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Language change
• All spoken languages change
• Some change faster than others
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Continued
• Written languages can be fixed – but will no longer be used in everyday life
• Common if a language has cultural or religious significance
• Latin in Western Europe for 1,500+ years
• Hebrew among Jews
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• Classical Arabic – Muslims• Pali – Buddhists• Sanskrit – Hindus• Coptic – Egyptian Christians
• Often used on special occasions but not understood
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• Often such languages are part of speech community
• Even non- or semi- speakers insist they are used on certain occasions
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Prayer Book rebellion 1549
• “and so we the Cornyshe men (whereof certen of us understande no Englyshe) utterly refuse thyse newe Englyshe”
• Duke of Somerset – they did not understand Latin either so what’s the problem?
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• Many reasons for change• Phonological • Structural• economic and technical change• Contact with other speakers• sociolinguistic
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Ideas about language change
• Decline – ignorance and laziness before 1786
• Family tree – descent with modification
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mother
• 1. Ineny
• 2. Mutter
• 3. Ma
• 4. Um
• 5. Ina
• 6. Madre
• 7. Mere
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• 8. Mat’• 9. Madre• 10. Moder• 11. Εm• 12. Tina• 13. Tinaa• 14. Madær• 15. Ma:
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Key
• 1. Malagasy• 2. German• 3. Bengali• 4. Arabic• 5. Tagalog• 6. Italian• 7. French
• 8. Russian• 9. Spanish• 10. Swedish• 11. Hebrew• 12. Fijian• 13. Samoan• 14. Persian• 15. Gujerati
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Family Tree Model
• William Jones – observed similarities of Latin, Greek and Sanskrit – suggested common (and extinct) ancestor
• Reconstruction of ancestral languages – Proto-Indo-European, sometimes helped by documentary evidence
• Later Bantu, Austronesian
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Some language families• Indo-European• Dravidian• Afro-Asiatic• Niger-Congo• Austronesian• Sino-Tibetan• Amerindian?• Nostratic?• Proto-World????????????????????
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Wave Model
• Wave model – languages influence neighbours
• How else to explain taxi and OK ?
• Sprachbunde – SE Asia, SE Europe, NE Europe Maybe most of Europe
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• 19th century – • Words, structures, forms spread
like waves• Unpopular until late 20th century• But explains PNG and Australia• now “punctuated equilibrium”
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Why do languages change?
Wrong Ideas
• Running up German mountains• Noisy factories in Northern England• Stiff Chinese tongues
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Structural changes
•Why did Nemo’s father say “jangan sentuh punggung”?
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• Language is a system • – one change leads to another – • Vowel shifts in England, US
Northern Cities, China and English speaking southern hemisphere
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• Australian front vowels are moving up
• Central vowels are moving down• Boat becomes Buutt
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Phonological
• Glottal fricatives deleted• Consonant clusters reduced• Diphthongs monophthongised
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BUT
• Not satisfactory• Structural – how did first change
get started?• Contact – why is influence usually
one way?• Ease of articulation – why difficult
sounds in the first place
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Sociolinguistic change
• Provides an adequate exalanation
• Languages change because of the relationship between social groups
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• First there must be variation – I.e. differences
• But variation does not always lead to change
• -n, -ng – differences for centuries but no change
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Continue
• Variation acquires a social function• Differences indicate social status
or prestige• Forms vary according to social
status• Forms will spread or disappear
because they are linked to social characteristics
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Language change and society
• Linguistic forms may spread downwards -- post vocalic /r/ in New York
• -- may spread upwards – glottalisation in English – reached Diana but not Charles
• May spread from one ethnic group to another – ‘makan’ ‘bohsia’, ‘innit’
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Continued
• May spread geographical ly– post-vocalic /r/ deletion in English
• May spread from one age group to another – “grotty”, “sus out”
• Gender very important – women pioneers in downward change, men in upward change
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Example
• Often – all factors contributing to change
• Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts• Fishing community became a
tourist centre• 1950s Young men began imitating
the phonology of older fishermen
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• older form, centralised /aI/ used by fishermen – dying out
• ‘light’ pronounced /l@It/ ‘layeet’
• ‘house’ /h@us/ ‘heyoose’
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• But – now became a marker of local identity – locals versus summer people – esp Portuguese and Amerindians
• But by 1990s disappeared – younger people left the island or got jobs in the tourist business
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Rates of change
• Why does the rate of change vary?• Network theory• Dense network – slow change• In Belfast, women introduced high
status forms – worked in shops in city centre
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Politics and language change
• In Berlin local dialect (BUV) declined rapidly in middle class West Berlin
• Fairly rapidly in Working class West Berlin
• not in Working Class East Berlin – symbol of identity – before reunification Saxon dialect used by unpopular government
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• Divergence of Serbo-Croat since 1991
• Divergence of Hindi and Urdu since independence
• Convergence (standard forms) of Malay and Indonesian
• Individual case – Sadat’s Egyptian Arabic response to Arab criticism
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• Divergence of Palestinian Arabic in one village since between 1948 and 1967 (Spolsky)
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Conclusion
• Languages change• At different rates• For different reasons• Including social reasons• And it cannot be stopped