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1、General Introduction,Linguists have traditionally studied variations in a language occurring at the same, time (synchronic study) or how language develops over time (diachronic or historical study). The study of language change is often narrowed to consideration of change in one aspect of language:
2、lexis, semantics or syntax,Before the 20th century, most of the evidence that survives is of written forms. There are some second-hand written evidence of spoken language forms, but no recorded speech earlier than that allowed by modern recording technology.,The Indo-European languages,The language
3、family to which English belongs is sometimes known as the Indo-European group, a description which indicates the geographical spread of the languages in this family over a long historical period.,Indo-European Family,One convenient way to represent the long-term change as new languages arise out of
4、protoype or “parent” languages is to use a diagram like a family tree or genealogy,Language change never occurs at the same rate in all places. The language of the 14th century author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (late 14th-century ) has many features we find in Old English (5th-9th centuries,
5、 Alfred the Great ), while Chaucer, writing at more or less the same time, uses a variety of written English far closer to the forms of today.,Sound change Morphological Change Vocabulary change,1. Sound Change,1) Old English 2) The Great Vowel Shift http:/facweb.furman.edu/mmenzer/gvs/seehear2.htm,
6、Old English,The first extended written English texts were made by missionary priests, who spoke and wrote Latin. They adapted the Roman alphabet, adding the letters (known as “ash“) (“eth“) and (“thorn“). The priests purpose in writing was to produce English texts for a handful of educated and liter
7、ate men to read aloud to the illiterate and largely pagan people whom they sought to bring into the church.,The Great Vowel Shift,The Great Vowel Shift refers to the 15th century change in pronunciation of long that occurred in England. It was first identified and studied by Otto Jesperson, a lingui
8、st from Denmark, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.,Most linguists agree that the Great Vowel Shift did not occur all at once. That is why many English words are spelt differently. Some linguists account for the GVS by suggesting that Englands rule by the French led to disenchantment (觉醒
9、) with French pronunciation of vowels, which is a similar pronunciation to that of Middle English. To distance themselves from prior French occupation and rule, the English ruling class may have deliberately changed pronunciation to reflect that theirs was a language different from French.,After the
10、 Great Vowel Shift, vowel pronunciation shifted up one place. So that.,Step 1: i and u drop and become /i/. and u,Step 2: e and o move up, becoming i and u,Step 3: a moves forward to ,Step 4: becomes e, becomes o,Step 5: moves up to ,Step 6: e moves up to i The new e was created in Step 4; now that
11、e moves up to i,Step 7: moves up to e The new created in Step 5 now moves up,Step 8: i and u drop to ai and au,five,sweet,house,food,stone,name,As a result, the Anglo-Saxons lived (like the Scottish still do) in a hoose. They had a gode day milking a coo. They had feef fingers on each hand; they wor
12、e boats on their fate. Boy in North-East England is sitting by a river, crying. Passer-by asks whats up. Boy says Me mate fell in the water. Oh thats terrible, how did it happen?. Fell right out of me sandwich, into the water!,2. Morphological Change,About half of the common vocabulary of Modern Eng
13、lish comes from Old English, especially names of everyday objects and basic processes,The standard Scandinavian ending for a street name is -gate, from Old Norse gata, which means a way, street or road. Examples include: Briggate (=bridge street) Coppergate (=street of the cup makers) Kirkgate (=chu
14、rch street) Skeldergate (=street of the shield makers),Cognate pairs These are pairs of words descended from a common Germanic source, but entering English at different times, and which persist in both Old English and Scandinavian forms. In each pair, the first item comes from the Anglo-Saxon form,
15、the second from the Scandinavian form: no/nay from/fro rear/raise shirt/skirt edge/egg (verb, as in egg on),Legal or governmental termslaw (this replaced Old English doom or dom) by-law (law of the byr or village) outlaw (man outside the law) husband (from hus-bondi householder or manager of a house
16、),Parts of the body and animal names calf leg skin skull bull kid reindeer (originally Norse rein, meaning deer, with later addition of Old English deer, meaning animal - the whole word is thus a compound, meaning deer-animal),3. Vocabulary change,Addition of new words Loss of words Changes in the meaning of words,Addition of new words,coinage(创新词) clipped words(缩略词) blending(紧缩法) acronyms(词首字母缩略词) back-formation(逆构词法) functional shift borrowing,
