A2 English Language: Language Change

Reasons for Change

OF COURSE LANGUAGE CHANGES. BUT WHY?
Well, no one knows for sure. But what we do know is that changes rarely happen overnight. People do not wake
up one morning and decide to use the word beef instead of ox meat (but they might wake up and coin a new
word!). Generally, language changes are gradual, particularly changes in the phonological (sound) and syntactic
(grammar) systems.
Of course, certain changes may occur instantaneously for any one speaker. When a new word is acquired the
process is not gradual, although full appreciation for all of its possible uses may come slowly and with trial and
error. I can remember liking the new word esoteric, but I can equally remember being laughed at when I first
used it (I got its meaning wrong). Now I use it correctly which isnt very often!
And when you incorporate a new rule into your grammar, it is either in or not in your grammar. It may at first
be an optional rule, so that sometimes you use it and sometimes you dont maybe this is to do with the
context. But the rule is either there and available for use or it is not.
What is gradual is the spread of change over an entire speech community.

CHANGES CAUSED BY CHILD LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

A basic cause of change is the way children acquire language. No one teaches a child the basic rules of
grammar each child constructs his or her personal grammar alone, generalizing rules from the linguistic input
received from parents, teachers and other sources. We know that a childs language develops in stages until it
approximates that of adult grammar.
But a childs lexicon and grammar can never be exactly like that of the adult he or she comes into
contact with because of the varied linguistic input received. So, certain rules may be simplified or
overgeneralized, and vocabularies may show small differences that accumulate over several generations.
The older generation may be using certain rules optionally. For example, at certain times they might say
Its I and at other times Its me. The form society sees as the less formal style tends usually to be used with
children and friends, whose linguistic requirements are invariably less formal. So the next generation may use
only the me form of the pronoun in this construction if this happens, the grammar will have changed. Of
course, there will always be pressure to retain an older form, particularly if it is a more formal or standard
grammatical construction. The eighteenth century especially took language particularly seriously and wanted to
codify its rules, hence the proliferation of dictionaries that tried to fix both spelling and meaning (and so, to a
lesser extent, pronunciation); grammar books also abounded and these aimed to fix word order (syntax) and
word form (morphology) as Standard English.
The reasons for some changes are relatively easy to understand. Before television there was no such word as
television. It soon became a common lexical item. Borrowed words, too, generally serve a useful purpose and
their entry into the language is not mysterious.
Other changes are more difficult to explain. The Great Vowel Shift in English is one such case. We have some
plausible explanations for some of the phonological changes in languages. Some of these changes are due to
physiological mechanisms to do with the shape of the mouth and organs of speech. Some sounds and
combinations of sounds are easier to pronounce than others (perhaps for different peoples this is especially so
I found the French accent easy, but many do not. I later found that my great-grandmother was French). One
example is the change from hoofs to hooves; the fs phonemic pair is now harder for many people to articulate
than the ves phonemic pair and so the easier pronunciation has caught on.
Another example is that vowels are frequently nasalized before nasal consonants because it is difficult to
change the shape of the mouth sufficiently quickly for example on, in am. When one sound affects another,
the process is called assimilation; in this case, the preceding vowel assimilates to the nasality of the
following nasal consonant. Once the vowel is nasalized, the contrast that the nasal consonant provided can be
equally well provided by the nasalized vowel alone, and the redundant consonant may be deleted. The contrast
between oral and nasal vowels that exists in many languages of the world today results from just such a
historical sound change.
An example of how such assimilative processes can change a language is in the word key, the /k/ is articulated
forward in the mouth in anticipation of the high front palatal vowel /i/. In cot, the /k/ is pronounced farther
back in anticipation of the low back vowel /a/. The /k/ in key is said to be slightly palatalized.

THE THEORY OF LEAST EFFORT

Such assimilative processes gave rise to an important theory about how languages change. It is called the
theory of least effort. According to this theory, sound changes are primarily due to an economy of effort. This

suggests not so much that we prefer the lazy option but, perhaps, that we try to fit the most language into the
shortest time. So we tend to assimilate one sound to another, to drop out unstressed syllables, slur syllables
together, and so on. Try saying Ten Pence or Seven Pence. Do you say tempunce or sevempunce? Most
people do at least in informal conversation. Equally three pence becomes thruppence, and so on. You can
probably think of other examples easily yourself.

ECONOMY OF MEMORY ANALOGIC CHANGE

Another reason for change is thought to be caused by economy of memory. This results in a reduction of the
number of exceptional or irregular morphemes (those parts of a word that change its meaning, e.g. the
morpheme ed, which creates the past tense form of most verbs). This kind of change has been called internal
borrowing which mans we borrow from one part of the grammar and apply the rule more generally. It is also
called analogic change.
For instance, the original plural of cow was kine, and the plural of eye was eyne. So by analogy with plurals
such as foe/foes and dog/dogs we probably started to say cows and eyes and these gradually caught on.
Similarly, by analogy to reap/reaped, seem/seemed, and ignite/ignited children and some adults are presently
saying sweeped the floor, rather than swept. Also, I dreamed last night (instead of dreamt), and She lighted
the bonfire (instead of lit).
The same kind of analogic change is made clear by our regularization of exceptional plural forms, which is a
kind of morphological change. We have borrowed words like datum/data, agendum/agenda,
curriculum/curricula, memorandum/memoranda, medium/media and criterion/criteria, to name just a few. The
irregular plurals of these nouns have been replaced by regular plurals among many speakers: agendas,
curriculums, memorandums, criterias. In some cases the borrowed original plural forms were considered to be
the singular (as in agenda and criteria) and the new plural is therefore a plural-plural. Also, many speakers
now regard data and media as nouns that do not have plural forms, like information. All these changes lessen
the number of irregular forms that must be remembered.
The theory of least effort does seem to account for some language change; but it cannot account for others.
Simplification and regularization of grammar occurs, but so does elaboration or complication. So we are
not just getting lazy! Old English rules of syntax became more complex, imposing a stricter word order on the
language, at the same time that case endings (inflexions0 were being dropped or simplified. A tendency toward
simplification is counteracted by the need to limit potential ambiguity so, in this case, syntax tended to become
more complex. Much of language change is a balance between elaboration and complication.

DIALECTAL CHANGE
It has been said that some changes are created by children while they learn the language. Although the exact
reasons for language change are still elusive, it is clear that the imperfect learning of adult dialects by
children is a contributing factor. Similarly, a social preference for a particular regional dialect seems to
lead to change in the adult world. The use of the stretched a in grass, path and bath, and the quite recent
adoption of the Cockney glottal stop rather than the phoneme t in words such as bottle and butter is an
example of dialectal change (in this case the growing preference for the accent of the Thames Estuary
called Estuary English. Whether such change is a fashion or permanent remains to be seen. Certainly many
American dialects words and pronunciations have entered English permanently.
Interestingly Estuary English is itself strongly related to Cockney but it avoids many parts of Cockney
which seem to be considered less desirable. It is very interesting to consider this picking and choosing many
Estuary English speakers seem to be using Estuary English to sound more streetwise or more ordinary
(rumours are that Mr. Blair once started to use it). Yet, clearly, it is important not to sound too ordinary!
Many factors clearly are responsible for language change:

simplification of grammars
elaboration of grammars to maintain intelligibility
borrowing
lexical additions
dialectal change

Perhaps language changes for the same reason that all things change: it is simply the nature of things to
change. An ancient Greek teacher called Heraclitus once said: All is flux. Nothing stays still. Nothing endures
except change.

SJC 2003 (Rev. 1:16 PM 20/05/2015) A2 EngLang Language Change: Reasons for Change

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