Types of Language

Change
1. Phonological Changes

 Phonology – The study of the sound system of a given language and the
analysis and classification of its phonemes.

 Phonemes – One of a small set of speech sounds that are distinguished by the
speakers of a particular language.
Kinds of Phonological Change

1. Epenthesis

2. Metathesis
1.1 Epenthesis

 The insertion of a vowel or consonant into a word to make its pronunciation

easier.

 Examples:
 aemtig into empty, with epenthetic p.
 þunor into thunder, with epenthetic d.
 'athalete‘ for athlete.
 'fillum' for film.
Sentence Examples

 Worsh for Wash

"My brother took hisself a small fall, M'am." Dove pleaded, "Would you allow
him to worsh up at yer pump?“
 Whut for What
"Whut he sayin'?" the woman looked to Kitty for help
 Fambily for Family
"She were gentle an' sweet, an' the mos' beautiful creetur in all-in-in the place
where we lived. An' her fambily was that proud an' aristocratic thet no one could
tech 'em with a ten-foot pole."
The Effects of Epenthesis on Spelling

"Epenthesis occurs frequently, both in legal and in lay language. The

addition of an i before the t in speciality is an example. The pronunciation of
jewelry as 'jewelery' is a result of epenthesis, as is the pronunciation
'contentuous' for contentious. Other examples of epenthesis: the ubiquitous
'relitor' for realtor and that favorite of sports announcers, 'athalete' for athlete.
 "When a word becomes widely used with the added sound, the spelling
of the word changes to conform. Over the years we have obtained the words
thimble, thunder, and empty by the process of epenthesis. The original Middle
English words thimel, tunor, and emty were originally pronounced as spelled. The
consonants were added during a period when speech prevailed over writing. The
process of epenthesis slowed when writing became the foremost means of
communication. Now we are back to emphasis on speaking, via television, radio,
and films and our language is reflecting the prevailing influence of the oral
media over the written word."

 (Gertrude Block, Legal Writing Advice: Questions and Answers. William S.

Hein, 2004)
1.2 Metathesis

 The linguistic process of transposition of sounds or syllables within a word or

words within a sentence.

 Examples:
 Wasp used to be waps.
 Bird used to be brid.
 Horse used to be hros.
 Ask used to be aks.
 Task used to be tax.
 Oprah used to Orpha
 Animal used to be aminal.
 Remuneration used to be renumeration.
 Enemy used to be emeny.
 Cannibal used to be caliban.

"Metathesis is usually a slip of the tongue, but (as in the cases of /asteriks/
and /nukular/) it can become a variant of the original word. . . .
("axask,“ Mavens' Word of the Day. Random House, Dec. 16, 1999)
2. Lexical Changes

 Lexicon – a language user’s knowledge of words (vocabulary; mental lexicon).

 Lexicology - is the study of how words relate to each other and their
etymology, so over time we look at how and why words change in
meanings, and how language as a whole changes.
Types of Lexical Changes

1. Commonisation
2. Acronyms and Initialisms
3. Blends
4. Shortenings
5. Borrowing
2.1 Commonisation

 Commonisation occurs when something that was previously a name, loses its
capital letter and becomes a common, household word. For example the word
lamington, name of the chocolate covered pieces of sponge cake rolled in
coconut, came from Baron Lamington, a previous Governor of Queensland.
Jeans are also an example of commonisation, as they are named after the
town of Genoa, where a heavy fabric closely resembling denim was made.
2.3 Acronyms and Initialisms

 Acronyms and initialisms (previously known as abbreviations) are two closely

linked but seperate concepts. The term acronym refers to words that are
formed from the initials of other words, but are spoken as a word and not as a
series of letters, examples of acronyms include LOL for 'laugh out loud' and
DOS for 'disk operating system'. Initialisms are also formed from the initials of
words, but rather than be spoken as a word, initialisms are spoken as a
sequence of letters, like BRB for 'be right back' and BO for 'body odour'.
2.4 Blends

 Blends are words that are created from the joining of two different words,
incorporating the meanings of both of them. 'Cracker' for 'credit card hacker'
and 'foreplay' for 'any misunderstanding or outright lie that leads to sex' are
great examples of this phenomenon.
2.5 Shortenings

 Shortenings are the shortened, or truncated versions of longer words, that

come to replace the older, long versions entirely and become their own
words. Sometimes the two words become entirely distanced from each other
and the connection is hard to spot, like 'stroppy' from 'obstreperous' and
'grotty' from 'grotesque'.
2.6 Borrowing

 The ways in which language gains new words not only draw on sources within
the language, but also outside of it, in the form of 'borrowing'. English is one
of the largest and most notorious borrowing languages with words from over
160 different languages, including large amounts from the languages of our
own indigenous Australians. From various aboriginal languages we have gained
words for many things, but primarily names for animals, plants and places.
For example boomerang, jarrah, waratah, coolibah, galah, kookaburra, dingo,
wallaby, wombat and kangaroo are all indigenous words.
3. Spelling Changes

 Spelling – is the formation of words with letters according to the principles

underlying accepted usage.
 Webster proposed the removal of all silent letters and regularization of
certain other common sounds:

 give would be giv.

 built would be bilt.
 speak would be speek.
 key would be kee.
 Though these suggestions obviously didn't take hold, many of Webster's
American English spellings did:

 colour - color
 honour - honor
 defence - defense
 draught - draft
 plough - plow

(Kristin Denham and Anne Lobeck, Linguistics for Everyone: An Introduction.

Wadsworth, 2010)
4. Semantic Changes

 Semantics – the study of language meaning.

- the meaning of a word, phrase, sentence, or text.
Types of Semantic Change

 Broadening
 Narrowing
 Shift
 Elevation
 Deterioration
4.1 Broadening

 Broadening occurs when over time the meaning of a word has grown to be
applicable in contexts that it previously wasn't, and to mean things it
previously didn't, it's meaning has simply expanded. Examples of this include
brand names, a person may ask for a Kleenex instead of a tissue, or refer to a
mouldable, coloured clay for children as Playdough, despite it being made by
another company entirely, therefore the meaning of Kleenex has expanded
from simply being the name of a brand, to being used in context as the name
of the product.
4.2 Narrowing

 Narrowing refers to the opposite of broadening, and is defined as a reduction

in the contexts in which a word can appear. In simple terms, the meaning of
the word has gotten more specific. One example of this would be the word
daughter, which originally meant a child of either gender, rather than a
female child. The word has evolved to mean what was only part of it's original
definition, and this is semantic narrowing.
4.3 Shift

 A shift in meaning differs completely from broadening and narrowing in that

the word now retains none of it's original definition and has come to mean
something else entirely. A good example of a semantic shift is the word 'gay'.
Originally meaning "light-hearted", "joyous" or "happy", the word has
undergone a complete shift in meaning to now refer to a homosexual person.
4.4 Elevation

 Elevation refers to a change in the connotations of a word, occurring in one of

two ways. A word that loses its negative connotations is an example of
elevation, but elevation can also occur when, rather than losing bad
connotations, a word gains positive ones. One example of elevation through
loss of negative associations is intensifying expressions like 'terribly' and
awfully'. These words have lost their negative stigmas and now mean little
more than 'very', this is evident in that we can now use expressions such as
'terribly good.‘ An example of a word gaining positive connotations would be
"sick". It has obvious negative connotations of illness that are still connected
to the word today, but it has also become a popular slang term for something
cool. for example, "that's sick!"
4.5 Deterioration

 Deterioration occurs when a word gains association with a negative stimulus,

to then hold negative connotations.

 Deterioration is shown clearly in the word "accident". Once simply meaning "a
chance event" the word now has associations with misfortune and injury, so
we assume that when someone has "had an accident" it was not a positive
experience.
5. Syntactic Changes

 Syntax – the grammatical arrangement of words in sentences.

 Syntactic change is a phenomenon creating a shift in language patterns over

time, subject to cyclic drift. The morphological idiosyncrasies of today are
seen as the outcome of yesterday's regular syntax. For instance, in English,
the past tense of the verb to go is not goed or any other form based on the
base go, as could be expected, but went, a borrowing from the past tense of
the verb to wend.
 An example of syntactic change in English can be seen in the development
from the verb second (V2) word order, used before the 15th Century, to the
modern word order. Just as with other Germanic languages, Old and Middle
English had V2 word order. An example from Middle English is shown in (1),
where nu 'now' is in first position, and the verb loke 'look' is in second
position.

 (1) Nu loke euerich man toward himsuelen.

“Now look every man to himself.”
“Now it's for every man to look to himself.”
 Even though V2 was lost, verb raising was maintained in the 1600s in Early
Modern English. Unlike in Modern English, the verb preceded adverbs and
negation, as shown in (2). This word order is still apparent in Shakespeare's
writing.

 (2) if I gave not this accompt to you.

“If I didn't give this account to you.”