Week 7 - Age and Language change Flashcards
What was originally thought about language change?
- Couldn’t be observed until it had been completed
- Bloomfield 1933 “The process has never been observed”
What is the uniformitarian principle?
Can only explain what happened in the past by explaining today
What is the embedding problem?
- Cannot understand the development of language change apart from the social life of a community in which it occurs
What is the actuation problem?
- Why do changes happen at a particular time?
- Who are the innovators?
- Are there any social events that cause a shift
How does age stratification of variables reflect change?
- Within the speech of an individual over the course of their lives
- Within the community
What is age grading?
Characteristic linguistic behaviour for a particular age group
Define apparent time
- Comparing speakers of different ages to establish language change
- We assume language becomes fixed once people reach adoloscence
Define real-time
Comparing data from different periods
What are thedisadvantages of apparent time?
- Language is not necessarily fixed after adolescence
- Danger of manufacturing conditions
What is an example of a real time study?
- Regional Dutch dialect
- 1979-2015
- Formant charts show vowel shift
Define synchronic change
Change happening now
Define diachronic change
Change happening over time
Give 3 examples of English language change
- Amelioration: Awesome
- Pejoration: Silly
- gh was once /x/ and now it is silent eg. DauGHter
What causes language change?
- Simplification
- Generalisation
- Cultural factors eg. technology
- Social events
- Perception
What are the steps of change?
- Random fluctuation in a social group
- Change spreads to all members of the group
- Change spreads to other groups
- Change adopted by larger community
- If change not from highest status group then it is stigmatised
- Stigmatisation initiates change from above, speakers start to use language from above
