3. Outline
1. Lexical Change
Borrowing
Coining new words
2. Semantic Change
Broadening
Narrowing
Shifts of meaning
3. Sound change
Loss of phonemes
Addition of phonemes
Metathesis
4. Syntactic Change
Word order
Re-analysis
Grammaticalization
4. Lexical Change: Borrowing
Languages are avid borrowers
Two-fifths of common words in English
are loan words
Direct/indirect borrowing
Phonological and morphological
treatment of loans
Rarely borrowed words
6. Borrowing: Further Examples
Examples of Loan
Words
kayak superstar
Yogurt Top model
Racoon T- shirt
Ski Check- up
kangaroo Gentlemen
Tsunami look
democracy cool
coach computer
yacht disk
algebra fan
7. Lexical Change: Coining New Words
New words can be formed using the basic resources of
the language through a number of processes:
Compounding: Combining two or more words to form new
words
Blackboard- girlfriend- gingerbread
shopkeeper- sky diving
laptop- ozone friendly
Derivation: Using affixes to create new words
warmth- length- depth- wisdom- freedom-
stardom
Otherwise- clockwise- moneywise- profitwise
miniskirt- mini-budgets- mini-project- mini-wars
8. Lexical Change: Coining New
Words
Clipping: Forming a word by extracting an arbitrary portion of a
word of an identical meaning
phone (telephone)
bus
Gym (gymnasium)
Flu (influenza)
Ciggie (cigarette)
Blending: Pieces of existing words are combined to form new
words
Motel
Smog
Brunch
Chunnel
Oxbridge
Acronyms: The reduction of long phrases to a few letters
NATO- FBI- BBC
TA- LA
Laser
9. Semantic Change: Broadening and Narrowing
Broadening: Words acquire more meanings
beside the original one
• Dog
• Holiday
• Picture
• Mouse
• Virus
Narrowing: limiting the semantic scope that words
used to have
• Meat
• Deer
• Girl
11. Semantic Change: Shift of Meaning
Shift of Meaning: Words cease to mean
what they used to, and take on new
semantic representations
• Silly
• Nice
• Immoral
• With
• cheer
14. Sound Change: Types
Metathesis: It occurs when two sounds
switch places
• Old English: Ask- aks
• Latin: crepare- parabola- miraculu- pericula
• Spanish: quebrar- palabra- milagro- peligru
15. Syntactic Change: Types
It occurs in the grammatical notions that govern languages
Slow and in need for further investigation
Word order
• Old English: SOV and SVO language
• Modern English: An SVO language
Reanalysis: a process whereby grammatical notions which has one
particular function comes to be perceived by the speakers of a language as
having a second.
The perfect tense in English
I have finished my dinner
I have a copy of her new book
She have my hair cut
She has her daughter trapped in war
Old English: Your faith has you healed
Your faith healed you
16. Syntactic Change: Types
Grammaticalization: The process whereby
lexical items are reduced to grammatical items
without entirely losing their function as words.
• Verbs meaning ‘go’, ‘come,’ want very often
develop into grammatical markers of futurity
• Going to
• Will