LANGUAGE AND CHANGES

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A. Background

The study of language change, rather than the analysis of specific instances of change, had
already been undertaken in the 19th century. Hermann Paul’s Prinzipien der
Sprachgeschichte (1880), ‘Principles of language history’, shows a linguist standing back
from the monumental task of comparing and reconstructing the many Indo-European
languages and discussing the underlying principles of this enterprise (Baldi ed. 1991). It came
to be perceived as the definitive statement on the historical approach to language analysis
which saw the notion of sound law, German Lautgesetz, as central and stressed the
exceptionless nature of this, German Ausnahmslosigkeit.
When reading the title above, perhaps most readers will understand the sense of each
of these systems (language and change). Change begins with variation in the speech of
speakers, ultimately of individual speakers. But continuously occurring variation in speech
only leads to established instances of change in some cases. And it is communities (or sub-
communities) who carry it forward. So change must reach a certain threshold to become
established. While it is not possible to predict change, accounting for change which has
already occurred is a legitimate pursuit for linguists.

B. Objectives of Papers

Give information and understanding about language and change to the reader.

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 CHAPTER II

DISCUSSION

A. Where does change begin?

Speakers are the agents of change. It goes without saying that speakers change
language and that the term ‘language’ is an abstraction over the collective behavior of a
speech community. It is salutary to remember that when one is dealing with structural and
developmental tendencies in language it is in the linguistic behavior of speakers that these are
manifested (J. Milroy 2003).

Change begins with variation in the speech of speakers, ultimately of individual

speakers. But continuously occurring variation in speech only leads to established instances
of change in some cases. And it is communities (or sub- communities) who carry it forward.
So change must reach a certain threshold to become established. While it is not possible to
predict change, accounting for change which has already occurred is a legitimate pursuit for
linguists.1

B. How and why does language change?2

There are many different routes to language change. Changes can take originate in
language learning, or through language contact, social differentiation, and natural processes
in usage.

1. Language learning

Language is transformed as transmitted from one generation to the next. Each individual must
re-create a grammar and lexicon based on input received from parents, older siblings and
other members of the speech community. The experience of each individual is different, and
the process of linguistic replication is imperfect, so that the result is variable across
individuals. However, a bias in the learning process -- for instance, towards regularization --
will cause systematic drift, generation by generation. In addition, random differences may
spread and become 'fixed', especially in small populations.

1
Hernández Compoy, Juan Manuel and Juan Camilo, Conde-Silvestre (eds). The Handbook of Historical
Sociolinguistics. (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell) pp. 401- 421.
2
http://LanguagechangesandHistorical-Reconstruction.html

2
 2. Language contact

Migration, conquest and trade bring speakers of one language into contact with speakers of
another language. Some individuals will become fully bilingual as children, while others
learn a second language more or less well as adults. In such contact situations, languages
often borrow words, sounds, constructions and so on. Also, Migration/Movement can make
speakers will change and create languages, such as pidgins and creoles.

3. Social differentiation or Social Status

Social groups adopt distinctive norms of dress, adornment, gesture and so forth; language is
part of the package. Linguistic distinctiveness can be achieved through vocabulary (slang or
jargon), pronunciation (usually via exaggeration of some variants already available in the
environment), morphological processes, syntactic constructions, and so on.

In Australia the HRT, mentioned above, seems to be spreanding among lower socio-
economic group. People in lower-paid jobs use this intonation most frequently, and it clearly
function as a solidarity marker for this group. However, it is currently regarded by older
higher status speakers in particular as vulgar, and so it may spread into the informal speech of
young people from the higher social group, and so gradually spread upwards in this way3.

4. Natural processes in usage

Rapid or casual speech naturally produces processes such as assimilation, dissimilation,

syncope and apocope. Through repetition, particular cases may become conventionalized,
and therefore produced even in slower or more careful speech. Word meaning change in a
similar way, through conventionalization of processes like metaphor and metonymy.

Some linguists distinguish between internal and external sources of language change.
Changes internally initially occurred in the behavior of speakers in their everyday lives to
adjust to each other, and followed by a tendency to innovate in groups of people who are
already familiar, then followed by other changes in sequence, such as in grammatically or
vocabulary which ultimately makes a language different each other, although originally
derived from a single language family. Changes in the external language and development is
caused by the contact of a language with other languages, where humans as social beings who
have been cultured either interconnected or inter-ethnic nations in the world in a country.

3
Holmes, Janet. An Introduction To Sociolinguistic. (London and New York: Longman, 1992 1995)

3
 The changes internally and language development will be reviewed by looking through
the study of historical change and development language based on the history of its
development. While changes in external and development will be explored through the study
of sociolinguistics by examining and looking at changes and developments that language is
influenced by socio-cultural factors that occur in society.4

Perhaps the first division to be made among factors in language change is that between
those, which operate from within the language (internal factors), and those, which are active
from outside (external factors). These factors are different in themselves (Gerritsen and Stein
eds. 1992). For example, internal factors have very often to do with the establishment of
morphological regularity (analogical levelling and possible analogical extension, Campbell
1998: 92-9) or with the reshuffling of items in a word field (re-alignment of sense relations).
External factors have primarily to do with the symbolic role of language in society. The
levels of language first affected are usually phonetics and phonology, though others may be
later embraced by change.

The evolution of English in the fifteenth century, occurs continuously in the UK. In
development there are three periods in the history of the period of English which is the right
tool as dividing line linguistic changes that occur. These periods are:

1. Old English (Anglo-Saxon): In this period (449-1100 C.E) has a wide variety of
languages. There are four dialects staple in the days of ancient Britain: Northumbrian,
Mercian, West Saxon, and Kenntish. In general, the difference which is a declaration
between the ancient and the modern British English is the way spelling,
pronunciation, vocal, and grammar (Albert C. Baugh, 1963: 62, Haryono, 2002).

2. Middle English (Middle English): English medieval period (1066-1500). On this

period many changes - important changes in the English language. More feasible
changes in extensive and fundamental. Changes to this era influence on the English
language and grammar Vocab. In this part of English grammar by reducing the height
of inflection on a significant difference analysis. (Albert C. Baugh, 1963: 189,
Haryono, 2002).

3. Modern English (1500-present): In the 19th century the change of personal pronouns
into another form of shape.
4
http://en.wikipedia.org-language-changes.html

4
C. Types of language change
1. Morphological changes5 (changes in word formation)

Change the language can also occur in the field of morphology in the process of word
formation. Rules of morphology may be lost, added or changed. It is can observed some of
these changes by comparing older and newer forms of the language.

For example in Old English-Modern English6:

Case OE Singular ME Singular OE Plural ME Plural

Nominative Stān Stone Stānas Stones
Genitive Stānes stone’s Stāna Stones
Dative Stāne Stone Stānum Stones
Accusative Stān Stone Stānas Stones

2. Semantic Changes

All words have a meaning, but since English first appeared from its base language of Anglo-
Saxon, the meanings of words have undergone (mengalami) changes. These changes include
a broadening of meaning, a narrowing of meaning or a complete shift in meaning altogether.
Another semantic change in English would be a change in connotations, referred to as either
elevation or deterioration.

a. Broadening. Is expansion meaning (perluasan)

The meaning of word use for now, more large than the meaning in the past.

Broadening is the change in the meaning of a word by expansion, so that the word is
applicable in more contexts than it previously was and means more than it previously did.

An example of broadening is the word "business", which originally meant "a state of being
busy", but has now broadened to include all kinds of work occupations.

b. Narrowing. (penyempitan)

5
http://theJuna’smakalah-Morphologyblogspot.com.html

6
Victoria Fromkin, Robert Rodman, Nina Hyams. An Introduction to Lingiustic (United States: Thomson
Wadsworth, 2003)

5
Narrowing refers to the opposite of broadening, and is defined as a reduction in the contexts
in which a word can appear. In simple terms, the meaning of the word has gotten more
specific.

One example of this would be the world 'girl', which originally meant a child of either
gender, rather than a female child. The word has evolved to mean what was only part of it's
original definition, and this is semantic narrowing.
c. Shift. (perubahan)

Broadening occurs when over time the meaning of a word has grown to be applicable in
contexts that it previously wasn't, and to mean things it previously didn't - it's meaning has
simply expanded.

Examples of this include brand names, a person may ask for a Kleenex instead of a tissue, or
refer to a mould able, colored clay for children as Play dough, despite it being made by
another company entirely. Therefore the meaning of Kleenex has expanded from simply
being the name of a brand, to being used in context as the name of the product. A shift in
meaning differs completely from broadening and narrowing in that the word now retains
none of it's original definition and has come to mean something else enitrely.

A good example of a semantic shift is the word 'gay'. Originally meaning "lighthearted",
"joyous" or "happy", the word has undergone a complete shift in meaning to now refer to a
homosexual person.

d. Elevation. Change in yhe connotation of word.

Elevation refers to a change in the connotations of a word, occouring in one of two ways. A
word that loses its negative connotations is an example of elevation, but elevation can also
occur when, rather than losing bad connotations, a word gains positive ones.

One example of elevation through loss of negative associations is intensifing expressions like
'terribly' and awfully'. These words have lost their negative stigmas and now mean little more
than 'very', this is evident in that we can now use expressions such as 'terribly good.'

An example of a word gaining positive connotations would be "sick". It has obvious negative
connotations of illness that are still connected to the word today, but it has also become a
popular slang term for something cool. for example, "that's sick!"

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 e. Deterioration. When a word has the negative meaning, now, we also hold the negative
connotations of the word.

Deterioration occurs when a word gains association with a negative stimulus, to then hold
negative connotations.

Deterioration is shown clearly in the word "accident". Once simply meaning "a chance event"
the word now has associations with misfortune and injury, so we assume that when someone
has "had an accident" it was not a positive experience.

3. Lexical Changes

Lexicology is the study of how words relate to each other and their etymology, so over time
we look at how and why words change in meanings, and how language as a whole changes.

Here are some of the ways that words are gained, lost and changed in the English language.

a. Commonisation.

Commonisation occurs when something that was previosuly a name, loses its capital letter
and becomes a common, household word. For example the word LAMINGTON, name of the
chocolate covered pieces of sponge cake rolled in coconut, came from Baron Lamington, a
previous Governor of Queensland. Jeans are also an example of commonisation, as they are
named after the town of Genoa, where a heavy fabric closely resembling denim was made.

b. Acronyms and initialism. =initial letter of word

acronym IS words that are formed from the initials of other words, but are spoken as a word
and not as a series of letters, examples of acronyms include :LOL for 'laugh out loud' and
DOS for 'disk operating system'.

NASA : National Automatic and Space Administration

WOMAN ;World Organzation of Mothers all Nation

ACCEPT : Adult Child Caring for Eldery Parents

Initialism are also formed from the initials of words, but rather than be spoken as a word,
initialisms are spoken as a sequence of letters, like BRB for 'be right back' and BO for 'body
odour'.

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 c. Blends.

Blends are words that are created from the joining of two different words, incorporating the
meanings of both of them.

'Cracker' for 'credit card hacker'

BRUNCH= Breakfast+lunch

MOTEL= motor+hotel

Smog+= smoke+fog

Cheseburger= chesee humberger

Eurasian:

d. Shortenings.

Shortenings are the shortened, or truncated versions of longer words, that come to replace the
older, long versions entirely and become their own words. Sometimes the two words become
entirely distanced from each other and the connection is hard to spot, like 'stroppy' from
'obstreperous' and 'grotty' from 'grotesque'.

e. Borrowing.

The ways in which language gains new words not only draw on sources within the language,
but also outside of it, in the form of 'borrowing'. English is one of the largest and most
notorious borrowing languages with words from over 160 different languages, including large
amounts from the languages of our own indigenous Australian. From various aboriginal
languages we have gained words for many things, but primarily names for animals, plants
and places. For example:

Boomerang- Australia Near- Sanskrit

Haiku- Japan Paprika- Hungarian

Pizza- Italian Yo-yo- Tagalog

Murder- French Algebra- Arabic

4. Phonological Changes

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 Phonological change is change in pronounciation. All aspects of language
change, and a great deal is know about general mechanisms and historical details of
changes at all levels of linguistic analysis. However, a special and conspicuous
success has been achieved in modeling changes in phonological systems, traditionally
called sound change. In the cases where we have access to several historical stages.
For instance, the development of the modern Romance Languages from Latin, these
sound changes are remarkably regular. Techniques developed in such cases permit us
to reconstruct the sound system and some of the vocabulary of unattested parent
languages from information about daughter languages.

In some cases, an old sound becomes a new sound across the board. Such a
change occurred in Hawai'ian, in that all the "t" sounds in an older form of the
language became "k"s: at the time Europeans encountered Hawai'ian, there were no
"t"s in it at all, though the closely related languages Tahitian, Samoan, Tongan and
Maori all have "t"s.

Another unconditioned sound change that occurred between Middle and

Early Modern English (around Shakespeare's time) is known as the Great Vowel
Shift. At that time, there was a length distinction in the English vowels, and the Great
Vowel Shift altered the position of all the long vowels, in a giant rotation.

The nucleus of the two high vowels (front "long i" /i:/, and the back "long
u" /u:/) started to drop, and the high position was retained only in the offglide.
Eventually, the original /i:/ became /ai/ - so a "long i" vowel in Modern English is
now pronounced /ai/ as in a word like 'bite': /bait/. Similarly, the "long u" found its
nucleus dropping all the way to /au/: the earlier 'house' /hu:s/ became /haus/. All the
other long vowels rotated, the mid vowels /e:/ and /o:/ rising to fill the spots vacated
by the former /i:/ and /u:/ respectively, and so on. That is why the modern pronouns
'he' and 'she' are written with /e/ (reflecting the old pronunciation) but pronounced
as /i/. In the following chart, the words are located where their vowel used to be
pronounced, where they are pronounced today is indicated by the arrows7.

7
Op.cit

9
Example:

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 CHAPTER III

CONCLUSION

Speakers are the agents of change. It goes without saying that speakers change
language and that the term ‘language’ is an abstraction over the collective behaviour
of a speech community. Change begins with variation in the speech of speakers,
ultimately of individual speakers.

The evolution of English in the fifteenth century, occurs continuously in the

UK. In development there are three periods in the history of the period of English
which is the right tool as dividing line linguistic changes that occur. These periods
are:

1. Old English (Anglo-Saxon): In this period (449-1100 C.E) has a wide variety of
languages. There are four dialects staple in the days of ancient Britain: Northumbrian,
Mercian, West Saxon, and Kenntish. In general, the difference which is a declaration
between the ancient and the modern British English is the way spelling,
pronunciation, vocal, and grammar (Albert C. Baugh, 1963: 62, Haryono, 2002).

2. Middle English (Middle English): English medieval period (1066-1500). On this

period many changes - important changes in the English language. More feasible
changes inextensive and fundamental. Changes to this era influence on the English
language and grammar Vocab. In this part of English grammar by reducing the height
of inflection on a significant difference analysis. (Albert C. Baugh, 1963: 189,
Haryono, 2002).

3. Modern English (1500-present): In the 19th century the change of personal pronouns
into another form of shape

Types of language change

1. Morphological changes
2. Semantic changes
3. Lexical changes
4. Phonological changes

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 REFERENCES

Hernández-Compoy, Juan Manuel and Juan Camilo Conde-Silvestre (eds). The

Handbook of Historical Sociolinguistics. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 401-
421.

Holmes, Janet. 1992, 1995. An Introduction To Sociolinguistic. London and New

York: Longman.

http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/popcult/handouts/lexchange.html. Handout for

LING 057, Language and Popular Culture. Diakses pada tanggal 27 Maret 2015,
pukul 08.00 WIB

http://en.wikipedia.org-language-changes.html

http://LanguagechangesandHistorical-Reconstruction.html diakses pada tanggal 1

April 2015

http://theJuna’smakalah-Morphologyblogspot.com.html diakses pada tanggal 29

Maret 2015

https://www.uni-due.de/SHE/HE_Change_Phonological.html diakses pada tanggal 30

Maret 2015, pukul 07.30 WIB

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