Language change

Language change is the manner in which the phonetic, morphological, semantic, syntactic, and other features of a language are modified over time. All languages are continually changing. At any given moment the English language, for example, has a huge variety within itself, and this variety is known as synchronic variation. From these different forms comes the affect on language over time known as diachronic variation. Two linguistic disciplines concern themselves with studying language change: Historical linguistics and sociolinguistics. Historical linguists examine how a language was spoken in the past and seek to determine how present languages derive from it and are related to one another. Sociolinguists are interested in the origins of language changes and want to explain, how society and changes in society influence language.

Causes of language change

1. Economy: Speakers tend to make their utterances as efficient as possible: they try to exert the least effort in communicating with language (abbreviations, simple grammar structures in spoken language).

2. Analogy

3. Language contact

Types of language change

All languages change always. The causes are many and varied.

Lexical changes

The constant influx of new words in the English language would make it an obvious choice of investigation into language change, although it is difficult to define precisely and accurately the vocabulary available to speakers of English. Throughout its history English has not only ‘borrowed’ words extravagantly from other languages but has re-combined and recycled them to create new meanings.

Dictionary writers (lexicographers) try to keep track of the change in language by recording the appearance in the language of new words, or new usages for old words.

Phonetic and phonological changes

As already mentioned the sociolinguist William Labov famously recorded the change in pronunciation in a relatively short period in the American resort of Martha’s Vineyard and showed how this was the result of social tensions and processes. Even in the relatively short time that broadcast media have been available, we can observe the difference between the ‘marked’ RP of the newsreaders of the 1940s and the 1950s and the more neutral, ‘unmarked’ RP of today. The greater acceptance and fashionability of regional accents in the media may also reflect a more democratic, less formal society.

Small-scale phonological changes are difficult to map and record –especially as the technology of sound recording only goes back a hundred years or so. So the only evidence we have of how our language has changed over the centuries is written evidence of what English sounded like.

Spelling changes

The modern obsession with spelling is a fairly modern trend. Differences in spelling are very often the most immediately obvious thing about a text from a previous century. In the pre-print era when literacy was much less common, there was no fixed system and in the handwritten manuscripts that survive, words are spelt according to regional pronunciation and personal preference.

So the development of the printing press brought dilemmas to the printers; texts from the fifteenth-seventeenth centuries show many internal inconsistencies, with the same word often being spelt differently within the same text.

Unfortunately modern spellings were not the result of a single consistent system, they show evidence of previous pronunciations e.g. the silent gh in words such as night would have represented a pronunciation similar to that found in the Scottish loch.

Graphology and orthography changes

Even relatively recent texts, such as personal letters or diaries written in the early twentieth century can reveal that handwriting styles have changed ; look further back into the nineteenth century or earlier and such differences become even more marked. Similarly, the conventions used by printers have changed, as at first the use of lower/upper-case letters, various fonts and punctuation developed in a fairly hap hazard way.

Semantic changes

The appearance of a new word is only the beginning of its existence, once it becomes part of the language the meanings and applications it has for speakers can shift dramatically. Therefore, when reading a text from the past, you may think you recognize a word but may actually misunderstand the sense it conveyed when it was written.

Sociolinguistics and language change

The sociolinguist Jennifer Coates describes that linguistic change occurs in the context of linguistic heterogeneity. She explains that “^*inguistic change can be said to have taken place when a new linguistic form, used by some sub-group within a speech community, is adopted by other members of that community and accepted as the norm.” (Coates, 1992: 169)

Language change has been induced by a number of factors over the centuries. In modern times language change is for example being brought about by technology. The internet and mobile technology have drastically altered language with the use of instant messaging and texting from mobile phones.

References

Wardhaugh, R. (1986), An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, Oxford/ New York. Coates, J. (1992), Women, Men and Language: Second Edition, Essex. German Wikipedia: Sprachwandel

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