Language Change Over Time

1. Milroy - he is a descriptivist in terms of language change because he disagrees with the 'Golden Age' hypothesis as there have been lots of illiterate children in the past 

2. Aitchison - she is also a prescriptivist who in an essay presented the ideas of 'the Crumbling Castle', 'the Damp Spoon' and 'the Infectious Diseases' and gave arguments against them

- she believes change occurs because people want it to, she uses evidence from other theorists like Trudgills Norwich study, Labov's New York and Martha's Vineyard study, Eckhert's Jocks vs. Burnouts study, Cheshire's Reading study and the Belfast study

3. Trudgill is also a descriptivist, bringing forward the idea of covert and overt prestige with his Norwich study and sayinging 'language cannot be halted'

4. Harlow - is a descriptivist who's major argument was against the idea that some languages and accents are ugly, he believes we form stereotypes based on past experiences such as the Italian poet Dante's dislike of the Romans 

5. Deutscher - is a descriptivist who argued for language change, saying without it language would be 'a reef of dead metaphors' so if language was static we wouldn't understand it 

6. DeTroy - believes language change is a cycle of destruction and creation 

7. Schleicher - believes that language should develop and become more perfect in its structures etc. over time but that we find the opposite (prescriptivist) 

1. the Romans - invaded in 43AD and stayed for 400 years, they brought latin to England which was used in churches first, then in town names, scientific words and now can be seen as the route of most words 

2. the Anglo-Saxons and Jutes - invaded in the 5th Century from Belgium, Germany, Denmark and Holland, they came to stop England being invaded by the Scottish and Irish, they stayed for 500 years but never really left (hence most people have Anglo-Saxon anscestors) and used Germanic and Latinate influences to create what is now known as Old English, most words are now unrecognisable but they were words about nature and violence as these people were here to farm and to fight 

3. the Vikings - invaded in the 8th century from Norway, Sweden and Denmark and brought Old Norse with them, particularly words with 'th' and 'sk' can be linked with the Vikings, other clues are monosyllabic words and language about superstition and stories 

4. the Normans - invaded in 1066 from France and only stayed for 88 years, however, French was considered an upper class language in England for around 3 centuries, it was used in cuisine, science, law and admin particularly.

1. the 12th - 15th Centuries - Chaucer published the first English fiction in 1343 called 'the Canterbury Tales' starting the Middle English period, in the same period, naval advances to Spain and Portugal saw a lot of borrowed words and in the 15th Century we began easing into the early modern English period

2. King James Bible - was published in 1611 and was one of the first publications, it was spread by missionaries to other countries and translated into Hebrew etc.

3. 1755 - the first dictionary was written by Samuel Johnson which took 8 years to write was an early attempt at standardising spelling and grammar 

4. 18th Century - words start to emerge from Africa and Asia as the British Empire grows

5. 19th/20th Centuries - industrialisation and urbanisation brought lots of economic migrants to England, bringing with them their various languages, at this time the hierachy in Britain changed from feudal to a class system 

1. external factors 

-borrowing = words from another language e.g futon, bungalow, saga

-loan words = words that are borrowed from other cultures or languages 

2. internal factors 

- initialisms = CD, MP3, OMG

- acronyms = NATO, AIDS

- affixiations = marketeer, regift, diengage

- eponyms = bic, hoover, pasteurise

- conversions = a word is a noun and a verb e.g text, network, google 

- blends = brangelina, brunch, moped

- compounding = (open) long winded, (solid) handheld and (hyphenated) user - friendly

- back formations = word was a noun and now a verb e.g burgle, edit and locate

- clippings = (initial) omnibus, (final) delicateuseur and (complicated) influenza

3. neologisms - few words are created this way but they are completely new e.g spoof, widget

1. changes from above - this is a concious change usually from people in an upper class position for prestige 

2. changes from below - this is an unconcious change usually from the lower classes 

- narrowing = the word becomes more specialist over time e.g wife 

- broadening = word acquires more meaning over time e.g holiday

- amelioration = the meaning grows more positive over time e.g brave 

- pejoration = the meaning grows more negative over time e.g villain 

- bleeching = (weakening) the word loses meaning over time e.g thing used to mean meeting

- metaphors = metaphors also change over time such as in euphamisms