Language Change and Variation in English: Sociolinguistics and Historical Linguistics

Language Change and Variation in English

Linguistic Variability

All languages can be considered ad open and dynamic entities which adapt to the history and culture of the speech communities in which they are in use. In modern languages we usually analyse language variability in relation to its standard variety, which is considered the language "par excellence" in terms of social prestige and domains of use.

Sociolinguistics

• Is the study of relations between language and society.

Language behaviour and language variability are influenced by social factors such as:

• Gender, social network, social class, ethnicity and age

An example is Labov's sociolinguistic work carried out during the 1960s, in particular the analysis of the patterning of [r] pronunciation in New York City. The use of the prestigious "R-full" pronunciation was less frequently used by lower-class speakers, and increased in the pronunciation of the middle and upper-class speakers. This phenomenon is explained by Labov ad an example of hypercorrection

• All speakers tended to conform to the more prestigious norms
• Is more typical of socially insecure speakers such ad middle classes and women

Historical Linguistics

Historical linguistics/diachronic linguistics, has been the main paradigm of investigation of language change over time. There are two main approaches to historical language change

1. Comparative linguistics, which is based on the concept of "proto-language", usually a reconstructed language. o Example: English is a Germanic language, which originated from Indo-European
2. The history of language, which is the study of the changes undergone by a single language over the centuries. Extralinguistic factors which contribute to language change are, for example: technological innovation, military conquest and immigration. The internal causes are changes leading to balance in the system, for example: the analogical spread of regular forms.

Phonological Change

Phonological change deals with any mutation within the sound system of language ad can be both sporadic and regular. Sporadic change: refers to changes which affect the sounds of a limited number of words

• Example (e.g) the loss of in OE (Old English) "speak"

Regular change: implies changes leading to the re-organization of the phonological inventory of a language

• E.g: the split of the nasal phoneme /n/ (sing.).The Great Vowel Shift started in the 15th century and affected Me long vowels: o Bite, mete, name, ute, fode, bot

Morpho-Syntactic Change

Refers to any change in both the morpho-phonematic and syntactic systems of a language. An example of morpho-phonematic change in English is represented by the levelling of the noun ending system in the transition from late OE to early ME. Two main examples of syntactic change are:

• Word order, or the order if the elements within the sentence
• Grammaticalization, the phenomenon by which a grammatical function is given to a previously autonomous word o E.g: the changes which led to the formation of PDE modal/auxiliar verbs. The verbs "wilian" and "cunnan", which correspond to PDE "will" and "can", functioned in OE ad main verbs, meaning respectively "want" and "know"

Semantic Change

Refers in any mutation in the meaning of individual lexical item, which is commonly influenced by external factors such as borrowing, scientific innovation, socio-cultural change. There are different kinds of semantic changes:

• Widening, or the use of a particular item in more than one context o E.g the PDE "dog", which originally meant "a particularly powerful breed of dog"
• Narrowing, which indicates the opposite process o E.g PDE "meat", was originally used with the meaning of "food"
• Pejoration, which is linked to speakers' social attitude E.g PDE "silly" derives from ME "sely" meaning "happy/innocent" o
• Amelioration, which refers to a change denoting a positive attitude towards a certain word o E.g PDE "queen" comes from OE "cwen" meaning "women/wife"

Old English

The original inhabitants of the British Isles were the Celts, Indo-European who had lived in Europe since 2000 B.C. in 54 B.C the Romans invaded the British island and Latin became the language of public and private recordings. The Roman heritage can be still detected in some urban terminology such as toponymy's endings in -chester (from Latin "castra", a fortified military camp) like "Manchester and Lancaster. In the 5th century A.D, groups of West-Germanic tribes settled in the southern and eastern parts of the island. The stage of the language that goes from c. 700 to 1150 A.D is commonly known as the OE period

• It refers to Germanic dialects spoken by Jutes, Angles and Saxons: Kentish, West-Saxon, Mercian and Northumbrian.

The Saxon, the Angles and the Jutes, drove the native Celts out of the main urban centres and established total political hegemony.Other Celtic communities were forced to move westwards and northwards, into areas we know now as Cornwall, Wales, Cumbria and Scotland, where Celtic languages are still spoken today. In the year 867, Vikings (Scandinavians) settled in north-eastern part of England and almost conquered the island. King Alfred, the head of the West-Saxon reign, defeated them and pushed them out of his kingdom, re-conquered part of the Scandinavian possessions, savings his kingdoms and also the West-Saxon language.

• This dialect is considered the first standard written language

At the time the Anglo-Saxon court was one of the most important political, religious and cultural centres in Europe. King Alfred the Great encouraged the use of English for writing. Danish (Vikings) influence was the strongest because the two Germanic languages had similar grammatical structures, declensions and conjugation. English toponyms in -by are Danish in origin: Rugby, Derby, Whitby (the danish word by meant "farm" or "town"). Simple life-words borrowed from danish: law, band, odd, rotten, rugged, die. After 1066, West-Saxon was substituted by Anglo-Norman, the variety of French spoken by the Norman conquerors; English continued to be spoken and to change. The event that most contributed to shaping of the OE language was the Christianization of the island, starting from the 6th century, the main consequence was the introduction of the Latin alphabet and the progressive abandonment by the Anglo-Saxons of the Runic alphabet. From the 9th to the 11th centuries manuscripts were translated from Latin into old English. Latin and Greek gave old English a wide range of Gospel words related to religion and spirituality

• Abbot, altar, apostle, candle, mass, minister, pope

Features of Old English

• The graphemes were used to represent both long and short vowel sounds. There were also three diagraphs to indicate OE diphthongs both long and short;
• Nouns, adjectives and pronouns were inflected for case, number and gender;
• Two types of verbs, strong and weak, which correspond to the regular and irregular verbs in PDE;
• Word order was free;
• Lexic was mainly Germanic but included a small percentage of Celtic words (name of places, e.g., London), Latin (e.g. school from schola) and Scandinavian origin (e.g. landes mann, meaning native in PDE);
• Latin alphabet, with some differences from PDE (e.g. the consonant thorn)

Middle English

The Norman conquest of England meant that a new dominant French-speaking nobility substituted the Anglo-Saxon court. The reorganization of political power meant the progressive marginalization of the Anglo-Saxon cultural and laterally tradition. The Norman conquest of England in 1066 is traditionally considered as the starting point of the so-called Middle English period (c. 1150-1500). We can distinguish three main stages of ME:

1. A transitional stage (c. 1066-1150) The Norman conquest represented the end of the advanced Anglo-Saxon social cultural system. The role of the vernacular, or West-Saxon, in administration, Church, education and culture was reduced. The main evidence for language maintenance in early ME, I the continuity of the Anglo-Saxons laterally tradition, in particular the religious prose
2. An early ME period (c. 1150-1350) English gradually reacquired its status of language of the law and culture. Over time, the Norman became "Anglicized". The beginning of the Hundred yeas War, between England and France (1337-1453), separated the two countries and languages, even further
3. A late ME period (c. 1350-late 15th) Many socio-cultural changes took place in England such as urbanization, in particular she growth of London, the rising of the new social classes, such as the powerful and literate merchant class, the introduction of the printing press in England by William Caxton in 1476. Caxton understood the importance of Chaucer's poetry in creating a unified national language, and he personally edited two editions of the book "The Canterbury Tales"

During the ME period, three main languages were spoken in England: French or Anglo-Norman, Latin and English.

• French was the language of bureaucracy and partly literature
• Latin was the language of education and the Church
• English was still the language of the majority of the population

French/English bilingualism existed in the upper middle classes and nobility; by the end of the 13th century, more and more bilingual speakers shifted to English. The classical ME variety was represented by the language of Chaucer. Chaucer was a diplomat and he travelled throughout England and Europe. He realized that England was ready for a literature of its own, so he decided to write a work in English which could be understood by everybody.

• The Canterbury Tales, is a mirror of England where people could really recognize themselves.

Linguistic Features of Middle English

• Reduction of the case system, in particular in nouns and adjectives
• Introduction of the pronoun "she/shoe"
• Development of the future with "shall/will" and the present progressive
• Increasingly fixed word order, with some variation;
• French (e.g. 'marry' from 'marier') and Latin (e.g. 'inferior') influence on vocabulary;
• Infinitives dropped the -an suffix and developed the to+ form;
• Plurals of nouns and the genitive singular marked by the - (e)s ending.