Language Change
The nature of language change
Language change is inevitable,
universal, continuous and, to a
considerable degree, regular
a n d s y s t e m a t i c .
Language change is extensive, taking place in
virtually all aspects of the grammar --- in
phonology, morphology, syntax, lexicon, and
semantics. Language change is never an
overnight occurrence, otherwise,
communication would be impossible.
1 Sound change
1. 1 Vowel sound change
Great Vowel Shift , which occurred at the
end of the Middle English period,
approximately between 1400 and 1600
and which involved 7 long vowels, led to
one of the major disagreements between
the pronunciation and the spelling system
of Modern English. For example:
MiddleEnglish
Modern English
five
fi:v
faiv
mouse
mu:s
maus
feet
fe:t
fi:t
mood
Mo:d
mu:d
break
br:ken
breik
broke
Bro:ken
bruk
Name
na:m 
neim
Old English
Modern English
a:
u
stan
stone
ham
home
wrat
wrote
1. 2 Sound loss
Some sounds in English have simply
disappeared from the general pronunciation
of English. For example, the voiceless velar
fricative / x /, which was present in "nicht"
/nixt/ ("night") in old English, was lost in the
present-day form of night.
In Old and Middle English, /k/ sound
in /kn - / clusters in the word - initial
position was pronounced, but in
modern English, this /k/ is lost in such
w o r ds a s " k n i g h t " a n d " k n e e . "
Another sound loss is the deletion of a
word-final vowel segment, a
phenomenon called apocope. For
example, name and love were
pronounced respectively /na:m/and
/luv/ in Middle English, but as
/ neim/ and /l^v/ in Modern English and
the word-final sound /  / was lost.
1. 3 Sound addition
Sound addition includes the gain or
insertion of a sound. A change that
involves the insertion of a consonant or
vowel sound to the middle of a word is
known as epenthesis, for example:
emty
empty
glimse
glimpse
1. 4 Sound movement
Metathesis refers to sound change
because of a reversal in the positions
of two neighbouring sounds. For
example, Modern English word “bird”
is the result of the the reversal of the
two neibouring sounds /r/ and/i/ in the
Old English word "bridd" ("bird")
2 Morphological change
2. 1 Affix loss
In Old English, the affix "-bora",
which was added to a noun to indicate
the performer of the action, was now
lost in Modern English.
mund ("protection") + bora
mundbora ("protector")
Derivational rule loss also occurred to the
Old English suffix “-yan”, which was
added to an adjective to produce a
causative verb. In modern English, this
suffix has simply disappeared.
Old English had a gender-marking system.
This system divided nouns into three
genders of masculine, feminine, and neuter.
In Old English, over half of the nouns are
inflected to indicate different cases. In
modern English, the loss of gender and case
marking has become the most noticeable of
the morphological losses.
2. 2 Affix addition
The affix "-able" and “-ment” were
added to the English morphological
system because of the words such as
“favourable” and “accomplishment”
borrowed from the French language.
3 Syntactic change
3. 1 Rule loss
In Old English, there was a
morphosyntactic rule of adjective
agreement, according to which, the
endings of adjectives must agree with
the head noun in case, number, and
gender. But this syntactic rule has been
lost in modern English.
3. 2 Rule addition
The particle movement rule is a syntactic rule
added to Modern English. This rule allows the
particle in some phrasal verbs to be shifted to
the right of the object. This particle movement
is impossible in Old English. For example:
A: He switched off the light.
B: He switched the light off.
3. 3 Rule change
Major rule changes in the structure of
English sentences took place in their word
orders. In Middle English, “not” was added
to the end of an affirmative sentence to make
it negative. But in Modern English, the
negation is often made with “not” inserted
between the auxiliary verb and the main verb.
F o r
e x a m p l e :
I deny it not.
Old English had an elaborate case-marking
system. The grammatical functions were
well revealed with case markers. This
system made the word order of Old English
more variable than that of Modern English.
For example, the word orders in Old
English included SVO,VSO, SOV and
OSV, but Modern English has lost the
majority of case markers, therefore a basic
word order of SVO has to be followed.
2. 4 Lexical change
2. 4. 1 Lexical loss
Many words, which were used in Old
English or Middle English have fallen
out of use in Modern English. For
example: demiss, ere, oft, wot, beseem,
wer, aught, thee, thou, thy. Some of
them can still be found in compound
words or idioms, such as were-wolf.
2. 4. 2 Lexical addition
The history of English lexical expansion is
one that is characterized with heavy
borrowing and word formation, for example:
Loan words from French:
Government, religion, chaplain, crime,
medicine, physician
Loan words from Greek:
Myth, geometry, gymnastics
Loan words from Latin:
Formula, memorandum, datum, curriculum
Loan words from Spanish:
Banana, mosquito, embargo, plaza
Loan words from German:
Kindergarten, dock, seminar, plunder,
zinc
Loan words from Chinese:
Lichi, typhoon, tea, ginseng
New words, which are added to English,
can also be formed by using such word
formation rules as compounding,
derivation, acronym formation,
blending, abbreviation, clipping,
back-formation, and coinage.
Compounding： It is a process of
combining two or more words into one
lexical unit. For example:
warweary, law-abiding, short-sighted,
sit-in, end product
Derivation: It refers to the process by
which new words are formed by the
addition of affixes to the roots, stems,
or words. For example,
nation
national
nationalize
nationalization
internationalization
Acronymy: It is a process of creating a
word called acronym by combining the
initials of a number of words. For
example,
VIP (very important person)
OPEC (Organization of Petroleum
Exporting Countries)
Blending: It is a process of forming a
new word by combining parts of other
words. For example,
medicare( medical + care)
smog (smoke + fog)
comsat (communications + satellite)
brunch (breakfast + lunch)
Abbreviation: An abbreviation is a
shortened form of a word or phrase which
represents the complete form. For example,
kg (kilogram),
TV (television),
cf (confer),
cm (centimetre)
Clipping: it is a kind of abbreviation of
otherwise longer words or phrases. For
example,
Zoo (zoological garden)
gym (gymnasium)
copter (helicopter)
phone (telephone)
Back-formation: It is a process by
which new words are formed by
taking away the suffix of an existing
w o r d . F o r e x a m p l e ,
enthuse (enthusiasm)
burgle (burglar)
babysit (babysitter)
edit (editor)
Coinage: It refers to the invention of a
new word, often from the brand-name
or trade-mark of a product. For example,
Hoover, Whiteout, Thermofax, Mace
are the trademarks for their respective
products, but now are commonized:
To hoover a floor
To white out a mistake
To thermofax a material
To mace demonstators
2.5 Semantic change
2. 5. 1 Semantic broadening
Semantic broadening refers to the
process in which the meaning of a
word becomes more general or
inclusive than its historically
earlier denotation. For example:
Words
Past meaning
Dog
a kind of hunting
dog
Aunt
father’s sister
Present meaning
any kind
of dog
both father’s and
mother’s sister
Holiday
a holy day
any day off
2. 5. 2 Semantic narrowing
Semantic narrowing is a process in which the
meaning of a word becomes less general or
inclusive than its historically earlier meaning.
For example：
Words
Hund
past meaning
any kind of dog
present meaning
a dog used for
hunting
Deer
an animal
a special kind of
animal
2.5.3 Semantic shift
Semantic shift is a process of semantic change
in which a word loses its former meaning and
acquires a new, sometimes related, meaning.
For example:
Words
past meaning
Silly
happy
Fond
foolish
board
present meaning
stupid
loving, affectionate
a piece of timber
a council or
authoritative body
The causes of language change
No one is able to provide a
consistent account for the exact
causes of all types of language
change, most linguists believe that
physiological, linguistic or
sociological factors all contribute to
l a n g u a g e c h a n g e .
5. 1 Sound assimilation
Sound assimilation refers to the physiological
effect of one sound on another. The
assimilation can result in the identity or
similarity of successive sounds, or in the loss
of one of two phonetically similar syllables in
sequence, phenomenon called haplology,
such as the loss of “la-”in “Engla-land.”
Impossible
Irregular
illogical
5. 2 Rule simplification and regularization
Rule simplification and regularization means
to regularize or simplify an irregular rule. For
example, because of the process of
regularization and simplification, the
irregular plural forms of “leaf”, "agendum",
"datum", "curriculum" and "memorandum"
have the tendency to change from leaves,
agenda, data, curricula, memoranda to leafs,
agendas, datas, curriculums, memorandums.
The rule simplification and
regularization help lessen the number
of irregular forms to be remembered.
5. 3 Internal borrowing
I n ter n al
speakers
borrow a
grammar
bo rr ow ing m e an s th at
of a particular language
rule from one part of the
and apply it generally.
In most situations, English forms the past
tense by adding –ed to the end of a verb.
English speakers may borrow this rule and
apply it to the situations where the rule was
formerly not used. For example, they may
create sweeped, spoiled, leaned to replace
swept, spoilt and leant respectively.
Internal borrowing has the
effect of reducing
memorization burdens
while communicative
efficiency is maximized.
5. 4 Elaboration
Rule elaboration occurs when there is a need
to reduce ambiguity and increase
communicative clarity or expressiveness.
Language seems to maintain a balance in rule
losses and rule elaboration. The loss of a rule
may be compensated for by the addition of
another feature to the grammar. For example,
the loss of case markers has resulted in a
stricter word order in modern English than in
O l d
E n g l i s h .
5. 5 Sociological triggers
Radical socio-political changes such as
wars, invasions, occupation,
colonialization, and language planning
and standardization policies lead to
vigorous language changes. For example,
the Norman Conquest marked the
beginning of the Middle English period.
5. 6 Cultural transmission
Another reason for language change is the need
to create new word and expression to refer to
newly developed concepts and new things.
Youngsters are creative enough in the use of
language. They may use a word different from
that used by the older generations to refer to
the same thing. For example, they tend to use
fridge while the older generation prefers icebox.
This tenuous transmission process adds up to
the inevitable and ongoing language change
a n d
v a r i a t i o n .
7 Children's approximation
toward the adult grammar
Children are exposed to diverse
linguistic information，which
makes it impossible for children’s
grammar to be identical to adults’.
Children tend to simplify and
regularize grammatical rules,
particularly when they see adults
u s e c e r t a i n r u l e s o p t i o n a l l y.
For example, adults may say "It's I" at
certain times and say "It's me" at other times
when the occasion is less formal. Children
tend to use the less formal style and
consequently, adopt the "me" variant
consistently in this construction. In such
cases, a change in the grammar occurs.