Module
5: Texts in Time
Questions
will focus on:
- The
processes and causes of change.
- Details
of language change in English - sound, vocabulary, semantics,
grammar.
Class
notes to revise:
- Changes
in words and meanings over time
- Changes
in written English, sound systems, grammar and social
context of these
- Principles
which underlie language change, and problems involved
in these
Long-term
historic change:
- Change
to spoken and to written forms
- Standardizing
influences (Caxton, the King James
Bible, Johnson, Lowth/
prescriptivism)
- Sources
of variation (temporal, dialectal,
regional, class-based)
- Semantic
change (e.g. cardinal, silly, gay)
- Etymology
and word creation
- Loss
of grammatical features (inflection,
declension,
case endings)
since Old English times,
leading
to flexibility
(e.g. conversion
from one
word class to
another)
- Socio-cultural
causes and
consequences of language change
in
English
- Reasons
for prestige of
written forms
Short-term
change/language
fashions
Change
as an
inherent feature
of living
language Sources
of short-term change:
- new
technology
- commerce
- arts,
media, popular culture
- collocations
To
explain change, you need knowledge of these areas
of language as system:
- morphology
(inflectional and derivational)
- word
classes (parts of speech)
- semantics
Etymology – the
sources of the lexicon
Grammar
- Robert
Lowth
- prescriptivism
- invented
rules (deprecating split infinitives, starting sentence
with and, double negatives)
Spelling
- Lexicography
- Johnson
- Webster
- Oxford
English Dictionary
- Microsoft
- Changing
primacy of British, US and World
English
Semantic
change
- Shakespearean
examples – thee, thou/you; honest (Othello);
villain (Romeo and Juliet)cardinal
- gay
- silly
(see The
Rime of
the Ancient
Mariner: “The silly
buckets on the deck”)television (this form
is recorded in the 19th century, denoting a
vision of something far
off)
- wireless/radio
- vacuum
cleaner/Hoover or
hoover
- Kodak/camera,
kodaker/photographer
(the
former term
of each
pair is
given as
common noun
by OED
early in
the 20th
century)
Current
debate about
change (inc.
influence of
modern technology) Suggested
Reading
Aitchison,
Jean. Language Change: Progress or Decay
Banks, R. A. & F. D. A. Burns English Language. Chapter
2.
Crystal, David. The English Language. Chapters 9-13.
Crystal, David. The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Language.
Chapter 1.
Crystal, David. The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of the
English Language. Parts 1-2.
Holmes, Janet. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. Chapter
9.
Fromkin, V. and R. Rodman. An Introduction to Language.
Chapter 8.
Russell, Shirley. Grammar, Structure and Style. Chapter
1.
Thorne, Sara. Mastering Advanced English Language. Chapter
7.
Yule, George. The Study of Language. Chapters
1-2, 7, & 18
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