Language Variation

• Typography- Different ways the phoneme "th" is represented
• orthography- conventional spelling system of language
• inflection- the sound of your voice changing during speech, e.g. emphasising particular words
• Anglo-Saxon: synthetic language- meaning comes from inflections e.g. 'followeth'
• Graphology: visual appearance of language, used to infer a person's personality
• Middle English: 1066-1500
• Early Modern English: 1500-1700
• Late Modern English: 1700-today
• Declension: changing form of a word, to express its grammatical function in sentence e.g. actor, actors, actor's, actress
• F used in place of S: represents 'long s', was a feature of Latin alphabet
• 'ck' representing hard 'c': 'c' represented 'ch' phoneme in Anglo-Saxon English
• Neologism: New words
• Halliday's Functional Theory: words are created when needed, lost when not needed
• Crystal's 4 Lang Rev: speaking English, writing English, Printing press, Internet
• Idioms: A phrase that has a figurative meaning that is not easily understood without the context of the sentence, e.g. kill two birds with one stone
• Diachronic change: variation overtime
• Printing press: made 1440
• Archaic language: words that were once widely used, but are now no longer apart of the English language
• Aitcheson + neologism:

  1. Implementation: word is created
  2. Diffusion: word spreads + usage increases
  3. Codification: word accepted + entered into dictionary
• Three process of change:

  1. Borrowing: taking and using a word from a diff lang into recipient lang
  2. Analogy:
  3. Reanalysis: word takes on a new meaning
• eth verb inflection (third person present tense): Anglo-Saxon synthetic lang, used inflections instead of words to create meanings
• 'y' used to represent 'th': replaced thorn with y, when printing came along
• Consonants: non-vowel sounds, letter leaves mouth with blockage e.g. b, d, f, p...
• consonant cluster: group of consonants with no vowels between them e.g. blue, brown
• es inflection for genitive case (possessive): Anglo-Saxon synthetic lang, inflections used to create meanings
• Anglo-Saxon nouns:

  • Nominative: nouns is the subject- acting
  • Accusative: noun is the object- acted upon
  • Dative: noun is the indirect object
  • Genitive: noun is possessing something
• Minim letters: when letters have a downward stroke e.g. u, v, m