Concept of Linguistic Change.

One can distingsh three main types of difference in language: geographical, social and temporal. Linguistic changes imply temporal differences, which become apparent if the same elements or parts of the language are compared at successive historical stages; they are transformations of the same units in time which can be registered as distinct steps in their evolution. For insance, the OE form of the Past tense p1 Ind. Mood of the verb to find — fundon [‘fundon] became founden [‘fu:ndən] in the I2th-l3th c. and found in Mod E. The continuity of the item was not broken, though we can register several changes: a) phonetic and spelling changes as the root vowel [u] became [u:] and then [au] and the letter u was replaced by the digraph ou; b) phonetic and morphological changes in the inflection: -on>-en>—’; c) morphological changes in the place of the form in the verb paradigm and its grammatical meaning: fundon was the Past tense p1 of the Ind. Mood; its destendant founden was also the form of Past p1 Subj. and Part. II, as these three forms had fallen together; the modern found has further lextended its functions — it stands now both for the singular and plural since these forms are not distinguished in the Past tense. All these changes can be defined as structural or intralinguistic as they belong to the language system.
The concept of linguistic change is not limited to internal, structural changes. It also includes temporal differenses in the position of the given unit in language space that is the extent of its spread in the functional varities. A new feature — a word, a form, a sound can be recognised as a linguistic change only after it has been accepted for general use in most varieties of the language or in its main, “prestige” variety — the Literary Standard. For instance, in the 10th- 11th c. many Scandinavian words enetrafed into the Northern dialects of the English language (as a result of Scandinavian invasions and mixture of the population), e.g. sky, they, call; later they entered literary English.
Most linguistic changes involve some kind of substitution and can therefore be called replacements. Replacements are subdivided into different t ypes or patterns. A simple one-to-one replacement occurs when a new unit merely takes the place of the old one, e.g. in the words but, feet the vowels [u] and [e:] (pronounced four or five hundred years age) have been replaced by [۸] and [i: I respectively ([u]> [۸] and [e:]> [i:]). OE ēa was replaced by the French loan-word river, OE ēode [‘eode I, the Past tense of to go, was replaced by a new form, went. Replacements can also be found in the plane of content; they are shifts of meaning in words which have survived from the early periods of history, e.g. OE feoh [feox] had the meaning ‘cattle’, ‘property’, its modern descendant is fee.
Those are the simplest one-to-one replacements. Most linguistic
changes, however, both in the language system and language space,
have a more complicated pattern. Two or more units may fall together and thus may be replaced by one unit, or, vice versa, two distinct units may take the place of one. The former type of replacement is defined as merging or merger; the latter is known as splitting or split. The modern Common case of nouns is the result of the merging of three OE cases — om., Qen. and Acc. Many instances of splitting can be found in the history of English sounds, e.g. the consonant 1k] has split into two phonemes 1k] and [t] in words like kin, keep and chin, child.
Linguistc changes c1assified into different types of replacement namely splits and the mergers, can also be described in terms of oppositions, which is a widely recognised method of scientific linguistic analysis. Thus a merger is acatully an instance of neutralisation or loss of) oppositions between formerly contrasted linguistic units, while the essense of splitting is the growth of new oppositions between identical or nondistinctive forms. To use the same examples, when three OE cases merged into the Comm. case, the opposition between the cases was neutralised or lost. When 1k] split into [k] and [t∫] there arose a new kind of phonemic opposition — a plosive consonant came to be opposed to an afiricate (cf. kin and chin).
Although many linguistic changes can be described in terms of replacements and explained as loss and rise of oppositions, the concept of replacement is narrower than that of linguistic change. Some changes are pure innovations, which do not replace anything, or pure losses. Thus we should regard as new words which were ‘borrowed or coined to denote entirely new objects or ideas, such as sputnik, Soviet, nylon, high-jacking, baby-sitter. On the other hand, many words have been lost (or have died out) together with the objects or ideas which have become obsolete, e.g. OE witenazemōt ‘Assembly of the elders’, numerous OE poetic words denoting warriors, ships and
the sea.
In addition to the distinctions described above — and irrespective of those distinctions, — various classifications of linguistic changes are used to achieve an orderly analysis and presentation. It is obvious from the examples quoted that linguistic changes are conveniently classified and described in abbrdance with linguistic levels: we can speak of phonetic and phonological changes (also sound changes), spelling changes, grammatical changes, including morphology and syntax, lexical and stylistic changes. At these levels further subdivisions are made: phonetic changes include vowel and consonant changes, qualitative and quantitative changes, positional and independent changes, and so on. Changes at the higher levels fall into formal and semantic, since they can affect the plane of expression and the plane of content; semantic changes, in their turn, may take various forms: narrowing or widening of meaning, metaphoric and metonymic changes, etc.

In books on language history one may often come across one more division of linguistic changes: into historical and analogical. This distinction was introduced by the Young Grammarian school in the late 19th c. A change is defined as historical only if it can be shown as a phonetic modification of an earlier form, e. g., the modern p1 ending of nouns -es has descended directly from its prototype, OE -as due to phonetic reduction and loss of the vowel in the unstressed ending (of. OE stān-as and NE ston-es); both the change the resulting form are called “historical”. An analogical form does not develop directly from its prototype; it appears on the analogy of other forms, similar in meaning or shape. When the plural ending -es began to be added to nouns which had never taken -as but had used other endings: -a, -an, or -a, — it was a change by analogy or an instance of analogical levelling. This analogical change gave rise to new forms referred to as “analogical” (cf. OE nam-an and NE nam-es).
So far we have spoken of separate changes: those of sounds, grammatical forms, or words. In describing the evolution of language, we shall more often deal with the development of entire sets or systems of linguistic units. Every separate change enters a larger frame and forms a part of the development of a certain system. As known, language is a system of interrelated elements, subsystems and linguistic levels. Every linguistic unit is a component part of some system or subsystem correlated to other units through formal or semantic affinities and oppositions. The alteration of one element is part of the alteration of the entire system as it reveals a re-arrangement of its structure, a change in the relationships of its components.
The systemic nature of linguistic change can be illustrated by the followingexamples.
In the early periods of history the verb system in English was relatively poor: there were only two simple tenses in the md. Mood — Pres. and Past — the prototypes of the modern Pres. and Past Indef. In the course of time the system was enriched by numerous analytical forms: the Future tense, the Continuous and Perfect forms. The development of these forms transformed the entire verb system, which has acquired new formal and semantic oppositions; the growth of analytical forms has also affected the employment of the two simple forms, for some of their former meanings came to be expressed by the new compound forms (e.g. futurity andpriority).
In the age of Shakespeare (late l6th—early 17th c.) in certain phonetic conditions the sonorant [r] changed into [a] giving rise to diphthongs, e.g. bear, beer, poor; the new set of diphthongs with a central glide [iaj, [eel, [uo] introduced new distinctive features into the system of vowel phonemes.
2. Rate of Linguistic Changes.

Linguistic changes are usually slow and gradual. They proceed in minor, imperceptible steps unnoticed by the speakers. The rate of linguistic changes is restricted by the communicative function of language, for a rapid change would have disturbed or hindered communication between speakers of different generations. Unlike human society, language undergoes no revolutions or sudden breaks. The slow rate of linguistic change is seen in the gradual spread of new features in language space.
This should not be understood to mean that the speed of evolution in language is absolutely consistent or that all changes proceed at exactly the same pace. As shown below, at some historical periods linguistic changes grew more intensive and more rapid, whereas at other periods they slowed down and the English language was stabilised.

It is important to note that different parts or levels of language develop at differentrates.
It is often said that the vocabulary of a language can change very rapidly. This is true only if we compare lexical changes with changes at other linguistic levels, e.g. grammatical. Lexical changes are quite conspicuous and easy to observe, since new items prrng into, being before our very eyes, though, as a matter of fact, they rarely amount to more than isolated words or groups of words. New words are usually built in conformity with the Isting ways of worfprmati0n which are very slow to change; the new,forrnations make ue of available elements
— roots, affixes and support the productive wordbui1ding patterns b\ extending them to new instances. Cf. motel and hotel, typescript and anuscript. It should be added that if the number of new words is very large, it takes them several hundred years to be adopted and assimilated (as was the case in the Middle Ages when English borrowed hundreds of words from French).
‘The system of phonemes cannot be subjected to sudden or rapid,changes since it must preserve the oppositions between the phonemes required for the distinction of morphemes. Sometimes phonetic changes affect a whole set of sounds agroup of vowels or a group of consonants, — but as a rule they do not inpair the differentiation of phonemes.
Likewise, the grammatical system is very slow to change. Being the most abstract of linguistic levels it must provide stable formal devices for arranging words into classes and for connecting them into phrases and sentences.

 

 

Lecture № 3

Linguistic Change

Mechanism of Change. Role of Synchronic Variation. Causes of Language Evolution.

 

Literature:

Аракин В. Д. Очерки по истории английского языка. М., 1955.

Бруннер К. История английского языка. Пер. с нем. М.: Иностранная литература, т. I-II, 1955-1956.

Введение в германскую филологию/Арсеньева М. Г., Балашова С. П., Берков В. П., Соловьева Л. Н./-М., 1980.

Иванова И. П., Чахоян Л. П. История английского языка. М., 1976.

Ильиш Б. А. История английского языка. Л., 1973.

Линский С. С. Сборник упражнений по истории английского языка. Л., 1963.

Плоткин В. Я. Очерк диахроничекой фонологии английского языка. М., 1976.

Смирницкий А. И. Древнеанглийский язык. М., 1955.

Смирницкий А. И. История английского языка (средний и новый период). Курс лекций. М., 1965.

Смирницкий А. И. Хрестоматия по истории английского языка. М., 1938, 1939, 1953.

Швейцер А. Д. Литературный английский язык в США и Англии. М., 1971.

Ярцева В. Н. Развитие национального литературного английского языка. М., 1969.

Barber Ch. Linguistic Change in Present-Day English. London, 1964.

Baugh A., Cable Th. A History of the English Language. New York, 1978.

Campbell A. Old English Grammar. Oxford, 1959.

Jespersen O. Growth and Structure of the English Language. Oxford, 1935.

Morton A. L. A People’s History of England. New York, 1968.

Mosse F. A Handbook of Middle English. Baltimore, 1952.

Schlauch M. The English Language in Modern Times (since 1400). Warszawa, 1964.

Serjeantson M. History of Foreign Words in English. London, 1935.

Strang B. A History of English. London, 1974.

Sweet H. A New English Grammar. Logical and Historical. Oxford, 1930.

Sweet H. An Anglo- Saxon Reader in Prose and Verse with Grammar, Notes, Metre and Glossary. Oxford, 1925.

Williams J. M. Origins of the English Language, A Social and tory. New York, 1975.

Wyld H. C. A History of Modern Colloquial English. Oxford, 1936.

Mechanism of Change.

From comparing the state of linguistic units before and after a change one can determine the nature of the change, define its type and direction; but in order to understand how the change came about one must also trace the process or mechanism of the change.
A linguistic change begins with synchronic variation. Alongside the existing language units words, forms, affixes, pronunciations, spellings, syntactic construction — there spring up new units. They may be similar in rneaning, but slightly different in form, stylistic connotations, social values, distribution in language space, etc. In the same way new meanings may arise in the existing words or forms ir addition to their main meanings. Both kinds of variation — formal and semantic — supply the raw material for impending changes.
2. Role of Synchronic Variation

Synchronic variation is to be found in every language at every stage of its history. It is caused by two main factors: functional differentiation of language and tendencies of historical development.
Language is a ‘heterogeneous system of immeasurable, complexity; it functions in various forms as a group of mutually intelligible overlapping speech varieties. The range of synchronic variation largely depends on the distinction of the main functional varieties and also on the variable use of the language in different conditions of communication, in varuos social groups and in individual forms of speech. Synchronic differences between the varities of language may consist of specific items not to be found in other varieties, or in the different use of
the same items, which may seem slightly unusual and yet quite intelligible to the speakers of other varieties.
Synchronic variation reveals the tendencies of historical development and is produced by those tendenies. New features, which appear
as instances of synchronic variation, represent dynamics in synchrony and arise in conformity with productive historical trends.’
Variation supplies material for linguistic change and also provides conditions for its realisation.
At every period of history, lanuages offers a wide choice of expressive means to the speaker. From this stock — conciousIy or unconsciously
— the speaker ‘selects forms of expression suitable in the given situation; in making this choice he observes the speech habits of his social group or emp1oys forms of expression current in other varieties of the language; sometimes he creates new expressive means — forms, words, phrases — in accordance with the productive historica1 tendencies. Old and new forms begin to be used indiscriminately in free variation, which may lead to a change in their relative frequencies and finally to the substitution of one for another. Thus synchronic variation ensures a gradual imperceptible realisation of the change. If the co-existing competing units lose all differences, one rival will die out and the other will occupy its place, for only in rare cases can genuine free variation exist for long (that is, co-existence of absolyt equivalents). If the differences between parallel means of expression peist and are centuated, both rivals will survive as distinct units.
The process of change consisting of several stages, including the stage of variation is illustrated below by the substitution of the verb ending -(e)s for the earlier -eth:
Before the Process of change After the change

Change Variation stage

Appearance of Co-existance of Selection of new forms

new forms old and new forms

14^th c. 15^th – 17^th c. 18^th c.

-eth -eth -

e.g.help-eth -(e)s - (e)s

help-eth -

help-s help-s

The variation stage may extend over a long period. During this period, at successive crss-sections, we can observe the gradual rapprochement of the coexisting, corn eting units, shifts in their frequencies, growth or loosening of stylistic and dl ectal constraints and other evidence of the change in progress (the ending -(e)s was first recorded in the Northern dialects and was dialectally restricted; when it came into general use, -etti acquired stylistic restrictions: it was used only in high poetry and religious texts).
3. The causes of language evolution.

The causes or moving factors in language history have always attracted the attention of linguists and have given rise to various explantions and theories. In the early 19th c. philologists of the romantic trend (J. G. Herder, J. and W. Grimm and others) interpreted the history of the Indo-European, and especially the Germanic languages, as ‘decline and degradation, for most of these languages have been losing their richness of grammatical forms, declensions, conjugаtions and infllections since the so-called “Go!den Age” of the parentlanguage. Linguists of the naturalist trend (e.g. A. Schleicher) conceived language as a living organism and associated stages in language history with stages of life: birth, youth, maturity, old age, and death. In the later 19th c. the psychological theories of language (W. Wundt, H. Paul) attributed linguistic changes to individual psychology and to accidental individual fluctuations. The study of factual history undertaken by the Young Grammarians led them to believe that there are no superior or inferior stages in language history and that all languages are equal; changes are brought about by phonetic laws which admit of no exceptions (seeming exceptions are due to analogy, which may introduce a historically unjustified form, or else to borrowing from another language). Sociologists in linguistics (J. Vendryes, A. Meillet) maintained that linguistic changes are caused by social conditions and events in external history.
Some modern authors assert that causality lies outside the scope of linguistics, which should be concerned only with the fact and mechanism of the change; others believe that linguistics should investigate only those causes and conditions of language evolution which are to be found within the language system; external factors are no concern of linguistic history. In accordance with this view the main internal cause which produces linguistic change is the pressure of the language system. Whenever the balance of the system or its symmetrical structural arrangement is disrupted, it tends to be restored again under the pressure of symmetry inherent in the system.
The recent decades witnessed a revival of interest in extralinguistic aspects of language history. The Prague school of linguists was the first among the modern trends to recognise the functional stratification of language and its diversity dependent on external conditions. In present- day theories, especially in the sociolinguistic trends, great importance is attached to the variability of speech in social groups as the primary factor of linguistic change.
Like any movement in nature and society, the evolution of language is caused by the struggle of opposites. The moving power underlying the development of language is made up of two main forces:
one force is the growing and changing needs of man in the speech community; the other is the resisting force that curbs the changes and preserves the language in a state fit for communication. The two forces are manifestations of the two principal functions of language — its expressive and communicative functions. The struggle of the two opposites can also be described as the opposition of thought and means of its expression or the opposition of growing needs of expression and communication and the available resources of language.

These general forces operate in all languages at all times; they are so universal that they fail to account for concrete facts in the history of a particular language. To explain these facts many other conditioning factors must be taken into consideration.
The most widely accepted classification of factors relevant to language history divides them into external or extralinguistic and internal (also intra-linguistic and systemic).
Strictly speaking, the term “extra-linguistic” embraces a variety of conditions bearing upon different aspects of human life, for instance,
the psychological or the physiological aspects. In the first place, however, extralinguistic factors include events in the history of the people
relevant to the development of the language, such as the structure of society, expansion over new geographical areas, migrations, mixtures and separation of tribes, political and economic unity or disunity, contacts with other peoples, the progress of culture and literature. These aspects of external history determine the linguistic situation and affect the evolution of the language.
Internal factors of language evolution arise from the language system. They can be subdivided into general factors or general regularities, which operate in all languages as inherent properties of any language system, and specific factors operating in one language or in a group of related languages at a certain period of time.
The most general causes of language evolution are to be found in the tendencies to improve the language technique or its formal apparatus. These tendencies are displayed in numerous assimilative and simplifying phonetic changes in the history of English (e.g. the consonant cluster [kn] in know, and knee was simplified to [n]; It] was missed out in often and listen, etc.) To this group we can also refer the tendency to express different meanings by distinct formal means and thus avoid what is known as “homonymy clashes”.
On the other hand, similar or identical meanings tend to be indicated by identical means, therefore the plural ending of nouns -(e)s has gradually spread to most English nouns and replaced numerous markers of the plural.
Another group of general internal tendencies aims to preserve the language as a vehicle fit for communication. These tendencies resist linguistic change and account for the historical stability of many elements and features (“statics in diachrony”). For instance, since the earliest periods English has retained many words and formal markers expressing the most important notions and distinctions, e.g. the words he, we, man, good, son; the suffix -d- to form the Past tense. This tendency also accounts for the growth of compensatory means to make up for the loss of essential distinctions, e.g. the wider use of prepositional phrases instead of case forms.
Among the general causes of language evolution, or rather among its universal regularities, we must mention the interdependence of changes within the sub-systems of the language and the interaction of changes at different linguistic levels.
Interdependence of changes at different linguistic levels can be illustrated by the history of noun morphology in English. In the course of history nouns have lost most of their cases (in OE there were four cases, nowadays only two). The simplification of noun morphology involved changes at different levels: phonetic weakening of final syllables, analogical levelling of forms at the morphological level, and stabilisation of the word order at the level of syntax.
Some factors and causes of language evolution are confined to a certain group of languages or to one language only and may operate over a limited span of time. These specific factors are trends of evolution characteristic of separate languages or linguistic groups, which distinguish them from other languages. Since English belongs to the Germanic group of languages, it shares many Germanic trends of development with cognate languages. These trends were caused by common Germanic factors but were transformed and modified in the history of English, and were combined with other trends caused by specifically English internal and external factors. The combination of all these factors and the resulting course of evolution is unique for every language; it accounts for its individual history which is never repeated by other languages. Thus English, like other Germanic languages, displayed a tendency towards a more analytical grammatical structure, but it has gone further along this way of development than most other languages, probably owing to the peculiar combination of internal and external conditions and to the interaction of changes at different linguistic levels.
In conclusion it must be admitted that motivation of changes is one of the most difficult problems of the historical linguistics. The causes of many developments are obscure or hypothetical. Therefore in discussing the causes of the most important events in the history of English, we shall have to mention various theories and interpretations.

Lecture № 4