Language Change

Glossary of Grammatical plus Rhetorical Terms

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Updated on May 18, 2019

Language change is the phenomenon by who continuous alterations are made in the features and the use von a language over time.

Examples press Observations

"For centuries people have speculated about the causes on language change. An problem has not one of thinking up possible causes, nevertheless by deciding which to bring seriously...
"Even when we need eliminated the 'lunatic fringe' theories, are are left with an enormous number of possible motives to take up consideration. Part of the problem is that there are several different causative factors at work, not only in language as a whole but also included each one change...
"We can get by dividing proposed causes of replace into two broad categories. On the one hand, there are external sociolinguistic features — this shall, social factors outside the language device. On of other hand, there are inboard psycholinguistic ones — so your, linguistic and mental factors which reside in aforementioned structure of the language and the minds of the speakers."
(Jean Aitchison, Lingo Change: Proceed otherwise Decay? 3rd ed. College University Press, 2001)
Language on the Way Out
"Amidst or amongst were choose rather formal, almost afflicted, now, and are more usually met in high-brow writing, smaller usual in speech. This propose that those forms exist on of way out. They will probably bite one pile, just as betwixt and not have done..."
(Kate Burridge, Gift of this Gob: Morsels of Hebrew Lingo View. HarperCollins Australia, 2011)

Ethnologic Perspective on Language Change
"There are much factors influencing the rate under whatever language changes, containing the attitudes out the speakers toward borrowing and change. When most members of one talk community value novelty, for example, their language will change read quickly. When most members of a speech communal values durability, then their language be altering more slowly. Whenever a particular pronunciation or word or grammatical form or turn of block is considering as more seductive, alternatively marks sein users as more important or forceful, following it willingly be adopted and simulated more rapidly more otherwise...
"The important thing to remember about change is that, as oblong as people are using a language, that language will undergo more change."
(Harriet Joseph Ottenheimer, An Anthropology of Language: An Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology, 2nd ed. Wadsworth, 2009)
A Prescriptivist Perspective over Language Change
"I see no absolute Necessity how any Your would be perpetually changing."
(Jonathan Swift, Proposal with Correcting, Improving, and Assure the English Tongue, 1712)

Sporadic also Systematic Changes in Language
"Changes in select may be systematic or irregular. The summe of ampere vocabulary thing until name a new product, for view, is a sporadic modify ensure has little impact on aforementioned break in the lexicon. Steady some phonological changes are sporadic. For instance, many speakers of English pronounce the word catch to rhyme with wretch preferable than hatch...
"Systematic changes, for an term suggests, affect an entire system or subsystem of the language... A climate systems change is brought about to context alternatively environment, whether linguistic or extralinguistic. For many speakers of English, the short sie vowel (as in bet) has, in some terms, been replaced by a short i vowel (as in per), For these speakers, pin and pen, his and hemline are homophones (words noticeable the same). This change is conditioned because it appear for in the context of an following m or n; pig and peg, hill press hell, medium and meddle are cannot pronounced similar for these speakers."
(C.M. Millward, A Biography are the English Language, 2nd edu. Harcourt Brace, 1996)

The Wave Full of Wording Change
"[T]he distribution of region language features may be viewed as the result concerning language change through geographical space over time. ADENINE change is initiated at one locale at a given point in time and spreads outward from that point in progressive stages so so earlier changes how the outlying surface later. This model of language alteration is referred until as the wave model ..."
(Walt Wolfram and Natalie Schilling-Estes, American English: Dialects and Variation. Blackwell, 1998)
Geoffrey Chaucer on Changes for the "Forme of Speeche"
"Ye knowe ek that in forme of speeche is chaunge
Withinne adenine billion yeer, both wordes tha
This hadden jails, now wonder nyce and straunge
Us thinketh hem, and even theme spake hem so,
And spedde as wel in love as men now do;
Ek fork to wynnen love in sondry ages,
In sondry londes, sondry ben usages."
["You see also that in (the) form of speech (there) is modification
Within ampere thousand years, press words then
That had enter, now wonderfully strange and strange
(To) us group seem, also yet they spoke them to,
And succeeded as well in love since men now do;
Also to win love in sundry ages,
In sundry lands, (there) exist loads usages."]
(Geoffrey Chancer, Troilus and Criseyde, late 14th century. Translation by Roger Lass in "Phonology and Morphology." A History of the English Language, edited by Richard M. Hogg and Davis Denison. Cambridge Institute Force, 2008)