Transcript Language change

Language change
The Language Detective
Villiers Park
9-13 July 2007
Kinds of change (1)
PHONOLOGICAL CHANGE: AN OLD EXAMPLE
Latin piscus ~ English fish
Latin pater ~ English father
Latin pes ~ English foot
Latin centus ~ English hundred
Latin caput ~ English head
Latin canis ~ English hound
These correspondences (among others) allow us to suggest a series
of sound changes which took place as Proto Indo-European
developed into Proto Germanic, at some point beginning in the first
millennium BC (e.g. PIE *p > PGmc *f). This series of changes is
known as Grimm’s Law.
Kinds of change (1)
PHONOLOGICAL CHANGE: A NEW EXAMPLE
RP [bath] ~ Cockney [baf]
RP [thin] ~ Cockney [fin]
RP [brother]
RP [breathe]
Earlier records of Cockney, along with contemporary study of agebased variation, suggest that this is a phonological change in
progress, a merger of two phonemes.
Kinds of change (2)
SEMANTIC CHANGE
What do the following words mean to you?
starve; nice; knight; hussy; cretin; gay
ModE starve = either ‘to be hungry’ or ‘to die
of hunger’
OE steorfan = ‘to die’ (cf. German sterben)
SPECIALISATION
Kinds of change (2)
Nice (check OED for quotes and dates)
Kinds of change (2)
OE cniht = boy
OE huswife = housewife
Fr crétin ‘Christian’
The change in meaning of cniht is an
example of AMELIORATION
The changes in meaning of the lexicalised
form hussy, and of cretin, are examples of
PEJORATION
The gay debate
Gay [get OED dates]
Chris Moyles and the ringtone: “I don’t want
that one, it’s gay”
Is this a reflection of an on-going semantic
change, or an instance of homophobia, or
both?
Kinds of change (3)
SYNTACTIC CHANGES
OE
EModE
Saw you not his face? (Shakespeare,
Hamlet, 1601)
Why do languages change?
LANGUAGE INTERNAL REASONS (e.g.
markedness and analogy)
LANGUAGE IN USE (e.g. frequency of use
of a particular form)
SPEAKER FACTORS (e.g. identification
with social groups; projection of identity)
In other words, a combination of FORMAL
and FUNCTIONAL factors
AN ONGOING CHANGE?
Quotative verbs in English:
I said “He’s a really nice person”
An old one:
Give eg with quoth
A new one:
And I was like “What are you talking about?”
What other quotative verbs do you use, or do you know
that other speakers of English use?
Sort and kind
What do the words sort and kind mean in the
following examples? What grammatical
category do they belong to? Are there any that
are hard to classify? Why?
(a) I don’t like that sort of pasta
(b) What kind of a piano is it?
(c) He’s sort of a football coach
(d) They’re kind of my favourite band
(e) I got annoyed with him, sort of
(f) A: Do you like fish and chips? B: Kind of.
Grammaticalization
An early definition of grammaticalization was
that of Meillet (1912): “l’attribution du
caractère grammatical à un mot jadis
autonome” [the attribution of grammatical
character to a word which once was
autonomous]
A classic example of gzn: be going to
Duke:
Sir Valentine, whither away so fast?
Valentine:
Please it your grace, there is a messenger
That stays to bear my letters to my friends,
And I am going to deliver them.
(c. 1595, Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona
III.i.51)
Reanalysis
I [am going] [to deliver them] – verb of motion
I [am going to] [deliver them] – marker of futurity
cf. He is going to love London
He’s gonna love London
The grammaticalization of way
[All examples taken from OED Online www.oed.com]
1460 Paston Lett. I. 525 As for tythyngs here, the Kyng is
way at Eltham
1891 Anthony's Photogr. Bull. IV. 29, I would have sold at a
very low price, way below cost.
1959 Times Lit. Suppl. 16 Oct. 589/3 You are feet deep in
snow and the temperature is way below zero.
1988 Freestyle BMX June 25/2 The guys behind the bar
were way cool, flowing free beers to the visiting skaters.
Some googled ways (1)
(1) Via Virginia Postrel comes this nice profile of the NYT's
John Tierney, and speculation that he may be Safire's
replacement at op-ed. Make it so! And then fire Maureen
Dowd. Not because she's liberal, but because she's an
embarassment. Fiftyish women should not use
phrases like “way harsh”
(http://www.affbrainwash.com/genehealy/archives/015686.
php)
(2) Math Becomes Way Cool
(http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_11_98.html)
Some googled ways (2)
(3) In case you're trying to amass a majority, I'd vote for the
Cleveland Heights/Shaker area. Keep in mind, I grew up
in Parma and now live in Garfield, so I'm way not cool
(http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/14342)
(4) jo(e), you only have to type in ISBNs or some little bit of
the book -- a few words from the title, for example. It
looks up the rest of it for you. It is so way cool. You can
type a few in while you're waiting for other pages to
load...
(http://www.haloscan.com/comments/becceratoo/112947
877449751687/)
A cline for (a)way
Adverb of motion or state (complement or verbal
modifier) > adverb of extent (adjectival modifier)
> degree adverb (adjectival modifier) >
intensifier
A change arising from language use (speakers
using linguistic forms in specific contexts for
particular functions) which involves grammatical,
semantic and phonological changes (e.g. on
weg > away > way; a kind of (NP) > kind of >
kinda; going to > gonna)