language change

• prescriptivism - belief that language should be prevented from changing
• descriptivism - belief that all language change is good
• political correctness - avoiding language that could be seen as offensive or insulting
• strong verbs - verbs that change when the tense change. swim to swam
• weak verbs - verbs which take an inflection when changing tense. walk to walked
• lexical innovation - using words we already have to create new words
• affixation - adding a prefix to an existing word
• blending - taking parts of two different words to create a new one eg fog and smoke makes smog
• clipping/abbreviating - removing part of a word
• conversation - a word that changes class
• compounding - compounding two existing words together
• reduplication - combining two similar sounds
• borrowing words - new words are brought in from other languages
• neologlisation- a completely new word
• amelioration - a word gains a more positive meaning
• bleaching - a word looses power
• derogation - a word gets a worse meaning over time
• expansion - a words definition expands to cover more
• restriction - a word looses some of its meaning
• neosemy - a word gains a completely new meaning
• angles, saxons, jutes, - when they invaded they brought large amounts of their language with them.
• Vikings (793) - the vikings brought new words like sky and skull and brought a more simplified grammar system
• Normans (1066) led to a large amount of norman french terms to be introduced to the language, introduced latinate features to english
• wycliffe (1382) translated the bible from latin to english
• the chancery court (1558 - 1875) - decided to make english to a more standard form of the language
• tyndale (1525) - translated the bible again but with more success than wycliffe
• gutenburg (1440) - invented the print and press
• the great vowel shift (12th century to 18th century) - long vowel sounds moved from the front of the mouth to further back
• the inkhorn controversy (mid 16th to mid 17th cent) - concern was raised over the high numbers of lexis which were being borrowed from latinate and greek lexis into english
• Cawdery (1604) - wrote the first dictionary and tried to fix orthography
• shakespeare (1564-1616) - introduced over 400 new words to english
• johnson (1755) - published a dictionary containing over 40,000 words and provided spelling. however some of the definitions he chose may have been biased
• Johnson (1755) - he sought to provide regulation, though admitted that trying to control language is like trying to 'lash the wind'
• swift - thought that english needed to be corrected, improved and ascertained. he felt that the langauge was being destroyed
• murray - believed that we should not use split infinitives
• the industrial revolution (1760 - 1840) - the rise in industry caused mass migration and so new regional accents began to develop. for example accents liverpool accent stems from irish migration
• the british empire (1583 - 1997) - the british empire started colonising nd acquiring new words from places they colonised
• crumbling castle view - english was once a thing of beauty and now it is being ruined
• damp spoon syndrome - changes to language are a result of laziness and disrespect
• infectious disease assumption - change spreads like a plague, it should be avoided