from the 1933 edition of the OED.

Apart from having an entry for ‘Aardvark’ – magnificently still hyphenated – which, disappointingly, isn’t in Johnson’sdictionary, despite what they say on “Blackadder”…

…what does it do that no previous dictionary does?

Stretch yourself – can you label every component of the OED entry?

Now, some of the key names in English lexicography are

Nathaniel Bailey, Thomas Blount, Henry Cockeram, Edmund Coote, Samuel Johnson, Richard M u l c aster ,

J.A.H. Murray, Edward Phillips, the Philological Society, Noah Webster,

find out as much as you can about the contribution each one made to English lexicography,and put them in timeline order…

33

ATTITUDESAt A Level, ‘attitudes’ covers two overlapping areas:

1. ‘encoded or embedded attitudes’ are attitudes to society revealed in languagechoices

What attitudes are encoded in the following?a) “even a boy can manage that”

b) “a reasonable employee won’t make such unreasonable demands at this time”

c) “Sam’s a good dresser, at least”

d) “Media’s a Mickey Mouse subject”

2. ‘linguistic attitudes’ are attitudes to language itself – these are themselves often‘encoded’ or ‘embedded’ in what speakers say, and in how they say what they say…

What attitudes and ‘linguistic attitudes’ are encoded in the following?

34

“Ideas from language study” & Language ChangeYou earn third of your exam mark by choosing and applying ideas from language study to LanguageChange.

If you only want one idea from language study for Language Change, it is that

“language changes because people change

and the things that people do with language changes”

That is, Language Change is more about analysis, description, & explanation, than it is abouttheorizing.

If you want a few more ideas from language study that you’ll find useful in analysing and describing Language Change, remember all the ‘social contexts’ *gender & power] ideas from last year – they

were all arrived at to explain Language Change.(there’s a ‘refresher’ section in the A2 Handbook if you need it…)

how might the following account for language changes?

1. Prestige?

2. Convergence & divergence?

3. Social networks?

4. Categorisation?

5. Changing gender roles?

6. Informalisation?

7. Dialect levelling?

And these?

8. Colonisation?

9. Globalisation?

For even more ideas from language study for Language Change, the best thing to do is to read Dr. Johnson’s preface to his Dictionary of the English Language. Besides doing more than any other single linguist to ‘standardize’ English, by attempting to codify or set down in print in one place for the first

time, EVERY WORD IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE,Johnson discussed most of the ideas from language study that historical linguists use today. In the

following, the ideas’ modern names are in block capitals, followed by the linguist with whom they are most associated.

Read the excerpt from the “Preface,” and, as you do, put answers to the questions which follow into your own words…

35

'l ::;u.,.... . t

p R E F A c E.1 Thos it lnpPCDS that in things difficult there is cbngu &om igoor:mCC', and in things ea!y from

(lORfi . 1 mind ofr.hd o'J<<arnett and dilibinfuf of liulene{s, hoJlily witbdnw• rfelffrotnlinlUI reard><S, with

1 • • ._ /t_ ad 1,. '- • :'land !)2JICs cornful rapr uy o•er uuK$ not !"lll>t IX> po' =· .omctunes too

urc .for caution. and :lg:.in too tnx!ous for v•go?uOIJ: etro:t 1 f mct•mes tdlc: 111 :l pl:un path, :1nd fome-

time. difina.d in Jabyrioand diffipat<:d by Om<:ent UlfCntiOII$.

A large work is difficult l:ecaufe it is large, cren though oll irs parts migt fmgly be pc• fonned with2 f.tcility.- where there arc 11Y.111Y thing• to be done,..ch mull allowed 11$ lhare of umc ond l:alx> JC,

' n the j.ropo<tioD only which it bea<a tO the whole; nor con It be o:pc.acd, that.the ftones wbicb fi...m the dome of a temple, lbould be fquared and polilhed Eke the diamond of a ring.

Of tbe event of thu work, for wbich, having laboured it with fo much applic:uion, I cannot but

3 have fome degree of parental fondncfs, it is natural to fonn conjctlure•. Thofc vho h3\'C been ·pcrCuaded to thi.nk well of my defign, requir!' thot it lhould lix our lantt,U•!t"o :md put :1 llop tothor4:-21tcn.tioos which time 2-nd chance have hitbt:no bc:c:n f .co nuke mIt u.t oppofit:JOn.With this oonfequencc l will fcftbot Iftauaed myf lf for a \·h k; but now be,:m to (oic that 1b:tve indulged expeB:ation \9bteh neither nafon nor e:rpcncnce an JUihty. , When we. men grow ld:ond die .,0 e«t:>in time one :Uter Mother, fro!"<:<:ntury !O c.cntury, we !augat the eliXIr tba.t pronufeo

10 prolong lifeto :1 thouf•nd yars; IUld wnh equal JUI!NX may the lex cognpber be derided, wbo being able IX> produce: no e:r:2n!plof a mtion thot Ius refer-:ed their woids pbnfeo fromatability, Chall im•gine that his di<l\1onary an embalm b11 langu: ge, and liecure Jt from corntptiOD and decoy, that it is in his power to clunge fublunary nature, or clear the world at once from 1'oUy,vanity, and .tff'c&ation.

WJtb this ':>?pe, ho\ >r, anies b:tYe been nlli!uted, to guard -·a.. nucs ?f their lao

;

4 II> ,.,.in fuCJDYCS, and rcpulfc. Intruders ; but t <Jr v1gnu.oe nd offi.,ty have hitherto bee!' ""'"1 found. arc too volatile ond 'l'i1bule for legal rcfttamts; to encha10 Cyllables, and to Wh the wmd, are equolly the unclcrtakings of pride, un,vi!ling IX> n><afurc ito defires by its llrengtb. "The Fn"'6 laof,j,SChas vifibly changed under the inCpeaion of the a<::Jdemy; the aae of .dM.Ws =nll:ltion of ...Ptudis.obCC:n·ed by Lr c-rcpr to be tm ptu f'l'.fl; aud no Italian \\'ill m:>inrain, that the diaion of anymodern writer is not perocptibly dift'erent fr01n that of &ce.u,, J.1ctbitx;<f, or ClrD.

Total ond fudden ltl>n•formations of a lang"•&• felclom bappcn 1 conquclls ond migr:otio.,. :>re nownry ca:c: bur there :ue other caufa of change, which, though llow in their operation, md iovillble in

5 thcic-progtel<, :>re pcrb•P'"' much (upc:riour to humin rcJill:>nce, •• the rcvolnuons of the lky, oc incumefanc:c of th-e tide:. Commerce, however n c:r.trary, ho\VC:\'er lucr2tiv-e, as it dep:r:a.vcs the m.annCT$.,corru ptS the laogu: ge; they that ha"e frequent in tercou rfc witli llnngas. to whom they cnde:>vour to occommodotc thcm!elvcs, mull in time learn • mingled di.21.cd, like the jargon which i'crocs the uaf. ficlcers on the J.fdjftrrmutu: :>od Jtuli ta>alls. This will no< alw•Y' be co:>lined to the exchange, the wareboufe, or the port, but will be communicated by degrees to other =b of the people, and be at !J:Il incorponted with the current fpcocb.

There ore likewife internal caufes equ lly forcible. The language n\oll likely to continue long without .tt<nlioa, would be that of • n:>tion rufed " litde, and but • Hule, above b:ubarity,

6 f<dudcd from llraogers, and rotally employed in p:ocuring the convcniencics of life 1cirbcr withoutbooks-' or, like feme of the MniJf.ttttln countries, wnb very few: men thus1bu_Ged :md uniCAmedr h2vingonly fuch words as common tile requires, would pcti"'J>S long continue to exprc& tbe &me notions by the C.me figns. But no fuch c:onll:>ncy can be ap«led in a pcop1= polilhed by arts, and dalrcd by Jubor dinatioo, whcteolle ptrt of the community is fulhined and 2C<:ommocbted by the r of the ether. Thofe who have much lcifure to think, will :Uwa,.. be enlarging the flock of idea>, and every in Q'c:U'c of knowledge, whether real or· f.tncied, Will produce new words, or combinations of wor"" Wbeo the mind is uneha.iocd from neodll'r• it.will r:>ngC" :>fter con,·eniencc, wb:n it is left :at. btxe the iiclof fF':btion, it wil_lhift optnioos; as 1 .cum is diCill'ed, the words tint expreOCd" :nuJl pcna. ll; u my optnJOn grows popular, 11 'iill moo,·ate fpeeeh in the Came f!Oportionas It altera pra .

7 As by the cultivation. o£ .•• fcienees, a bnguagc is :>mplined, it will be mo:c furoilhed ,..;th wotl.c eded Jrom t_beir onguw fen[e; the geometrician will talk of a c:ounict's =it!>, .,.. the exteo· o! a mid .band the phfficiao of Canguioe expectations and pblcgautick delays.CoP,'I"'fnets of 1pccch will gJYe ?J>portunitteo 'to capricious choi«> by which fome words¥ wlll beete, and otbctO degra.kd ; vicillitudof f:tlhion will enCore<: the uCe of new, oc extend the 6g"! of known tums. The tropes ofwill make ourly no, and the metaphorical.will become the eur;en• fenfe: pron cuaon I be varied by !CYtty or ignoranee, and·pen

36

'!'ull ·lc gtb comply with.tbe;illnevate wnters will at one lime or other, by publick inliuuao n, 11<: '""' renown, wn?' knowing the original import of words. will ufc tlicm with colfbquiol lianttoufocfs, confound difliadion, and forget propriety. As politenefs incre:>fes, '<!meexpn:llions willbe coo ed as - p&_ and vulgar for the dclicatc, Othcn u !DO fonn:>l and cercmoniOU$ for the t'! and :ury.' nf!bnUes a<c t_hettfore adopted, wbieb mull, for the fame nafoos, be in time dif m . Secift, tn bl$ pet_ty trcao(e on the &xli/h 1An3u:.gc. Q.lJotv• that nMV words olufl- JOtuctirucs\ocU)Uo.lueed, but propofes that none lhould lie fufl'cred to become obfo!cce. Bu t what makeu wordob(o(m;, !'IO<C than gocneraJ ow ment to fOrbear it ( 2nd how lhall it be continued, when it QODVCY' onoft'-"ttfivc tdea, or recalled ag.>n miX> th<: mouths of mankind when it hu one<: bv diCufc bceomc: un mi!Ur, and by unfamiliarity unpleaf111g. ' •

36

Para3

1. PRESCRIPTIVISM (Bloomfield). What did Johnson’s supporters ‘require that it should’ do? What did they believe had ‘hitherto’ made ‘alterations’ in English?

2. LANGUAGE DECAY (Aitchison). What must a dictionary do to the language to prevent ‘corruption and decay’?

3. LATINATE LEXIS: what does ‘sublunary’ mean, what is its morphology, and how does Johnson’suse of it recall the Inkhorn Controversy?

Para4

4. THE ‘ACADEMY’ APPROACH: The French and Italians famously set up ‘Academies’ to make decisions on their languages. What is Johnson’s opinion of this, and what does his imagery imply?

5. LOAN WORDS: What does ‘un peu passé’ mean, and what is does it tell you about Johnson andabout his audience that he is using it here?

Para5

6. EXTERNAL CAUSES (Algeo): What does Johnson believe causes ‘total and sudden transformations of a language’?

7. PIDGINISATION (Todd): What ‘corrupts the language’? How?

8. LEXICAL DIFFUSION (Labov): How does this ‘corrupt language’ undergo what we might now call‘language diffusion’? What does ‘incorporation’ mean (etymologically, and after the semanticchange process of metaphor)?

Para6

9. INTERNAL CAUSES (Algeo): What does Dr Johnson decide are the two conditions necessary to life for a language not to change?

10. NECESSITY (McKnight): What happens every time there is an increase in knowledge?

37

11. ‘EASE of USE’: what makes the mind ‘range after convenience’

12. DERACINATION (Crystal): what causes words to ‘perish’?

Para7

13. EDUCATION (Burgess): New subjects generate new words. What do they do to some of the old ones?

14. REGISTER: How might ‘copiousness of speech’ lead to a greater range of available registers?

15. MODISHNESS (Algeo): how does fashion affect language?

16. SYNCHRONIC VARIATION: what genre does Johnson use to show how language variesdepending on what you’re doing with it?

17. IMPERFECT LEARNING (Crystal): What are two causes of phonological change, and how do they result in orthographic change? Who might be responsible?

18. SOCIAL PRESTIGE (McKnight, Labov): Name three effects of an increase in ‘politeness’

19. FOSIILIZATION: Swift proposed that no word ‘be suffered to become obsolete’. What didJohnson do to guarantee this?

20. name three orthographic conventions in this text which are still used in the same way today,

& name three orthographic conventions in this text which are not used in the same way today

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Standardisation – what it means...

‘Standardisation’ means, as you might imagine, ‘making something standard’. Before MnE, our language wasn’t standardised – people used different accents, and wrote them differently, and it just wasn’t an issue.

The period of MnE is essentially the period of the standardisation of the English language.

So, how do you standardise a language?

Leith (1983) identifies 4 stages – selection, acceptance, elaboration, and codification.

Try it: Let’s make a new standard

1. Which dialect do we select?

2. How do we get it accepted?

3. Can we elaborate it –make it capable of doing all the things a standard has to be able to do?

4. & finally, how do we codify it – how do we ‘fix’ its orthography and phonology?

“A standard tends to emerge when ideas about nationhood and political autonomyare gaining currency” – Leith, 1983

Uhuh. Standardisation doesn’t happen overnight – the standardisation of English started around the mid-1500’s, and is often said to have only been accomplished at the time when Johnson published his dictionary, in , although it continued long beyond that, and, in a way, still does.

SE is based on the English of the ‘East Midlands Triangle’ – the dialect found betweenLondon, Oxford & Cambridge became the standard.

WHY?Think about it: work out, with your people, and note down here, why & how East Midlands English

was

1. selected

2. accepted

3. elaborated

4. codified

Standardization is the process of creating a standard language.

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Standardization & Orthography - the linguistic method for ‘spelling’.

There are a few things you need to know about Language Change & orthography, like

Why don’t the spellingsof words change?

Why do some spellings have different sounds in

different words?

Why don’t we spell words the way we say

them?

Why are some sounds spelt in different ways?

As you think you’ve figured out each answer, scribble it by the appropriate question above – that’ll make for easier revision…

For now, think on this;

1. Everyone uses SE orthography when they write.2. Phonological changes since the appearance of printing mean that

no-one pronounces SE orthography3. Standardisation, brought about by the combined effects of

printing and dictionariesmeans that SE orthography does not change.

So… Should we change the way we spell? If so,Why?

When? (now? once & for all? or every time we want a word’s orthography to reflect a different sound or accent?)

How? To what…?

Specifically: how should we spell the following, pretty much randomly grabbed from the thousands ofanomalous orthographies or MnE? Why? – justify each choice …

ski, quay, buy, would, debt, mission, sure, ignition, facial, rock, higgough, spinach, plough, rough, rhubarb, aunty, fuel, great, weight, fruit, meringue…*ah, the list is as long as the lexicon of the language – think of your own examples, possibly starting with ‘think’, ‘of’, ‘your’, ‘own’,

‘examples’… see what I mean?+

graphemic-phonemic correspondence

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“

EMnE to LMnE ≈ Orthographic standardisationor,

almost all the changes to English spelling took place before, or as, it standardised,or,

when English spelling looks like ours ≈ the English is ours

Dennis Freeborn (Varieties of English – it’s in the library) sums it all up:

“English spelling is complex and irregular, andit has only been largely fixed since the 18th century.

Much of this complexity derives fromour custom of spelling words as they were pronounced centuries ago,

rather than as they are pronounced now”“The peculiarities of the English system are well known. On the one hand, we have words pronounced identically but spelled differently, such as flour and flower …”

Think about it: come up with more homophones which are not homographs…

“…on the other hand, we have words spelled identically but pronounced differently, such as lead (the metal) and lead (the verb)…”

Think about it: come up with more homographs which are not homophones…

“…The vowel sound occurring in the word “day” isspelled in an astonishing number of ways…”

You know what’s coming: how many can you come up with (over 10 is good, over 20 is almost too good…)

By the 18thcentury, the standardization of English spelling was well advanced, but still not complete. It was in this century that the great English dictionaries appeared, the most important of which was _’s which appeared in _. The influence of this dictionary was such that the spellings [it used] came to be accepted in almost every case as the standard spelling in England. In the United States, however, it was … Noah Webster’s dictionary of 1828 which largely settled American spelling. Johnson and Webster did not always make the same choices betweencompeting spellings, and this is the principal reason for the well-known differences between British [SE] and American [SAE+ spelling…”

Think of some differences between SE & SAE spellings:

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How might the fact that

Johnson looked backwards – to ‘tradition’ and ‘authority’ – for hisorthography, while Webster looked to current usage for his explain them…?

As an illustration of the complex history of English spelling, consider the word ‘shield’. According to the OED, this word has at various times been spelled scild, scyld, sceld, seld, sseled, sheld, cheld, sceild, scheeld, cheeld, schuld, sceled, schild, schilde, schylde, shilde, schelde, sheeld, schield, childe, scheild, scheelde, scheylde, shyld, shulde, shild, shylde, sheelde, shielde, shield and shield. Only in the late 18thcentury did the last form become fixed as the only possibility: very many other words show a similarly complex history….”

Think about it: why so many orthographic variants before the 18thcentury?

Why so few since the 18thcentury?

“…One major factor in the fixing of English spelling was the introduction of printing in the 15thcentury. Faced by a bewildering variety of spellings for a single word, the printers made an effort to reduce the variety by settling on one spelling, or at least only on 2 or 3 variants.

Unfortunately, perhaps, they often preferred the spellings used in earlier mediaeval manuscripts, with the result that we have already seen: the spellings of many words were fixed in forms that represented obsolete pronunciations.”

Now, why would they do a thing like that?

Why would Johnson later do almost the same thing in then selecting those very same16thcentury printers’ spellings?

& what would you have done…?

42

REGISTER & Language Change

RP ≠ SE or Contemporary English Phonology – RP meets Estuary English

Modern English went from EMnE – when dialects weren’t stigmatised,through LMnE – when they were, because they had no overt prestige

to Contemporary English. And…?

Well, remember what Giles said about why we still use regional dialects & sociolects?

RP does & doesn’t = SE. It’s a language change thing.

SE was codified between the time of printing and dictionary-making – meaning?

‘RP’ was only named after the event – in the early19th century, even though its phonological featureswere first recorded in the royal court of the 14th

century…

…& in the 20th century? Ah – in 1956 Alan Ross distinguished‘U’ and ‘non-U’ways of talking – briefly, how to sound upper class, and how to spot people who weren’tHow would you do it now?

Does it matter?

OK, how would you linguistically spot if someone was ‘cool’ – had covert prestige – or not?

… & in contemporary English? Well, in Honey (1989, in a remarkable book – “ Does AccentMatter?”) distinguished

Marked RP – ‘poshest’ form of RP, found amongst those of the very highest social privilege.Not accessible to the majority by education. The HYPERLECT of British society.

Unmarked/Pure RP – Traditional form of RP, spoken by approximately 3% of the population.The ACROLECT of British society.

Modified RP – pretty much RP accent, but with some regional features that are stamps of a speaker’s regional origins. Typically a speaker who has converged to RP during his/her life. The PARALECT of British society.

43

Meaning?

Public & private registersor,

“Synchronic change = register”

Go on – ‘in your own words’, as they say, what does that statement mean?

Sketch out a register continuum:

Now, in language change, we talk about the register continuum being three dimensional –one dimension is the degree of formality,

the second dimension is time [how what characterises, say, informal speech, changes over time], and the third dimension is generic register, that is,

which genres would use a certain degree of formality at a certain point in the history of the language

Try it: under each of the points on your register continuum, list the genres that you would associate with that degree of formality *stretch yourself by considering how these may have changed over time…+

We’ve only been able to record speech for about a hundred years.Now, what are the implications of that?

It’s not only in speech that we use nonstandard forms. There are documents from throughout the MnE period which are not transcriptions, but which have some characteristics that remind us of different registers, and of the spoken language of their time.

Diaries are sometimes of this type, but not always. Some diaries show literary sophistication - many were obviously written with publication in mind.

Some ‘private texts’, however, throw light on ‘spoken’ or nonstandard lexis and grammar, and, through theirspellings, on ‘spoken’ or nonstandard pronunciations.

As Freeborn (1993) says…“Printers in the seventeenth century tended to regularise spelling more and more, even though there werestill variations and no fixed standard of spelling had been established. In letters, however, even educated

44

writers still used ‘phonic’ spellings, and these provided some clues to their pronunciation.”

44

Language change in context – language and education

We learn English.Where & how we learn English helps to determine how we use English.

So, education is a key context of language change.

Before the Norman invasion, the first schools were ‘ecclesiastical schools’, run by the church, in Latin.Think about it: what did that do to the language?

After the Norman invasion, a couple of things happen:1. Private tutors throughout the country ‘prepare’ the children of the aristocracy for school by teaching themLatin

Think about that: what language would the children of the aristocracy speak?

2. More and more private schools began to appear. Education was expensive, and was still in Latin. However, students are sent to these – still rare – schools from all over the country. The lingua franca of these schools is, increasingly, English.

Think about it: what did that do to the language?

In 1348, as part of the growing nationalism, it is decreed that English replace Latin as the medium of instruction in schools (Oxford and Cambridge – already both powerful and independent - retain Latin).

Think about it: what did that do to the language?

As we already know, printing arrived in 1476.New question: what did that do to education?

As we also know, the King James, or Authorised Bible appeared in 1611.Same question: what did that do to education?

Throughout the EMnE period, education became more widely available. The Protestant Reformation meant that it was increasingly provided by the state, not by the church, but much education still private, that is, it still has to be paid for. Attending any school meant not working.

Why would people pay for education?

Who would receive it?

Remembering that Trudgill and Labov both conclude that it is the lower middle class who are most concerned with linguistic prestige, what kind of English would the schools teach, as the lower middle class began to be able to afford them?

Compulsory state education didn’t take place until 1870, when The Education Bill was introduced by W. E. Forster.

What difference would it make to the language?

The BBC was founded in 1922.What has that got to do with English? And with English education?

45

You’ll remember that we started all this with the mantra of our chief examiner, that

“Language varies because people, and the things people want to do with language, and the situations people find themselves in, all vary

It is possible to describe such linguistic variation with objectivity and precision

It is possible to account for such linguistic variation by considering it in relation to context”

I hope we’ve shown you what he meant. If not, here are the words of the language change guru’s guru, JohnAlgeo, paraphrased, and some questions. Between them, they should help…

The history of a language is intimately related to the history of the community of its speakers, so neither can be studied without considering the other.

The external history of a language is the history of its speakers as their history affects the language they use.

It includes such factors as the topography of the land where they live, their migrations, their wars, their conquests of and by others, their government, their arts and sciences, their economics and technology, their religions and philosophies, their trade and commerce, their marriage customs and family patterns, their architecture, their sports and recreations, and indeed every aspect of their lives.

Language is so basic to human activity that there is nothing human beings do that does not influence and, in turn, is not influenced by the language they speak. Indeed, if Benjamin Lee Whorf (1956) was right, our very thought patterns and view of the world are inescapably connected with our language.

It is, of course, possible to view the history of a language merely as internal history – a series of changes in the inventory of linguistic units (vocabulary) and the system by which they are related (grammar), quite apart from any experiences undergone by the users of t he language. We can describe how the vocabulary is affected by loanwords or how new words are derived from the language's own lexical resources. We can formulate sound laws and shifts, describe changes that convert an inflected language to an isolating one, or a syntax that puts an object before its verb to one that puts the verb before its object. That is, we can describe a language purely as a formal object. But such a view will be abstract, bloodless, and often lacking in explanation for the linguistic changes.

Because language is a human capacity, the history of a particular language is linked with that of its speakers. A language cannot be completely separated from the culture of which it is a part. To extend Meillet's dictum … a culture is a system in which everything hangs together. Therefore to understand the whole culture, we must understand the language; and vice versa, to understand the language, we must understand the culture.

The effort to trace the history of the linguistic system and its units (lexical, phonological, morphological, and syntactic history), and to trace the history of the speakers of that language is the diachronic aspect of the study of the English language.

(adapted from The Cambridge History of the English Language,Vol. VI English in North America, Cambridge,

1986, ed. Algeo, J., Professor Emeritus, University of Georgia)

46

Putting it ALL together: the Daily Telegraph past paper

1. Read & annotate the rubric and the question *you’ll notice that this one has the NEWquestion, AND some helpful OLD bullet points]:

2. GRASP the rubric:

3. Find your focus (or foci)

4. Read & annotate the features of the dataset

47

Texts for Question 3

Text E

English suffers hyper-inflationBy Neil Tweedie

ONCE upon a time it wa l'llOU!!h to be a hero. but now

for a ct:rtain area or ll<ltion;tl li fe. l n -,tcad. that per,on mu 'l he a ·· :-,ar"·. a man or \Hllll<lnwi t h the stature pf Pl' lcr the

hecomc exccu t i1c manage r:-.'":-.ociate managers or man a!!cr' at lar!!c.The a na l \·:-.i:-. iconta ined in

\\ords an: lo... i ng t heir p<mcr. To he called a hero ued to he t hl' hi!!he:-.t honnu r. !'\o\\'nu ha1l' In he a :-upe r hcro to

on I):, :-. upcrhero \\ ill do. And . Great able to turn thi n!!

Funlwy.1 (uul Ot·erdogs. a mah.c an impact."

i f once you thought the pco-·pic workin g in the post room\vere po:-. t mom ''orh.ers. ) ou were vvrnn!!. Thev ,,·ere.as \.\l' all no\\ 1-.tlow. (lipatch sen iccfacilitator .

En!!l i h. aceordin!! to a nc" hook. i:- uiTcrin!! ft:Om a form of inl"lat ion - thuc of ugly. exaggera t ed or pre tent iou "ord:-. or ph ra c' to de cribc thin!!that can he ummedu p In honer. cri per way .People. it _ ecm. arc tal king up c\'cry th mg.

Thu:-. it i..; no longer adc-4uatc for the Gove n1ment to cm plo) an ex pert n:,ponihl e

around a! !he Jrop or a hal.' The reta u ran t t rade ha'

UOile i t' 'hare o f dama!!e. hh arc no lon!!cr fril·d orgr illed. the al·c c ri:-. ped. scared . !!h11ed. tru ffkd and lacq uc rccl. Fre...hnc...., "' uperma rh.l'h i... no longer

!!OOd l'llOU!!h . \ 'e!!Ctahk' nust he til',;-fn_•,h .marl..ct fre:-.h or '>ea,onal.

Then then: i' thl' ocean urdt:i vcl prod uced hthe .':orldol bu:-.tnc:-'. ··L 1 pt llll ng '' a part icularlcommon ofktll'C111 which empln ce:-. <trl' gi\'c n clc1ated titk' to h'l'P the m happ. Th u'. nta nal,!l'r'

...nap hot or the Engli:-. h lan !!Ua!!c "riucn h\ Susie Dent:itH.fl·ompikd \\ i.th the hel p ofthe Oxford Engli:-.h Dictionary monitoring prog ram me.

A' part of the "bigging-up.. or ":-. upe rsi Ling.. tre nd. she idc ntific:- the u:-.c of "!l\a... "uhcr"' or "mega" prefi xes to bel'!· up \\'ords.

1\1i:-.:-. Dent 'aid: "Lin!!ui:-.tic... u pe r,i ting i... on the i ncrca:-e.and it mm sho\\· the inllucnccof adi'Crt i:-i ng-:-pcak and corporate jar!!on on lan!!ua!!c. in\\hich e\21'\thin!! neetbto heh y ped to get notll·ed . I t mcan:t h a t ...omc o r n ur grl'at eq

The fanhm' or the hook·, ti t le arc pcoph:. nHhtlv of the m a l e 1ariety. t oo ta'l-.e n up\\ i th thei r pa:-.... ion ror com ic... or Ulmpu t cr game' t o con ' i (kr their appeara nce. \\ hil 't on:rdo!!' arc ucce:-.,ful or dominalll in thei r f ield - the oppo...itl: or underdog .

And "ho JHl\\· dm•, notl-.110\\ the mean i n!! or ... udol.. u '.' The \lord ha.... inMi" Dent·,\\'tll'd,. "h u r't on to the ...cc nc" due to the rapid gro\.\ th in the llU lllhl'r of l'Oilllnllter:-. with pencil' and nc\\·:-.pape r' ' ud dc n h e\l'laim in!.!: "l\aa!!h! I '1·c got t"o t \\ o.'. '

48

Text F

crunk, adj. and n.2

A hoarse harsh cry: a croak.

1868 l\ 1 1-- I'\\()'\ Clen·lund Closs., Crunk. lhl· hoarsl' cr: or croak or the rmcn or ca rrion cw\\.

1995 Tutollr G·no(/iciu/ RoJJ-DictiomiiT (/]i-H·ccklr Posting. purl 1:3) in rec.music.lnjJ-hop ( Usend llC\\sgroupl I Ike.. Cnmk... Hypc. phat. ·Tonight is going to be crunk.· 1996 .J. DUI'RI ct a l. Toni!c\rho Nighr (song. perf. ·Kriss Kross') in HiJJ-!wp & RofJ (2003) 422 We came here to party. (jitty crunk. get drunk. and lea'e your hou se with so mebod y. 2000 A rlontu Jm/. & Consrit. ( Ne\ is) 24 Feb. 9m. W cwere just too krunk (ton tired up) for that..game. 2002 l'ihe July 201'2 They \Vere urban-music fem inists: sc\y. beautiful, strong \\Omen '"ho..stood up f(.)r their rights, got it erunk on t he dance floor. and educated people abPut sak sc.\. 2004 Philudclphiu Feh. 6-t2 (il'l crunk ''ith some raw hip-hop.

B. n.· A st yle or hip-hop or rap music originating in t he A merica n South. characteri zed hy repea ted l y shouted catch phra se!-. and clements usuall y 1\Ju nJ in clcctroni .· dance music. such as pro m inen t bass. handclaps, and beeping or buaing synthesizer noises. FreLJ. uflrih.

2005 /Y'nt· Srorn11wn 7 Mar. -+3d Crunk (combining ·cr<.vy· and ·drunk') is a supposedly new hip-hop suh-genre that prizes hedonism. bling and no-brainer party rh ythms over all else.

chav, n.Rril. slung (demgo!orr).

/Jril. :t fa v /. L.S ; tf<.e\ · IProb. e it her < Roman i (/1(1\'(1 unmarried Ronw n i male. male R om ani child (sec( ·11 \\ \\ 11. ).or shortened <_ either t II·\\\ Y n. l)r it s etymon Angloromani chon:\'.

In the United Kingdom (onginally the sou th or England): a young person of a type characterized hy brash and loutish beh m i o ur and the \\Caring ol'designer-style c l othes (esp. sport swear): usuall y \\ith connotations of a lm\ :-ocial status.1998 Rc. Colll/Jil!lcr hlut's.' in llklocal.kcnt (Uselll'l ne\\sgroup) H May. Tra\l·lling from Maidstone tPC hatham every day \\as bad enough. I was born in Brompton so am I a Chav or \\ha l1 2002 Ohi·Cl'\'<'1 . 26May 1. 5 ' ) rvlcct the Chatham (iirls. known as 'Cha\ s·. \\hose bshi on sense and n:p utation for easy\ irtue h<tnearned them a globall'ollowing as \\Orthy successors to t heir nort hern m:ighbou rs lsc. Esse:-;{iirl..;!. 2004 S11mlm Times (J>,;c\is) IS Aug. (Ncv.s Rev. section) 4 Older children desire nothing more than to dress, talk and hehave liJ.;c chavs. that is, a yout h trihe that prides itsell'on council-estate chicman-made fa hrics. ,;,J.;e labels a1H.l lots or eight-carat gold: thin k Vicky Pollard in Little Hritai n.

49

terms definitions3rd Language Revolution

Acronyms

Affix

Age of Authority

Amelioration

American-English

Apparent time

Archaism

Auxiliary verbs

Back-Formation

Blending

Broadening

Clipping

Codification

Colonialism

Compounding

Conversationalisation

Crumbling castle view

Damp spoon syndrome

Deracination

Descriptivism

Diachronic

Dictionaries

Double negatives

Ease of articulation

Epochs -MnE, PDE

External causes

Fossilisation

Globalisation

GPC

Grammar books

Homophone

Idiom

Immanent context

Imperfect learningInfectious diseaseassumptionInferred context

50

Informalisation

Initialism

Inkhorn controversyInternal and Externalcauses of changeLexical diffusion

Lexicographers’ paradox

Listeme principle

Loan word

Long S

Marked RP

Modified RP

Modishness

Narrowing

Necessity

Neologism

Pejoration

Pidginisation

Prescriptivism

Printing Press

Productive morpheme

Regularisation

RP

Schwa

Semantic spaceStandardisation(selection, codification and fossilisation)Strengthening

Subordinate clauses

Synchronic

Taboo

Triglossia

Unmarked RP

Vogue language

Weakening

Documents

The JLC Language Change Reader€¦ · Web viewFor any true stickler … the sight of the plural word “Book’s” with an apostrophe in it will trigger a ghastly private emotional