1. Aspects of Language Change
Prepared by
Mariam Bedraoui

2. Outline Lexical Change Semantic Change Sound change Syntactic Change
Borrowing
Coining new words
Semantic Change
Broadening
Narrowing
Shifts of meaning
Sound change
Loss of phonemes
Addition of phonemes
Metathesis
Syntactic Change
Word order
Re-analysis
Grammaticalization

3. Aspects of language Change
Lexical
Semantic
Phonological
Syntactic

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

5. Borrowing: Examples
Raccoon
Kayak

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
NATO: North Atlantic- Treaties Organisation
Light amplification of stimulated emission of radiation

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
Silly= happy, naive
nice=ignorant

10. Semantic Change

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

12. Sound Change
Phonetic and phonological
Natural
Ease of articulation

13. Sound Change: Types Loss of phonemes Addition of phonemes
Knot- knee- knife-know
Make- time- dive
Lit- gros- murs- aimer- part
Wednesday- Choclate- camera- correct- police
Addition of phonemes
Latin: scala- snob- smeralda- spatha
Spanish: escala- esnob-esmerada- espada
Middle English: amonges- amiddes, betwix
Amongst- amidst- betwixt

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

17. Thanks for your attention