language change Flashcards
1
Q
What are neologisms?
A
- new words, coinages and usages
2
Q
What are some examples of neologisms?
A
- selfie = wasn’t needed until front-facing cameras
- gaslight
- NPC
- mewing
- lore
- rizz
3
Q
In what order did different groups come to England and what languages did they speak?
A
- Celts - Celtic
- Romans - Latin
- Saxons - Old English
- Vikings - Old Norse
- Normans - French
- Romans - Latin
4
Q
Roughly where and when did English originate?
A
- somewhere between South Russia and the Baltic around 4000BC
5
Q
What kind of language is English?
A
- an Indo-European language
6
Q
What type of words came from Mercian Old English?
A
- man
- woman
- bairn
- eat
- drink
- sleep
7
Q
What words did English borrow from the Romanised Celts?
A
- pear
- cup
- pail
- anchor
8
Q
What Latin words did English take from Rome missionaries?
A
- minister
- alms
- altar
9
Q
What words did the Vikings introduce?
A
- are
- ugly
- trust
- they
- their
- though
10
Q
What words did the French invaders introduce?
A
- castle
- tower
- moat
- court
- chimney
- cooking words e.g. fry, boil, beef, pork, mutton and sausage
11
Q
What English words come from dutch?
A
- buoy
- skipper
- deck
- dock
12
Q
What English words come from Spain?
A
- galleon
- comrade
- armada
- grenade
13
Q
What words come from portugal?
A
- port wine
14
Q
What words come from South and Central America?
A
- tobacco
- potato
- maize
15
Q
What English words come from Germany?
A
- quartz
- plunder
16
Q
What English words come from Italy?
A
- cameo
- miniature
- balcony
- umbrella
17
Q
What words have been borrowed from India?
A
cockatoo and chintz
18
Q
What words have been borrowed from China?
A
tea
19
Q
What words have been borrowed from Arabia?
A
sash and sofa
20
Q
What words have been borrowed from Turkey?
A
coffee
21
Q
What words have been borrowed from Persia?
A
divan and shawl
22
Q
What words have been borrowed from West Africa?
A
chimpanzee and zebra
23
Q
What words have been borrowed from Australia?
A
kangaroo and budgerigar
24
Q
What is meant by synchronic variation?
A
variation at any given time
25
What is meant by **diachronic variation**?
variation over time
26
How are new words made?
- borrowings
- compounds
- blends
- acronyms
- initialisms
- word class changes
- morphology
- coinages
- abbreviations
27
What is meant by **borrowings**?
- words from other languages are incorporated into English e.g. shampoo
28
What is meant by **compounds**?
- new words are made by joining two words together e.g. laptop
29
What is meant by **blends**?
- new words are made by blending other words e.g. bromance
30
What is meant by **acronyms**?
- acronyms become words through common usage e.g. radar, scuba, asap
31
What is meant by **initialisms**?
- initialisms for phrases can become so commonly used that they become lexicalised e.g. FYI
32
What is meant by **word class changes**?
- new meanings are formes when words are used in different word classes e.g. ‘friend’ as a verb
33
What is meant by **morphology**?
- new words are formed when prefixes or suffixes are added to existing words e.g. ‘**un**friend’
34
What is meant by **coinages**?
- completely invented new words e.g. leng
35
What is **semantic change**?
- general term for how words change their meanings
36
What is meant by **amelioration**?
- a word develops more positive connotations over time
e.g. ‘nice’ originally meant ignorant q
37
What is meant by **pejoration**?
- words take on a more negative meaning
e.g. silly originally meant happy/fortunate
38
What is meant by **semantic reclamation**?
- particular groups consciously reclaim a pejorative and start to self-consciously ameliorate the meaning
e.g. ‘queer’
39
What is meant by **broadening**?
- when words pick up wider and less specific meanings
e.g. ‘navigate’ is no longer just about ships
40
What is meant by **narrowing**?
- when words gain more specific meanings and lose their broader meaning
e.g. ‘meat’ originally meant ‘food’
41
What are the different grammatical cases in modern English?
- **subjective/nominative** = a noun/pronoun is the subject of a verb
- **objective** = object of a verb (direct = **accussative** or indirect = **dative**)
- **possessive/genitive** = ownership or relationship
42
What is an **inflection**?
a change in the form of a word (typically the ending) to express a grammatical function or attribute such as tense, mood, person, number, case, and gender
43
What is one of the key grammatical changes in English?
the loss of inflections
44
What are some inflections in modern English?
- the possessive ‘s
- the plural -s
- the third person singular -s
- the past tense -d, -ed, or -t
- the negative particle ‘nt
- -ing forms of verbs
- -en forms of verbs
- the comparative -er
- the superlative -est
45
What are some early modern english verb inflections?
- -st
- -th
- art
46
How are verb inflections determined in Early Modern English?
- by the person
- ‘th’ = 3rd person singular
- ‘st’ = 2nd person singular
47
What is needed in Modern English to form a question or a negative?
an auxiliary verb
48
What do we do when the original sentence doesn’t have an auxiliary?
we add one - the **periphrastic ‘do’** in the correct tense
49
What is meant by **periphrasis**?
the use of one or more function words to express meaning that otherwise may be expressed through an inflection - the resulting phrase includes two or more collocated words instead of one inflected word
50
Why have some of these grammatical changes taken place?
In his book ‘Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue’ (2008), **John McWhorter** argues that they have their roots in the Celtic languages, which, also have these two features:
1. the necessary use of **present progressive** to describe a present action
2. the required periphrastic ‘do’ to form questions and negatives
51
What is meant by the **Great Vowel Shift**?
- the pronunciation of all Middle English long vowels was changed
- it is the major reason why English spellings now often deviate from how they represent pronunciations
52
Around what time did the Great Vowel shift occur?
- primarily between 1400 and 1700, beginning in Southern England
53
What is meant by **uptalk**?
- where the intonation rises at the end of a sentence
- sometimes this can be used to form questions, or perhaps to express doubt/uncertainty
54
What are some examples of recent phonological changes?
- vocal fry
- glottal stop/dropping of consonants
- ASMR
55
What is an example of a major graphological change?
- emoticons and emojis
56
Why did emojis emerge?
- developments in communication technology such as phones and the internet, means that written mode became electronic mode with the key difference being the informality
- people were writing far fewer words and it began to mimic spoken mode, BUT the electronic mode lacked **paralinguistic features** and therefore **pragmatic meaning** of the conversation is lost
57
When did people speak Old English?
500-1100
58
When did people speak Early Middle English?
1100-1300
59
When did people speak Late Middle English?
1300-1500
60
When did people speak Early Modern English?
1500-1700
61
When did people speak Modern English?
1700-present day
62
When was the printing press invented?
1476
63
When was Shakespeare writing?
1540s-1611
64
When was the first settlement in America?
1607
65
When was the King James Bible written?
1611
66
When was the Oxford English dictionary written?
1886
67
When was the telephone made?
1876
68
When was the first iphone made?
2007
69
Who invented the printing press?
William Caxton
70
When was the first dictionary made and by whom?
1604 - **Robert Cawdrey’s** Table Alphabeticall
