Reasons for
Language Change
The notion of change
How did language become so diverse? There seems to be
a tendency for language to split up, and it is worthwhile examining the reasons
for this. Is
language change a good thing or a bad thing?
Many automatically assume that change must necessarily
bad. Take this letter written to David Crystal, an expert on the English
language, at the time when he hosted a BBC radio programme on the English
language and invited comments from listeners.
Dear Sirs
I would appreciate
your view about why so many eminent authorities of English, who must know
better, should gravitate so abjectly to the regrettable tendency that if enough
idiots say something wrong it becomes right; instead of endeavouring to educate
these same idiots into some appreciation of the beauty found by using the many
shades of meaning in our very versatile language.…
I find it interesting that the writer prefers non-core
lexical items (eminent authorities rather than experts; gravitate
rather than be sympathetic to, abjectly rather than in such a
humiliating way; and so on. On the other hand, he/she uses ‘idiots’: a lexical
item suggesting strong value judgement. And there is a strong assumption that there is a clear
right and wrong; and that change is ugly.
Or take the following article, taken from The Times,
a
It’s just
not on. The sloppy language of Britain’s most articulate 18-year-olds has taken
a hammering from one of Britain’s biggest A-level examination boards … Take the
A-level history student whose analysis of Martin Luther’s excommunication by
the Catholic church was direct, to say the least. ‘Luther came in for a lot of
stick,’ the candidate wrote. Or the pupil who summed up the radical theology of
John Calvin, the 16th century Protestant reformer, with the words: ‘Calvin’s
ideas were over the top’
It is a worrying trend towards
colloquialism that A-level examiners from their
The article imitates the colloquial language
that is being complained about in the first sentence. Do you think
over-colloquial language is a problem in the context of exams?
Finally, have a look at this extract from
Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.
‘I am summoned to see the headmistress at morning
break on Monday,’ said Miss Brodie. ‘I have no doubt
Miss Mackay wishes to question my methods of instruction … The word “education”
comes from the root e from ex, out, and duco,
I lead. It means a leading out. To me education is a leading out of what is
already there in the pupil’s soul. To Miss Mackay it is a putting in of
something that is not there, and that is not what I call education, I call it
intrusion, from the Latin root prefix in meaning in and the stem trudo, I thrust’ (p. 37)
You will recall the terms root and stem
in our discussion of morphology. Miss Brodie has
given morphological and etymological analyses of education and intrusion.
But then she proceeds to assume that the original Latin meanings are the correct
meanings of the words in English. (This is sometimes known as the etymological
fallacy.) Do you agree that the original meaning or the etymological
meaning of a word is its correct meaning?
So, is change to be welcomed or not? If you
accept the change = degeneration, you might then say:
- ‘if meanings change, how can we be sure of what anybody
means?’
- ‘I took
all this trouble learning the language properly; why
should these people get away with not putting in the same effort
that I have put?’
- ‘it’s so ugly!’
The negative
view was certainly prevalent among linguists (philologists) in the 19th century
and first half of the 20th century. Here are a couple of quotations.
A language may become greatly altered by the
excessive prevalence of the wearing out processes, abandoning much which in
other languages is retained and valued. It is necessary that we take notice of
the disorganizing and destructive workings of this tendency … (W D Whitney
1904: 75)
That phonetic evolution is a disturbing force
is now obvious. Wherever it does not create alternations, it helps to loosen
the grammatical bonds between words; the total number of forms is uselessly
increased, the linguistic mechanism is obscured and complicated to the extent
that the irregularities born of phonetic change win out over the forms grouped
under general patterns … (Ferdinand de Saussure 1949:
161)
However, if
we accept that change = adaptation (evolution), we might then say:
- If
people who live in the world have to constantly learn information about
the world (what new trade blocs have been formed? who’s taken over as
prime minister?), we also have to constantly ‘update’ our information
about language. So, through this process, we know that we cannot use gay
to mean carefree and happy as people did thirty years ago.
- The
first charge of imprecision we’ll probably need to take a little more
seriously. I suspect that most of the time, there is really very little
ambiguity because the context and the surrounding text usually makes the meaning clear.
How do we cope with the charge of ambiguity? For example, the word
presently meant ‘currently’ up until about Shakespeare’s time. However,
in British English today, the word usually means ‘shortly’ or ‘soon’. Today,
the earlier meaning has been revived. (The earlier sense of the word has been
preserved in any case in some British and American dialects.) Appeal to the
‘original’ meaning is unavailing because we don’t know how far back we have to go.
In spite of the contrasting meaning, during the times I have encountered the
word, there has been no ambiguity as to the meaning of the word. (Think of
sentences like: ‘I’m presently in charge of the sales division’ and ‘I’ll
attend to that presently’.) It seems to me that imprecision and ambiguity is
very often not an issue.
Recent examples of change
Some suggest that language change cannot be observed.
But in my own lifetime, I am aware of changes in the language:
o
pronunciation of nephew
o
use of shillings in
o
use of wireless in
Change and identity
Sometimes change is related to an individual’s or a
community’s sense of identity. In other words, some individuals/communities
(and therefore their linguistic style) might exercise some sort of attractive
pull. They might be considered prestigious or proper or correct or fashionable
or hip. The sociolinguists Bob le Page (
(Picture on the right:
Labov’s study of rhoticity in
All accents
were originally rhotic. Non-rhotic accents began to appear in
In 1917,
linguist Edward Sturtevant wrote: ‘A strong western r is a distinct hindrance
to a man who is trying to make his way in the East or the South of the
Labov had a hunch that this variation was not
random. It has been observed by many that shop assistants usually imitate the
accent of their customers. So, he chose three
The result was that there was a higher percentage of r’s in the Saks; a higher percentage of r’s
when shop assistants were asked to repeat their response.
He concluded
that social stratification could be observed through language use in
The centripetal force is at work here. There is
a pull towards what is considered prestigious or ‘correct’.
(Picture on the right:
Peter Trudgill on
Sometimes, the change can be temporary. The British
linguist Peter Trudgill noticed that his own style of
speaking changed when speaking to different informants when he conducted
face-to-face interviews with them in
In one of
his studies, he was interested in the glottal stop. (The IPA symbol is [?]).The
glottal stop is used in some
(Picture on the left:
Trudgill noticed that he used
more glottal stops when talking to people who also used more glottal stops. His
explanation was that he was trying to reduce social distance by unconsciously
picking up features of their accent.
The accommodation theory states that speakers
will converge towards their interlocutor when they wish to reduce social
distance, or get on with one another. They will diverge (ie become
linguistically less similar) when they wish to emphasise their distinctiveness
or increase social distance.
Trudgill
also investigated the alternation between the pronunciation
of -ing. The standard pronunciation is -ing [iN] whereas earlier, it was -in’
[In]. When he investigated this, internal distinctions were seen. The men
seem to be pulling one way, and the women another. Generally, women are more status
conscious than men and want to ‘speak better’ whereas men admire masculinity
and toughness. (See the diagram below.)
Labov
on Martha’s Vineyard
(On the left: Map of
Labov’s experiment based on
the English in
‘summer people’ have property
in ‘Down-Island’, the north-eastern part of the island – well developed. He was interested in the
sound of the diphthongs [eI] and [aU] (as in foul and fine), mainly
the former. Some of the
local folk had diphthongs that started off as schwas, ie [@I] and [@U]. (You might want to think of this
in relation to our discussion about the Great Vowel Shift.)
(Picture
below: Rugged landscape in
Labov devised
questions that elicited words containing the diphthongs, and he took note of
which pronunciation was produced. He tabulated his scores
against the different age groups and found the local diphthongs prominent in
the 31–45 age group, but least in the over 75 age group.
The local diphthongs were also more prominent in Up-Island than Down-Island. The diphthong was
particularly prominent in a group of fishermen in Up-Island. The movement seems to be away
from the norm, and not towards the norm as in
Hence this seems to
be centrifugal, with emphasis on ‘we are different’, rather than ‘we are
like you’. The
locals disapproved of the summer people, and approved of the old
fishermen. The former epitomised indolent, consumerist values; whereas
the latter epitomised good old Yankee virtues: independence, skill, physical
strength, and courage.
Interestingly, the movement is not only away from one ‘centre’, but also
towards another ‘centre’. There is the push away from one, working together
with a pull towards another one. This can be represented diagrammatically as
below.
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Stabilisation: a natural
change
It is
also possible to look at the internal system of a language and
discover internal forces at work. We can think of this in terms of
For example, if you
build a sand castle on the beach, we expect the castle to be disappear when
the tide comes in. ‘Nature’ seems to smoothen out the irregular landscape.
The peaks are flattened and the dips are filled in. A word that is difficult
to pronounce such as Old English hlafordum underwent simplification
and deletion to lord. |
Example: plural
system
- In
PDE, the general rule for forming plurals seems to be: ‘add -s or -es to form a plural’. In OE:
- cwen–cwene (queens),
- scip–scipu (ships),
- hund–hundas (dogs),
- sunu–suna (sons),
- eaga-eagan (eyes), and
- word–word (words).
- The
system is complicated; therefore we can describe this as an unstable
feature
- By
Shakespeare’s time (around 1600), the choice was reduced mainly to between
-(e)s and -(e)n, as
in eyen (eyes), shooen (shoes)
and housen (houses).
- There
is a continued tendency to regularise irregularities, for example, the
foreign plural systems used in English being replaced by the normal
English plural system: formulas v. formulae; appendixes
v. appendices – data and datas
(seldom datum); agenda and agendas (seldom agendum);
graffiti and graffitis (seldom graffito)
– spaghetti is plural in Italian, but singular in English.
- Today
then we are still left with ‘irregular’ plurals, some of which descended
from Old English – generally everyday words: man–men; child–children;
sheep–sheep; goose–geese. The irregular plural of brother
(brethren) is becoming increasingly rare, even in religious
contexts; the regular brothers is now preferred. The other irregular plurals are from
other languages, particularly Latin and Greek (phenomenon–phenomena;
analysis–analyses).
However,
this does not account for some sound changes: for example,
- in the shift in some British
accents towards using the glottal stop [?] instead of [th] in matter
does not involve less effort;
- the shift of
Language and thought (reality)
We can also think of a reason for language change that
is related to the way language and thought are related. Let us start with a
rather tentative and commonsensical model:
- sees
new thing
experience it name it - made-up word or an
old word used in a related or new way; a combination of several old
words; a word borrowed from another language?
language reflects new physical, environmental,
social or cultural situations.
Different language
for different realities.
Examples in
lexis include different lexical items for the physical landscape.
- bluff, creek, gulch, rapids and swamp in
- coomb (cwm),
fen, heath and moor in
- bush, paddock and outback in
Differences
in the human or urban environment, would also result
in distinctive lexis:
- dhobi (washerman),
dhoti (loin-cloth), lathi (long,
heavy stick), sahib (sir, master), tiffin
(luncheon) and charpoy (light bedstead) in
- shophouses, void decks, five-foot-way, the MRT, HDB
flats in
- Some South Asian lexis familiar
to Singaporeans (dhobi, tiffin and charpoy),
some ‘internationalised’ as people become familiar with South Asian
culture (dhoti).
Another example of a new reality is the new reality of
science? Doing science hasn’t been something that was done in the past. Indeed,
‘The past is a foreign country: they do
things differently there’ (L P Hartly, The
Go-Between). Presumably the future is like a foreign country. With
the rise of science and empiricism, a new set of vocabulary and a new style of
grammar were required. When science first began to be ‘done’, lexical expansion
was necessary. This happened:
- By borrowing words from Latin
(the traditional language for doing science) — altitude (15 c.), stria (16 c.)
- By borrowing words from Arabic
— azimuth (14 c.), alcohol (17 c.), algebra (16 c.)
- Borrow words from Greek — diagonal
(16 c.), hypotenuse (16 c.)
- By refashioning existing word —
mean in maths (16 c.), gravity (= weightiness) to gravity
(=force, in physics; 17 c.)
- By using someone’s name — pasteurise
(19 c.), Boyle’s law (19 c., although interesting the scientist
lived in the 17th century)
Science also required the use of new
structures.
I poured the chemical into the jar and it exploded [parataxis]
Because I poured the chemical
into the jar, it exploded [hypotaxis]
Because the chemical was poured
into the jar, it exploded [passivisation]
The contact of the chemical and
glass resulted in an explosion [nominalisation]
Re-evaluating the
diagram
However, some people suggest that the model
that we used in the diagram above is too naïve, for two reasons:
(a) the ‘thing’
can be less straightforward than it seems; and
(b) perhaps the
directionality of the arrows is also less straightforward.
Example: shapes
- there is one kind of ‘thing’
here — geometrical shapes;
- there are two kinds of ‘things’
— rectangles and circles;
- there are four kinds of ‘things’ —
squares, rectangles, circles and oval shapes.
More examples: colour terms, etc.
- In Zuni, there is one word for both
orange and yellow in English.
- The Welsh word glas covers the same range as the English green,
blue and grey.
- Malay has two words kami and kita
for English we. Kami is the
‘exclusive’ we (ie not including the hearer) and kita is the ‘inclusive’ we
- Cantonese has two words yeh-yeh and kung-kung for English grandfather.
Yeh-yeh is the paternal grandfather
whereas kung-kung is the maternal grandfather.
- The English word privacy
cannot be easily translated into many other languages. Perhaps English
recognises ‘privacy’ as a ‘thing’, but not other languages?
Another model
Each language or dialect ‘traps’ us into a
particular view of things, and communication between speakers of different
languages and dialects cannot be totally complete, as each language and dialect
divides up experience differently.
Whorfism (Linguistic
determinism)
- A
Zuni speaker might just ‘see’ one ‘thing’, whereas an English speaker two
‘things’ — precisely because of the languages that they speak.
- A
Welsh speaker might just ‘see’ one ‘thing’, whereas an English speaker
three ‘things’ — precisely because of the languages that they speak.
- This
is known as linguistic
determinism,
or the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, or
simply Whorfism.
A plea for a ‘moderate’ version of linguistic
determinism
Reasons for a
moderate version
- Studies
also suggest that speakers can also imagine or think of things that have
not been encoded by their own languages or dialects. We can imagine things
and experience which we cannot label. We can think about experiences that
are in some sense ‘ineffable’ or ‘indescribable’, although this does
mean that it is rather more difficult to think about them. This suggests
therefore that it is possible to escape from the ‘prison house’ of
language.
- But
our native language encourages us to think in a particular way.
Three metaphors
Language is like:
- a
receptacle
- a
prison
- a
pair of blinkers
Two quotations:
- ‘He
gave men speech, and speech created thought, which is the measure of the
universe’ (P B Shelley, the 19th-century poet, Prometheus Unbound,
Act 2 sc. 4, l. 72)
- ‘Expression
is the dress of thought’ (Alexander Pope, the 18-century poet, Essay on
Criticism Part 2, l. 318)
The new model
- How
then is this a reason for language change?
- If we accept that languages and
dialects ‘reflect’ in some way the perspectives (‘thoughts’) of the
speakers, then we must accept that if their perspectives change, the
language or dialect has to change concomitantly.
- Similarly, if a language is
adopted by ‘non-traditional’ speakers who have different cultural
perspectives, then the language must adapt itself to these new
perspectives as well.
Language contact and pidginisation (creolisation)
A pidgin (eg Bazaar Malay in 60s) is a temporary language that
arises out different linguistic communities needing to communicate. (The process
of creating a pidgin is called pidginisation.) A
pidgin that is learnt as a mother tongue (eg Baba Malay in 60s) is
called a ‘creole’. (The process of creating a creole is called creolisation.) Sometimes, these creoles
become languages in their own right. New languages or new varieties of
languages can therefore arise out of these situations of language contact.
English as
a creole?
For a long time, Old English had contact with Norse and Danish (from