![]() ![]() ![]() Much of the discussion is this textbook has focused on synchronic linguistics, which is the study of language patterns at a single point in time, such as how the house is being built is grammatical right now. Representation of change over time in the relative usage of the house is building, the house is in building, and the house is being built. Today, the house is building could only mean that the house is somehow building some other structure, while the house is in building just seems ungrammatical.įigure 14.1. Instead, the older forms are now the forms that would be out of place. However, the newer form has now replaced the older forms, overcoming the prescriptive pressure against it, so that it no longer has any negative perception (Figure 14.1, right). This new variant was looked down upon by the educated elite at the time, who viewed it as “clumsy” and “at war with the genius of the English tongue” (Marsh 1862: 461–465). But by the 1700s, a new variant had emerged, with some speakers saying the house is being built instead (Figure 14.1, centre). However, while variation may be stable over time (see Section 10.3), any given instance of sociolinguistic variation could eventually collapse, leaving older forms obsolete and forgotten, while the newer forms are now considered unremarkable rather than socially meaningful.įor example, to describe the construction of a new house, speakers of English in the 1600s would have said either the house is building or the house is in building (as depicted in Figure 14.1, left). As discussed in Section 2.5 and Chapter 10, languages naturally vary, and different linguistic variants can carry different social meanings. Variation and changeĬhanges in the world around us are not the only reasons that a language might change. No one wants to keep saying clever modification to routine activities when they could get by with the much shorter expression life hack. We could just use cumbersome descriptions, but the more common a concept is, the more likely we are to dedicate or adapt specialized terminology for it for more efficient communication. The world around us is constantly changing, with new technology, cultural shifts, and growing scientific understanding, and we want to be able to talk about those changes. ![]() The sentence in (1) demonstrates one important pressure that can cause a language to change. If we go back even further in time, this sentence would essentially be uninterpretable. And the term hack had long been used to refer to infiltrating computer systems, but it would not be combined with life to refer to cleverly modifying one’s routine activities until the 2000s. Online journals existed, but they wouldn’t be called blogs until the late 1990s. Smartphones were still very new, and app was not yet used to refer to programs for phones, since the very concept of installing programs on phones was not widespread. In the following discussion and throughout the rest of this chapter, all etymological information for English is from the Oxford English Dictionary Online 2023, unless otherwise noted.įor example, the word app as a short form of application had just started being used, but it was only used for computer programs. This sentence would be readily understood by many users of English in the early 2020s, but just 30 years earlier, it would have been very difficult for anyone to decode it, because some of the expressions used here did not exist or did not have the same meaning in the 1990s. (1) I found a new app for my phone that I read about on a life hack blog. Chapter 14: Historical Linguisticsġ4.1 Why do languages change? A need for change ![]()
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