11. spread
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Dr. Rachael-Anne Knight [email protected] www.rachaelanne.co.uk Language Change Inset Session University of Reading July 2004 How do changes spread thorough a language? Activity: Discuss how you think changes spread through a language. For example are all words affected at once or do some change before others? Might some words remain unaffected? What is the speed of change – is it always constant? An example from sound change. In English we have number of noun–verb pairs that are now distinguished by their stress pattern such as `record (n) and re`cord (v). However in the 15 th centaury these pairs would both have been stressed on the 2 nd syllable. By 1570 the stress on the nouns ‘outlaw, rebel and record’ had moved to the first syllable while the corresponding verbs were still stressed on the second. By 1582 5 more words were added and by by1660 there were 24, with 35 by 1700, 70 by 1800, and 150 by 1934. Presently there are still around 1000 that the change hasn’t reached and some such as ‘finance’ are wavering with some people using one form and some people another, although Well’s survey found 81% of people preferred stress on the first syllable. Activity: a. Plot the numbers above on the following graph. What sort of shape do you get? b. Can you think of any pairs that are still unaffected? 20 Number of Words Time 1500 1600 1700 1800 1900 2000 0 50 100 150
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11. spread
Transcript of 11. spread
How do changes spread thorough a language
Dr. Rachael-Anne Knight
www.rachaelanne.co.uk
Language Change Inset Session University of Reading July 2004
How do changes spread thorough a language?
Activity: Discuss how you think changes spread through a language. For example are all words affected at once or do some change before others? Might some words remain unaffected? What is the speed of change is it always constant?
An example from sound change.
In English we have number of nounverb pairs that are now distinguished by their stress pattern such as `record (n) and re`cord (v). However in the 15th centaury these pairs would both have been stressed on the 2nd syllable. By 1570 the stress on the nouns outlaw, rebel and record had moved to the first syllable while the corresponding verbs were still stressed on the second. By 1582 5 more words were added and by by1660 there were 24, with 35 by 1700, 70 by 1800, and 150 by 1934. Presently there are still around 1000 that the change hasnt reached and some such as finance are wavering with some people using one form and some people another, although Wells survey found 81% of people preferred stress on the first syllable.
Activity: a. Plot the numbers above on the following graph. What sort of shape do you get?
b. Can you think of any pairs that are still unaffected?
An example from grammatical change
We return to the progressive aspect to see an example of syntactic change. As weve seen the progressive was hardly ever seen in OE and rare in ME. By EME however the progressive was being used for an ongoing action and has now spread to many other verbs.
Changes do not affect all likely words at the same time. In fact it seems that changes in a language start with a few words then more rapidly spread to many other words before slowing down again and maybe even leaving some words unaffected. This can be described by an /s/ shaped curve.
Number of Words
Time
Time
Number of Words
150016001700180019002000
050100150
20
