Language change: an Introduction

Introduction

Hi, and welcome to the next series in my language blog. My next series of articles is going to be about the subject of language change.

All living languages are in a constant state of flux (Crystal, 1997), and all aspects of language change over time. Every aspect of language structure is subject to change (which I will explain later in this article,) but the most noticeable and frequent changes affect pronunciation and vocabulary. These areas have attracted the most study, and they also tend to be noticed even by people who are not otherwise interested in language.

For the most part, language change tends to be gradual. After all, it would be no good if a language changed at such a rate that people who belong to the older generation were completely unable to communicate with the younger generation.

Instead, changes tend to accumulate slowly over time. You will notice that the older generation 'speak differently' to young people; even if you can't pinpoint exactly how they speak differently, it's quite clear that language can change in a short space of time. So, it stands to reason that, given enough time, a language can change to such an extent that it is very different to its ancestral variety.

Also, if two or more speech communities who once spoke the same dialect become isolated from each other, maybe due to geographical or political factors, their language will begin to diverge from each other to the extent that communication will become difficult. 

When even more time passes, the two speech communities will be wholly unable to communicate with each other in their native languages. When, say, 2,000 years have passed, the similarities between the speech of the two separate communities might not even be recognisable at first glance.

Although every language will change in isolation, languages also borrow from each other. Multilingualism has been the norm throughout much of recorded human history, and today, most people in the world are multilingual (Tucker, 1999.) Typically, words are borrowed between languages. 

As much as 70% of the vocabulary of English has been borrowed from French and Latin. However, phonemes (units of sounds) and even grammatical constructions can be borrowed from one language into another.

A tasty pie chart showing the proportion of English words that come from various sources.

Thanks to www.macmillandictionaryblog.com for the pie chart.

Although English has borrowed a great deal of its vocabulary from French, Latin and Greek, it is still classified as a Germanic language. Its basic vocabulary and grammar are still very much Germanic in character, being noticeably closer to Dutch and German than to French. 

In exceptional circumstances, a new language can arise remarkably quickly as a result of forced and intense contact between two or more languages, perhaps as a result of the slave trade or displacement. Such a language may have the bulk of its vocabulary taken from one language, but with a completely different grammar that owes little to either of its parent languages. These languages are known as creoles. 

The usual view is that creoles are formed from pidgin languages, which arise when speakers of two or more different are forced into a situation of close and intense contact with each other. I will devote a whole article later in this series to the development of creoles, so stay tuned!

  

New languages

So how does one language split off into tens or even hundreds of different languages?

Due to the ongoing process of language change, it is inevitable that, in the situation where different groups of speakers of the same language split off from each other, the language spoken by the individuals in each group will diverge in separate ways.

Even if the two separate groups remain in contact with each other, their languages/dialects will diverge separately if there is no uniting force to keep their languages together. Perhaps they now belong to different nations, or maybe one group of speakers will intensify and consolidate the differences in their dialect, in order to forge a separate identity. 

Consider the differences between British and American English. Both of these varieties stem from a single variety of English which was spoken in England before the discovery of the New World. When the British brought the English language over to America, it began to follow its own path separately in both Britain and in America.

However, British and American English do not exist in complete isolation from each other. There is some cross-pollination between British and American English. With the advent of the media, fast travel and the Internet, Brits and Americans are exposed to each other's variety of English, and they also frequently communicate with each other, both in writing and face-to-face. British English has adopted an array of Americanisms, but American English has borrowed a small amount of Britishisms.

British and American English are generally considered to be the same language, but some varieties of British and American English are continuing to diverge in different ways. In British English, the replacement of /t/ with a glottal stop in certain positions is becoming increasingly common, as is vocalising /l/ at the end of a syllable, so that 'fill' sounds like 'fiw.'

In some parts of northern USA, the Northern Cities Vowel Shift (NCVS) is occurring. The pronunciation of many short vowels is shifting. A notable feature of the NCVS is the pronunciation of 'cat' as something sounding like 'cay-at.' 

So, even though British and American English are still mostly mutually intelligible with each other, they are continuing to go their separate way. Who knows if Brits and Americans will be able to communicate with each other in 600 years' time? Perhaps Brits, Americans, Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders will have to learn a hypothetical International Standard English in order to communicate with each other.

As we can see with many real-life examples, the effects of continual language change are such that, given enough time, one language will eventually give rise to two or more daughter languages.

In a space of less than 2,000 years, Latin developed into Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, Occitan, Galician, French, Rumantsch, Italian, Corsican, Sardinian, Romanian and other Romance Languages. Modern-day Romance Languages evolved from various regional varieties of Vulgar Latin which were, at one point, similar enough to be considered the same language.

Yes, Sardinian is a real language. No, it's not spoken by sardines.

No doubt the development of all these regional varieties of Latin was hastened by the fall of the Roman Empire, as there was no longer a central government or common body of literature to unite these dialects together anymore. As early as 813 AD at the Council of Tours, priests were urged to preach in the vernacular (local) variety of Latin, or in the local Germanic language, since the common people could no longer understand formal Latin.

Variation

In order for language change to occur, we first need variation. You don't have to look far to find variation in the same language. No two people speak in exactly the same way; everyone's own language (idiolect) is slightly different from that of even their closest friends. 

More broadly, people speak differently depending on where they come from. You will probably be able to recognise different regional dialects - in fact, you might find speakers of some dialects very difficult to understand!

As I mentioned earlier in this article, the younger age group uses different words and pronunciations than the oldest age group, who tend to preserve an older variety of their local dialect.

Sociolinguists study how language varieties differ between groups separated by certain social variables, e.g., ethnicity, religion, social status, gender, level of education, age, etc., and how the adherence to these rules is used to categorise individuals in social or socioeconomic classes. 

As the usage of a language varies from place to place, language usage also varies among social classes, and it is these sociolects (a dialect or register associated with a social group) that is the focus of sociolinguistics.

It is important to mention that everybody speaks a dialect. Yes, even you! In fact, Standard English is a dialect. It just happens to be the one that carries the most prestige among the higher social classes, and the one that is the most widely understood. 

But a dialect is simply a variety of language that is characteristic of a certain group of the language's speakers. Standard English has features that set it apart from most other dialects of English, such as the lack of double negation (e.g. *I didn't do nothing meaning 'I did nothing' is not allowed in Standard English, but it does occur in many other English dialects.) Therefore, Standard English is a dialect of English.

Types of variation

Every aspect of language can vary. Here is a list of the different areas of language which are subject to variation:

The meaning of a word

An existing word might gain a new meaning, perhaps because a word is needed for a new concept or idea. 'Mouse' still means a small, furry rodent, but in the last 40 or so years, it has also come to mean a device attached to a computer, used to control a cursor on the screen. I'm sure you needed to read this blog to know that! 

The meaning of a word can evolve gradually. For example, a certain common English adjective meaning 'foolish' or 'irresponsible' used to mean 'happy' or 'prosperous.' Then its meaning changed to 'pious', then to 'innocent', then to 'pitiable', 'weak', 'feeble in mind' before gaining its current meaning (Harper, 2013.) All of these changes happened within 1,000 years. The word in question? Silly.

Lexicon 

A new word might gain wide currency in the language. Perhaps the word is a neologism, or a borrowing from another language. Maybe a dialectal term gains wider currency and is adopted into the standard language. Alternatively, a brand name or a website might become a fully-fledged word. For example, some people use hoover as the generic word for a vacuum cleaner. Facebook and Google are now verbs as well as proper nouns.

New words rarely come from thin air, although 'googol' (and its related term 'googolplex') was apparently coined by the 9 year old nephew of US mathematician Edward Kasner (Harper, 2013.) I found that out from Google, incidentally.

Pronunciation

The pronunciation of a phoneme (speech sound) or an allophone (a speech sound in a certain environment) is one of the most easily-noticed features of language variation. An example that most English speakers will be familiar with is the contrast between rhotic and non-rhotic dialects. Rhotic speakers (most American, Canadians, Irish and Scottish people) pronounce the <r> sounds in 'fourth floor' as a distinct consonant, whereas most English, Welsh, Australian and New Zealand people simply lengthen the preceding vowel. 

Morphology

A certain word ending (shooting v shootin') might vary, or perhaps the presence or absence of subject-verb agreement (he goes v he go) may be in variation. Over time, languages may lose inflections (word endings to mark categories such as gender, number, tense, noun case etc.) as English did, or they might pick up new inflections.

Syntax

Roughly speaking, this encompasses variations in word order, such as  whereabouts a preposition goes in the sentence (e.g. the sword which I attacked you with, or the sword with which I attacked you). Also, the use of function words to express agreement, such as double negation (I don't have any money v I don't have no money) comes under syntactic variation.

Spelling and punctuation

Obviously, this type of variation only applies to the written language, and not every language is written down. Written language is more conservative and resistant to change than spoken language, and as a result, it tends to be more heavily prescribed. However, variation can occur within written language. Think of the differences between the British and American spellings of words such as colour/color and centre/center.

Even punctuation is subject to variation and change. The current-day rules for the usage of the apostrophe in English were only universally accepted in the mid-19^th century (Crystal, 2003, p.203,) so even though written language is more standardised and fixed than spoken language, it does eventually catch up with changes in pronunciation¹.


Next up...

I will go into greater detail about each type of variation in later instalments of this series. My next article, though, will be about the descriptive approach towards language. Instead of pronouncing value judgements on a particular variant in language, sociolinguists like to investigate why a certain variant might be associated with a region, or social class, or gender. My next article will explain how they do this, and why they have this approach towards language.

Footnotes:

¹ - Written language is subject to a greater degree of standardisation than spoken language because it needs to be understood clearly by its audience. In the case of a popular newspaper, for example, the audience might include everyone who speaks the language! 

Ambiguities can easily be resolved in speech, because if you didn't understand what the other person said, you can simply ask them to clarify what they meant. This is not so easy in written language, because you could be reading a book or article written by somebody who is no longer alive! That is why precision and the avoidance of obscure words and definitions is important in the written language.

References:

Crystal, D. (1997) The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language (2^nd ed.) Cambridge University Press: Cambridge

Crystal, D. (2003) The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language (2^nd ed.), Cambridge University Press: Cambridge

Finegan, E. (2007) Language: Its Structure and Use (5^th ed.),Thomas Wadsworth: Boston, USA

Harper, D. (2013) Online Etymology Dictionary: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=silly&searchmode=none [Accessed 30/11/2013]

Tucker, G. R. (1999) A Global Perspective on Bilingualism and Bilingual Education:  http://www.cal.org/resources/Digest/digestglobal.html, Carnegie Mellon University [Accessed 5/12/13]