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Introduction
Generally it is believed that most of the languages of Europe and India are the
descendents of an ancient parent language which existed 4000 years ago. The name, traces,
or the historical record of that language is no more available now. Modern Researchers
identify it with the name of the “Indo-European Language”. Many Questions pop in every
mind that is interested in solving this mystery of language change:
The purpose of this work is not to search for the answers to all these Questions. Herein we
have tried to collect the examples of how scholars succeeded in studying subtle changes in
language.
Variables:
Independent Variables:
i. Sociolinguistic Factors.
ii. Psycholinguistic Factors
iii. Therapeutic Factors
iv. Chain Reaction Factors
Dependent Variables
i. Syntactic Aspects of Language
ii. Morphological Aspects
iii. Phonetic Aspects
Methodology
This work is based on a Secondary or Academic Research . Only Qualitative Data
will be collected and arranged. The aim of the work is to prepare a mini catalogue of the
achievements attained until now.
Hypothesis:
Depending on my background knowledge of linguistics and its Method of Research I
expect that
Delimitations;
Sociolinguistic Changes:
Sociolinguistic causes of change can be studied under three heads:
i. Fashion And Random Fluctuations
ii. Foreign Influence
iii. Social Need
Random Fluctuations:
Every speaker tries to articulate the exact pronunciation of every word and
segment. But naturally, no two utterances can be exactly alike. However, minor gaps
between different articulations of the same sound remain imperceptible to human ears. The
major differences are often successfully gauged. But since the listeners are more attentive
to the message only, they hardly give feedback about the deviated pronunciation.
Therefore, the speaker remains unaware of his pronunciation difference with the prototype
sound. This gradual shift from the prototype pronunciation is not effected by a few persons
only. In fact every speaker contributes to this massive change in the pronunciation system.
Thus, when the drift becomes marked enough, we realize the change has taken place.
Fashion:
Out of the variety of deviated pronunciations (of one or more segments) one or the
other is preferred to by the majority of the speakers. This preferred pronunciation emerges
as a Fashion and qualifies the status of a new prototype sound. Just as there can be no
logical and predictable reasons behind the trends in garment fashions, Fashions of
pronunciation are also arbitrary and whimsical. But whatever they are, they leave little
choice to the people.
Foreign Bodies:
Random Fluctuations and Fashions are not the sufficiently powerful factors to account for
all changes in the language system. A few changes also occur because of the influence of
foreign languages. The impact of foreign languages can be studied under the following
heads:
Substratum Theory:
When the immigrants, or the conquered subjects learn a new language, the features
of their L 1 are carried over to their L 2. These new learners hand over these imperfections
to the next generation. In this way the imperfections become the part of the code and often
a new dialect emerges, such as Black’s English. This is one of the major contributing
factors in the change of English language because this language is adopted by a great
number of immigrants.
Overcorrection:
Sometimes the descendents of the above mentioned immigrants pour extra efforts
to eradicate their imperfection. But they fall to overcorrection and exaggerate the corrected
feature, in this manner they produce another set of new features which add up to the basic
stock of the code:
e.g. for
for
Borrowing:
In Sociolinguistics ‘Borrowing’ refers to ‘copying’. It has four important
characteristics:
i. Coinage:
To fulfill its needs, a language sometimes coin new words by the processes of blending,
compounding, acronym formation, clippings, abbreviations etc.
ii. Emphasis:
The other example of change in function because of a need is the use of
double/repeated negative especially in Black’s English. According to Traditional Grammar,
the use of double negative in a sentence is incorrect. But the sentence ‘it ain’t no cat can’t
get in no coop.’ is a negative one. Its repeated use of negative is accounted for on the basis
of the ‘need for Emphasis’.
iii. Politeness:
In civilized societies polite and indirect assertions are preferred to rude and straight
forward demands. This need of politeness carries out changes in the choice of vocabulary,
shape of the sentence structure, and in the type of intonation pattern. For example, compare
the two sentences given below:
a) Prompt payment would be appreciated.
b) We order you to pay immediately.
Psycholinguistic Factors:
Assimilation:
During the flow of speech, a few obtrusive sound combinations are simplified and
changed into an easier single sound. This process is observed at both the word and the
stress level. At word lever ‘hand bag’ is the example which is usually articulated as
. The bilabial effect of b sound creeps back and delete d sound and convert nasal n into a
bilabial m.
At sentence level, ‘would you’ is pronounced as . Instead of clicking
the tongue at the alveolar ridge, and at the hard palate, once each, only one click is
performed that is on the Alveolar ridge and the other one is skipped. As for the stability of
such change, Assimilation at word level becomes permanent, but at sentence level it is
temporary.
Elision:
Instead of changing the sound, sometimes it is dropped altogether. The purpose is
to maintain the flow of speech. Example of elision within a word is sandwich
C-V-C-V Sequence:
Consonant-vowel sequence is found in all languages. Though it does not follow
with accuracy yet the trends of languages change suggest that the languages are moving
towards that end.
Warmpth :
The ‘fambly-like phenomenon are observable in other combination too. For
example, + t combinations are intervened by an intrusive p . Therefore, this potential
change may appear in future as:
dreampt, somepthing, hamster, etc.
fantcy:
Another phenomenon is the intrusion of in combinations. Therefore, the
potential possibilities are the following spelling:
Printce, tintsel, mintser, etc…
Ingland:
In this example, combination seems to be moving towards the and
combination.
Tone Languages:
There is a worldwide tendency that vowels are articulated at a slightly higher pitch
before voiceless consonants than before the voiced one. Some languages like Chinese,
exaggerated the former style. As a result they are transformed into the tone languages now.
They differentiate the words fromone another by the variation of pitch.
Reverse Change:
In fourteenth century, a change began to appear in Swedish language. It was the
omission of /d/ in the final position e.g. in the words like ved, hund, blad, etc. the final /d/
sound was dropped. But in the twentieth century this sound was restored probably because
of the increased literacy:
Similarly, in America, there was a tendency to skip one consonant if the final
cluster contained two e.g. kept, crept, swept, began to be pronounced as kep, crep, swep
tec. But if the presence of the final consonant marks tense, then normally the final
consonant is not dropped e.g. stepped, heaped, are pronounced as /stept/ -/heapt/.
Therapeutic Changes:
This section will discuss the preservation tendencies of language. How it trims
outgrowths and shaves off irregularities.
The underlying principle is that the efficiency of our memory can be enhanced limitlessly if
the data is systematically organized. Since human language consists of limited number of
patterns whose rearrangements produce a variety of meanings. If these patterns break
down, they bring in stress on memory. To counter this difficulty, self-regulating devices of
language become active and restore the broken patterns. This Restoration of the broken
patterns is termed as therapeutic change.
Voice :
There was no partner for and /h/ sounds. At that time, a therapeutic process
began was provided with a voiced partner . The reasons were two: (i) First /j/ sound
was inserted after /z/ sound e.g. pleasure which was first pronounced as /plez / now began
to be pronounced as /plezj /. The combination of /z/ and /j/ sounds produced / / sound (ii)
the / / sound was also borrowed from the French words like baige, garage etc. As for the
/h/ sound, since no partner could be devised for it, it is tending to disappear from English
language e.g. in many words of RP it is not pronounced now. For example, ghost,
exhibit / etc.
The treatment of /r/ and /h/ sounds is an example of how language creates
regularities and remove irregularities as a result of an innate process.
Vowel Pairs:
In the above example, consonant patterning was studied in voice quality. Here we
shall study the patterning of the vowels of the same height. For example, / and .
In New York Labov conducted this study in 1972. According to the findings of this
study certain diphthongs were changing their sounds. was expanding into .A
slower change was also noted. It was the movement from / to . A change in the back
vowel combination / also brought a similar change in its counterpart front vowel . It
is an example of how language maintains correlation between its different patterns, and
how neatness and harmony are effected.
1. Principle of Isomorphism:
One form should mark one type of change, one type of ending should express one
aspect of meaning e.g. tense or plural should be expressed by one type of inflection or
derivation.
2. The rules of alteration in the from of words should be systematic and easily detectable.
Under the influence of the same rules many of the irregular nouns have become
regular plurals e.g. housen houses, suna sons, media medium, syllabi syllabuses etc.
Similarly, a few nouns which were singular with ending lost this sound to bestow
prominent singularity on the lexeme e.g. peas pea.
Actually (i) became the cause of (ii). The last accusative inflection from Nouns might have
turned the preceding obj. into a subj as
Achilles chansed to sle philes.
Here Achilles was meant to be obj, but it passed as subject. In this way a neatening was
effected in the syntax of English.
French language is known for the use of double negative without making the
sentence negative. For example,
Je ne sais pas
I don’t know.
In the above sentence ‘ne’ and ‘pas’ are negative items. ‘Pas’ is the emphatic negative.
Now a change has occurred. ‘Pas’ is considered a regular negative and sometime ‘ne’ is
dropped as:
Je sais pas
I do not know.
In this way the syntax maintains both the negation and the emphasis. Moreover, the
confusing item is also dropped. The neatening process is, thus, performed.
Grim’s Law:
This law describes a series of consonant change from Indo-European to English
language.
/
/ /
Great Vowel Shift:
/ ------------ ------------ /
------------ ------------ /
------------ ------------
The Question arises why this shift occurred. The answer has been suggested with
the help of two theoretical chains:
(i) Drag Chain
(ii) Push Chain
Drag Chain:
It is a chain process in which one vowel slips off its place. Some other vowel fill up
this gap, and a chain process begins.
Examples: In German language a Drag Chain was formed in this manner.
Push Chain:
In this process, a vowel begins to slip forward imperceptibly, driving the next one
further ahead. This act of pushing on continues in a chain. The example of this chain is
present in the late Middle Chinese language which began in 18th C. There is a strong
evidence available that the change took place in this sequence.
800 AD
/
1200 AD
In view of the above Data the hypothesis is proved that language changes can be studied
however subtle and imperceptible they are.
Bibliography:
1. Aitchison, Jean (1991) Language Change: Progress or Decay. Cambridge
University Press.
2. Matthews . P.H. (2005) Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics. OUP
3. Yule, George (1977) The Study of Language.
4. Crystal, David (1994) Encyclopaedia of Language.
5. Lyon, Jhon
6. Robins
7. Hudson