Language change
Arranged
by :
Naninanik indra languange changek indra
Nim : 11214204200
STUDENT OF ENGLISH
EDUCATION DEPARMENT
SEMESTER V
FACULTY EDUCATION AND
TEACHER TRAINING
STATE ISLAMIC UNIVERSITY
SULTAN SYARIF KASIM RIAU
2014
INTRODUCTION
In speaking to one another, we make use of sentences, or, to be
more precise, utterances.In recent years a number of philosophers have had
interesting things to say about what utterances do as well as mean, observing
that part of the total meaning is this very doing. As soon as we look closely
at conversation in general, we see that it involves much more than using
language to state propositions or convey facts.
One thing that many utterances do is make propositions: they do
this mainly in the form of either statements or questions but other grammatical
forms are also possible.
We are able to converse with one another
because we recognize common goals in conversation and specific ways of achieving
these goals. In any conversation, only certain kinds of ‘moves’ are possible at
any particular time because of the constraints that operate to govern
exchanges. These constraints limit speakers as to what they can say and
listeners as to what they can infer.
CONTENT
Languange Change
Language is always changing. We've seen that language
changes across space and across social group. Language also varies across
time.Generation by generation, pronunciations evolve, new words are borrowed or
invented, the meaning of old words drifts, and morphology develops
or decays. The rate of change varies, but whether the changes are faster or
slower, they build up until the "mother tongue" becomes arbitrarily
distant and different. After a thousand years, the original and new languages
will not be mutually intelligible. After ten thousand years, the relationship
will be essentially indistinguishable from chance relationships between historically
unrelated languages.In isolated subpopulations speaking the same language, most
changes will not be shared. As a result, such subgroups will drift apart
linguistically, and eventually will not be able to understand one another.the
modern world, language change is often socially problematic. Long before
divergent dialects lose mutual intelligibility completely, they begin to show
difficulties and inefficiencies in communication, especially under noisy or
stressful conditions. Also, as people observe language change, they usually
react negatively, feeling that the language has "gone down hill". You
never seem to hear older people commenting that the language of their children
or grandchildren's generation has improved compared to the language of their
own youth.
Why They Change
Languages change for a variety of reasons.
Large-scale shifts often occur in response to social, economic and political
pressures. History records many examples of language change fueled by
invasions, colonization and migration. Even without these kinds of influences,
a language can change dramatically if enough users alter the way they speak
it. Frequently, the needs of speakers
drive language change. New technologies, industries, products and experiences
simply require new words. Plastic, cell
phones and the Internet didn’t exist in Shakespeare’s time, for example. By
using new and emerging terms, we all drive language change. But the unique way
that individuals speak also fuels language change. That’s because no two
individuals use a language in exactly the same way. The vocabulary and phrases
people use depend on where they live, their age, education level, social status
and other factors. Through our interactions, we pick up new words and sayings
and integrate them into our speech. Teens and young adults for example, often
use different words and phrases from their parents. Some of them spread through
the population and slowly change the language.
Types of Change
Three main aspects of language
change over time: vocabulary, sentence structure and pronunciations. Vocabulary
can change quickly as new words are borrowed from other languages, or as words
get combined or shortened. Some words are even created by mistake. As noted in
the Linguistic Society of America's publication Is English Changing?, pea
is one such example. Up until about 400 years ago, pease referred to
either a single pea or many peas. At some point, people mistakenly assumed that
the word pease was the plural form of pea, and a new word was born.
While vocabulary can change quickly, sentence structure—the order of words in a
sentence—changes more slowly. Yet it’s clear that today’s English speakers
construct sentences very differently from Chaucer and Shakespeare’s
contemporaries (see illustration above). Changes in sound are somewhat harder
to document, but at least as interesting. For example, during the so-called
“Great Vowel Shift” 500 years ago, English speakers modified their vowel
pronunciation dramatically. This shift represents the biggest difference
between the pronunciations of so called Middle and Modern English
Types of change
Language change may be
broadly divided into two categories:
1. external change,
is mainly caused by the adoption of borrowing..
2.
internal change. internal change is caused by the addition and loss of
sounds and lexical items, coinages of new words and extensions
There are 3 major types of language
change : lexical, grammatical;, sound levels.
1.
Sound Level describe
the passage of historical transition
from a given phoneme or group of phonems to another.. eg. The cange of
Germanic /sk/ into old English /sh/. There are 3 type of changes :
·
Phonetic change :
affects the manner of articulation
·
Influence of
neighboring sound example from /y/y (mys) English to /I;/ (mice) in modern English
·
Apocope omission of
some vowel from the end of a word eg. Shild as chile
·
Phonemic change
affects the pronounsation or sound system structures eg. /3/ (as in meat or
read) or /e:/ (As in meet or reed)
2.
Grammatical level refers
to change grammar and vocabulary. I this proses,morphs,combination of morph or
linguistic pattern are modified there are 3 types :
·
Morphological change
language as analogy eg. Middle englis plural from cow was kine modern English
cow/cows bull/bulls
·
Syntactic change
lexical words increasilingly adopt a grammatical function example will meant
want.
3.
lexical level refers to change in the meaning
of word. There are 3 types:
·
loss lexical item same
phonemic structure but different meaning
·
change of meaning
semantic change due to historical or phisicological factors
·
creation of new
lexical item eg.external from French words “crow” pwer. Internal “bird” as gril
from bride
SOUND CHANGE:
Traditionally historical linguistic studies begin with sound change which is a
term to describe the passage of historical transition from a given phoneme
or group of phonemes to another, e.g.
the change of Germanic [sk] into Old English [sh]. There are various theories that justify the
causes of sound change. The first is that
sound change is brought about by anatomical changes within the population. Others assign sound change to social and
historical reasons and discover a link between political instability and
linguistic instability.
1. Old English [x] (voiceless velar fricative) is everywhere lost
as such, but usually leaves traces behind (cheshirization).
In furh "furrow" and mearh "marrow", it
vocalizes. It is elided (albeit with varying effects on the preceding vowel,
such as lengthening) in night, knight, might, taught, naught, freight,
fought, plow (Brit. plough, OE plōh), bought, through, though,
slaughter; but /f/ in laugh, trough, tough, enough (and daughter
can be found in The Pilgrim's Progress riming with after, indeed
the spelling dafter is actually attested) The /x/ phoneme still exists
in some onomatopoeiac words, like "ugh" (note the spelling uses
"gh", which indicates that [when coined] there was still some
understanding of "gh"s meaning in regard to phonemes),
"yech" and "chutzpah".
2. /g k/ are lost in
English in word-initial position before /n/: gnaw, gnat, knight, know.
/t/ is lost after fricatives before nasals and /l/: soften, castle, bristle,
chestnut, Christmas, hasten
3. In many words /f/
(that is, Old English [v]) was lost between vowels: auger, hawk, newt
< OE nafogar, hafoc, efete ("lizard"), and in some
alternative (poetic) forms: e'en "evening", o'er
"over", e'er "ever"; Scottish siller
"silver", and others.
Language change is variation over time
in a language's phonetic, morphological, semantic, syntactic, and other
features.
Phonetics, Phonology This is the level of sounds. One must distinguish here
between the set of possible human sounds, which constitutes the area of phonetics proper, and the set of system sounds
used in a given human language, which constitutes the area of phonology. Phonology is
concerned with classifying the sounds of language and with saying how the
subset used in a particular language is utilised, for instance what
distinctions in meaning can be made on the basis of what sounds.
Morphology This is the level of words and endings, to put it in
simplified terms. It is what one normally understands by grammar (along with
syntax). The term morphology refers to the analysis of minimal
forms in language which are, however, themselves comprised of sounds and which
are used to construct words which have either a grammatical or a lexical
function. Lexicology is
concerned with the study of the lexicon from a formal point of view and is thus
closely linked to (derivational) morphology.
Syntax This is the level of sentences. It is concerned with the
meanings of words in combination with each other to form phrases or sentences.
In particular, it involves differences in meaning arrived at by changes in word
order, the addition or subtraction of words from sentences or changes in the
form of sentences. It furthermore deals with the relatedness of different
sentence types and with the analysis of ambiguous sentences Language
typology attempts to classify
languages according to high-order principles of morphology and syntax and to make
sets of generalisations across different languages irrespective of their
genetic affiliations, i.e. of what language family they belong to.
Semantics This is the
area of meaning. It might be thought that semantics is covered by the areas of
morphology and syntax, but it is quickly seen that this level needs to be
studied on its own to have a proper perspective on meaning in language. Here
one touches, however, on practically every other level of language as well as
there exists lexical, grammatical, sentence and utterance meaning. Semantic
change.
. They include:
- pejoration, in which a term acquires a negative association
- amelioration, in which a term acquires a positive association
- widening, in which a term acquires a broader meaning
- narrowing, in which a term acquires a narrower meaning
The appearance of a new word marks only the beginning of its
existence. Once generally adopted as part of the language, the meanings and
applications it has for speakers can shift dramatically, to the point of
causing misunderstandings. For example, "villain" once meant a
peasant or farmhand, but has come to imply a criminal individual in modern English. This exemplifies a
word that has undergone pejoration, which means that a
negative association has become attached to it. Conversely, other words have
undergone amelioration where a more positive meaning prevails. Thus, the word
'wicked' (generally meaning 'evil'), as of 2009 means 'brilliant' in slang or
in a colloquial context.
Other ways of semantic change include narrowing and broadening. Narrowing a
word semantically limits its alternative meanings. For example the word
"girl" once meant 'a young child' and "hound" (Old English hund) referred to any
dog, whereas in modern English it demotes a particular type of canid. Examples of words that have been broadened semantically include
"dog" (which once referred to a particular breed).
Pragmatics The concern
here is with the use of language in specific situations. The meaning of
sentences need not be the same in an abstract form and in practical use. In the
latter case one speaks of utterance meaning. The area of pragmatics relies
strongly for its analyses on the notion of speech act which is concerned with
the actual performance of language. This involves the notion of proposition –
roughly the content of a sentence – and the intent and effectof an utterance. 
Causes of language change
v Economy: Speakers tend to make their utterances as efficient
and effective as possible to reach communicative goals. Purposeful speaking
therefore involves a trade-off of costs and benefits.
v the principle of least effort: Speakers especially use economy
in their articulation, which tends to result in phonetic reduction of speech
forms. See vowel reduction, cluster reduction, lenition, and elision. After
some time a change may become widely accepted (it becomes a regular sound
change) and may end up treated as a standard. For instance: going to [ˈɡoʊ.ɪŋ.tʊ] → gonna
[ˈɡɔnə] or [ˈɡʌnə],
with examples of both vowel reduction [ʊ] → [ə] and elision [nt] → [n], [oʊ.ɪ] → [ʌ].
v Analogy: reducing word forms by likening different forms of
the word to the root.
v Language contact:
borrowing of words and constructions from foreign languages.
v The medium of communication.
v Cultural environment:
Groups of speakers will reflect new places, situations, and objects in their
language, whether they encounter different people there or not
CONCLUSION
Language is always changing. We've seen that language changes
across space and across social group. Language also varies across
time.Generation by generation, pronunciations evolve, new words are borrowed or
invented, the meaning of old words drifts, and morphology develops or decays.
The rate of change varies, but whether the changes are faster or slower, they
build up until the "mother tongue" becomes arbitrarily distant and
different. After a thousand years, the original and new languages will not be
mutually intelligible. After ten thousand years, the relationship will be
essentially indistinguishable from chance relationships between historically
unrelated languages.In isolated subpopulations speaking the same language, most
changes will not be shared. As a result, such subgroups will drift apart
linguistically, and eventually will not be able to understand one another.the
modern world, language change is often socially problematic. Long before
divergent dialects lose mutual intelligibility completely, they begin to show
difficulties and inefficiencies in communication, especially under noisy or
stressful conditions
