Historical linguistics
Language change
&
Semantic change
Language change
• Speakers constantly need to communicate with each
other in different circumstances.
• For this purpose they have to adapt language to
changing communicative needs in a changing
environment.
• These changes occur in the sound, grammar. And
modifications also occur in vocabulary and in the
meaning of the words.
Language change
• Through the basic process of word formation
of word formation all people are capable of
producing words.
• Such words result from the combination of
morphemes.
• speaker is seldom aware that he or she has
used language creatively.
• Language is, by its nature, productive.
• there are also the cases when truly new
words appear, words that no speaker of
the language has ever produced before.
• Words may be added or lost in
conjunction with cultural changes.
Vocabulary changes
• Vocabulary changes occur through
three main factors.
vocabulary change
•
Coinage
Compounding
& affixation
Conversion
Coinage
• Languages also make or coin new words,
entirely original creation, utilizing neither
words from another language nor
morphemes nor words already in use in one’s
own language.
• Examples are jazz, quiz, fun, and snob.
•
Morphemes are the smallest meaningful unit of a language.
coinage
• New words are also formed by
combining existing words and
morphemes into new, complex words.
For example teacher.
• Onomatopoeia is a modified type of
coining words.
Compounding and
affixation
• Compounds are the combination of two
independent words, i.e. free morphemes. For
example 'guesthouse‘.
• In affixation a bound morpheme is added to
a base as a prefix or as a suffix. For example
unlike, likeness.
Conversion
• This is the change of word class without
the addition of a formal suffix, for
example from verb 'to cheat' to noun 'a
cheat‘.
• A word changes its class i.e. undergoes
a functional change such as adv or adj
to v e.g. up > to up
shortening
Process
Example
Acronym
Radar, unesco, tevta
Blends
Clipping
Smoke + fog > smog
Motor + hotel > motel
Prof, phone
Abbreviations
Ms, Mr.
Initialism
BBC, RP
Back formations or
reanalysis
• A process where by which a word is formed
by cutting off an imagined suffix from an
existing word, owing to the morphological
reinterpretation.
• In back formation, a short word is created
from a larger word on the basis of similarities
between the longer word and other words in
the language. For example, the word editor
existed in lexicon of English long before the
word edit.
Semantic changes
• Words and morphemes change their
meanings in various ways, which shows the
social context.
• As we have example of the word pen.
• Words have their individual history.
• Semantic change is classified in two main
types.
• Extension and narrowing of meaning
• Grammaticalization