Lexical Change

Presented by:Caecillia Devy

Why does a language acquire

new words?

Why?

New Words Acquisition

New things

and concept

s

Different lives from

time to time

Language

contact

Prestigious

words from other

languages

How?

• Adding new words to a language to use the existing inventory of lexical items.

• Creating new ones by meas of a regular word-formation process.

• Resulting two alternatives:- The old word may disappear- Two words may coexsist expressing

roughly the same concept but different meaning or connotations

Old English-the Germanic Basis of

English

The invasion of Celtic-speaking Britain brought

Germanic vocabularies The Old

English vocabulari

es survived: pronoun,

prepositions

Highly frequent

grammatical building blocks of modern English

Examples

10 most frequent nouns in Present-day English: time, year, way, man, day, thing (6 are Germanic origin)

Frequent Old English verbs until today:go, have, think, find, come

Borrowing I: Early Influences on

English

• By the end of 7th century The Christianity convertion influence Latin

words blend with everyday English language.

The new words: angel, altar, nun, monastery, priest, temple (religion context); and school, chest, sock, plant, fennel, fever (education, household and medicine context)

Contact with speakers of another language brings about the integration of words for new concepts.

• Around 9th and 10th centuryThe entrance of Scandinavian

Vikings constitute very basic vocabulary about daily life aspects

Words borrowed from Scandinavian letters:

Nouns

• Bank• Birth• Bull • Egg• Seat• Skin

Verbs

• Call• Die• Get• Give• Raise• Scare

Adjectives

• Flat• Ill• Low• Odd• Tight• Weak

Function words

• they• their• them• both• though• are

• The lexical items of the conquerer’s language would have been adopted by the speakers.

• More prestigious language wins out in the bilingualism bringing the drop of the ancestor’s language.

• Prestige plays an important role in lexical change. the dialect spoken in Danelaw spread to all part of country not for quite some time

Borrowing II: French Influence

on English Vocabulary

• England’s 3 spoken language used by different people with different purpose: English for the native English French for the new ruling elite Latin for the religious, science and

learning

• New words to express the new concepts as French rule changed the society borrowing French words new ways of governing the country,

new laws, new food, new fashions

Prestigious names needed to do with administarion, warfare, and arts.

• Latin continued to be an influential language and to be a source for new English words.

• The contact with written language brought the borrowing words entering English.

• The words are more formal and stylistically elevated than French borrowings.

Examples

Nouns beauty, beef, button, complaint, fashion, government, marriage, paper, prince, punishment, toast, volume

Verbs advise, arrest, compile, furnish, marry, pay, rejoice, reply, roast, seize, stew, summon, wait

Adjectives courteous, foreign, honest, innocent, large, luxurious, natural, perfect, poor, pure, safe, tender, usual

Words mean the same things but different connotations

Germanic French Latin

AskFire

KinglyRise

QuestionFlameRoyalmount

InterrogateConflagration

RegalAscend

Borrowing III: from Early Modern

to Present-Day English

In 17th century: the decline of latin-enormous increse in specialist knowledge in the science

Inadequate language ‘enrichment’ of language

Turning to Latin and also Greek to expand English vocabulary

The expression of ‘inkhorn term’ useless and artificial additions of the massive influx of borrowing disappeared words: adminiculation ‘aid’, accersited ‘summoned, sent for’, deruncinate ‘to weed’

• The remained and form an essential part of the English lexicon today:Nouns: atmosphere, dexterity, disrespect, expectation Adjectives: conscipicious, habitual, malignant Verbs: assassinate, excavate, extinguish, meditate

• Latin and French borrowings: more elevated and formal style.

• Other languages were added to the inventory of English written sources, direct contact with other cultures

Internal Lexical Change

• Compounding combining of 2 or more existing words to form a new words. Example: diciple’leorning’ & ‘cniht’

(‘learning’ & ‘boy/ attendant’)

• Derivation/ Affixation creating new words by adding affixes (prefixes and suffixes) to existing words.

• Conversion (zero derivation) changing the word class of a lexical item without changing its form Example: to drink – to have a drink

(V to N)

• Shortening shortening of an existing word by dropping part of it. Clipping : influenza – flu Back formation : editor – edit Acronyms : NATO – pronounced

as single whole word; BBC – pronounced as separate letter

• Blending (Portmanteaux) combining parts of existing words to form new ones Example: smoke + fog smog

breakfast + lunch brunch

Very recent Lecixal Change

• The enormous expansion of the internet has revolutionized the communication patterns in number of ways.

• Writing doesn’t involve rigid editing process.• Speech-like production of written language.• The new creations do not mean the new

words but others spread and make it into general usage.

• Research that language is not only changing fast and in intersting ways but also charting the changes more easily conducted.

• Driving the changing offers the basis for establishing a thorough linguistic description of what is going on.

• Example on page 298: the very recent borrowing.

• Although uber- has become a productive prefix, it is infrequent prefix.