View source for Language change

{{Short description|Modification or development of a language}}
{{Distinguish|language shift|code-switching}}
{{for|the book by Jean Aitchison|Language Change: Progress or Decay?{{!}}''Language Change: Progress or Decay?''}}
{{Redirect|Linguistic corruption|errors in grammar|Solecism|non-standard words or pronunciation|Barbarism (linguistics)}}
{{Multiple issues|
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'''Language change''' is the process of alteration in the features of a single [[language]], or of languages in general, over time. It is studied in several subfields of [[linguistics]]: [[historical linguistics]], [[sociolinguistics]], and [[evolutionary linguistics]]. Traditional theories of historical linguistics identify three main types of change: systematic change in the pronunciation of [[phonemes]], or [[sound change]]; [[borrowing (linguistics)|borrowing]], in which features of a language or dialect are introduced or altered as a result of influence from another language or dialect; and [[analogical change]], in which the shape or grammatical behavior of a word is altered to more closely resemble that of another word. Research on language change generally assumes the [[uniformitarian principle (linguistics)|uniformitarian principle]]—the presumption that language changes in the past took place according to the same general principles as language changes visible in the present.<ref>{{Citation |last=Romaine |first=Suzanne |title=CONTACT WITH OTHER LANGUAGES |date=2001-02-07 |work=The Cambridge History of the English Language |pages=154–183 |url=https://doi.org/10.1017/chol9780521264792.005 |access-date=2025-03-22 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-1-139-05382-2}}</ref> 

Language change usually does not occur suddenly, but rather takes place via an extended period of [[variation (linguistics)|variation]], during which new and old linguistic features coexist. All living languages are continually undergoing change. Some commentators use derogatory labels such as "corruption" to suggest that language change constitutes a degradation in the quality of a language, especially when the change originates from [[human error]] or is a [[Prescription (linguistics)|prescriptively]] discouraged usage.<ref>{{cite book|last=Lyons|first=John |title=Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VGkkjkLPZkoC|date=1 June 1968|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-09510-5|page=42|quote=The traditional grammarian tended to assume [...] that it was his task, as a grammarian, to 'preserve' this form of language from 'corruption'.}}</ref> Modern linguistics rejects this concept, since from a scientific point of view such innovations cannot be judged in terms of good or bad.<ref>{{Cite book | author=Joan Bybee | title=Language Change | year=2015 | publisher=Cambridge University Press | pages=10–11 | isbn=9781107020160 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=b1mtCAAAQBAJ}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book | author=Lyle Campbell | title=Historical Linguistics: An Introduction | year=2004 | publisher=MIT Press | pages=3–4 | isbn=9780262532679 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EjXrrOJhex8C}}</ref> [[John Lyons (linguist)|John Lyons]] notes that "any standard of evaluation applied to language-change must be based upon a recognition of the various functions a language 'is called upon' to fulfil in the society which uses it".<ref>{{Cite book|author=John Lyons|title=Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics|date=1 June 1968|publisher=Cambridge University Press|pages=42–44|isbn=978-0-521-09510-5|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VGkkjkLPZkoC}}</ref>

Over enough time, changes in a language can accumulate to such an extent that it is no longer recognizable as the same language. For instance, [[modern English]] is the result of centuries of language change applying to [[Old English]], even though modern English is extremely divergent from Old English in grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. The two may be thought of as distinct languages, but Modern English is a "descendant" of its "ancestor" Old English. When multiple languages are all descended from the same ancestor language, as the [[Romance language]]s are from [[Vulgar Latin]], they are said to form a [[language family]] and be "[[genetic relationship (linguistics)|genetically]]" related.

==Causes==
* Economy: Speech communities tend to change their utterances to be as efficient and effective (with as little effort) as possible, while still reaching communicative goals. Purposeful speaking therefore involves a trade-off of costs and benefits.
** The [[principle of least effort]] tends to result in phonetic reduction of speech forms. See [[vowel reduction]], [[cluster reduction]], [[lenition]], and [[elision]]. After some time, a change may become widely accepted (it becomes a regular [[sound change]]) and may end up treated as [[standard language|standard]]. For instance: ''going to'' {{IPA|[ˈɡoʊ.ɪŋ.tʊ]}} → ''gonna'' {{IPA|[ˈɡɔnə]}} or {{IPA|[ˈɡʌnə]}}, with examples of both vowel reduction {{IPA|[ʊ] → [ə]}} and elision {{IPA|[nt] → [n]}}, {{IPA|[oʊ.ɪ] → [ʌ]}}.
* Expressiveness: Common or overused language tends to lose its emotional or rhetorical intensity over time; therefore, new words and constructions are continuously employed to revive that intensity<ref name="Deutscher"/>
* [[Analogical change|Analogy]]: Over time, speech communities unconsciously apply patterns of rules in certain words, sounds, etc. to unrelated other words, sounds, etc.
* [[Language contact]]: Words and constructions are borrowed from one language into another.<ref name="llas.ac.uk">{{cite web|url=http://www.llas.ac.uk/resources/gpg/2784|title=The teaching of pidgin and Creole studies - LLAS Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies|access-date=25 September 2016}}</ref>
* [[Culture|Cultural environment]]: As a culture evolves, new places, situations, and objects inevitably enter its language, whether or not the culture encounters different people.
* Migration/Movement: Speech communities, moving into a region with a new or more complex linguistic situation, will influence, and be influenced by, language change; they sometimes even end up with entirely new languages, such as pidgins and creoles.<ref name="llas.ac.uk"/>
* Imperfect learning: According to one view, children regularly learn the adult forms imperfectly, and the changed forms then turn into a new standard. Alternatively, imperfect learning occurs regularly in one part of society, such as an immigrant group, where the minority language forms a [[Substrata (linguistics)|substratum]], and the changed forms can ultimately influence majority usage.<ref name=Cambridge>''The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language'' (1997, p. 335)</ref>
* Social prestige: A language change towards adopting features that have more social [[prestige (sociolinguistics)|prestige]], or away from ones with negative prestige,<ref name=Cambridge/> as in the case of the [[Rhoticity in English|loss of rhoticity]] in the British [[Received Pronunciation]] accent.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://dialectblog.com/2012/10/07/was-received-pronunciation-ever-rhotic/|title=Was Received Pronunciation Ever Rhotic?|last=Ben|date=7 October 2012|access-date=25 September 2016}}</ref> Such movements can go back and forth.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.macmillandictionaryblog.com/the-fall-of-the-r-less-class|title=The fall of the r-less class - Macmillan|date=14 November 2011|access-date=25 September 2016}}</ref>

According to [[Guy Deutscher (linguist)|Guy Deutscher]], the tricky question is "Why are changes not brought up short and stopped in their tracks? At first sight, there seem to be all the reasons in the world why society should never let the changes through." He sees the reason for tolerating change in the fact that we already are used to "[[Variation (linguistics)|synchronic variation]]", to the extent that we are hardly aware of it. For example, when we hear the word "wicked", we automatically interpret it as either "evil" or "wonderful", depending on whether it is uttered by an elderly lady or a teenager. Deutscher speculates that "[i]n a hundred years' time, when the original meaning of 'wicked' has all but been forgotten, people may wonder how it was ever possible for a word meaning 'evil' to change its sense to 'wonderful' so quickly."<ref name="Deutscher">The Unfolding of Language, 2005, chapter 2, esp. pp. 63, 69 and 71</ref>

==Types==

===Phonetic and phonological changes===
{{Main|Sound change|Phonological change}}

[[Sound change]]—i.e., change in the pronunciation of [[phoneme]]s—can lead to [[phonological change]] (i.e., change in the relationships between phonemes within the structure of a language). For instance, if the pronunciation of one phoneme changes to become identical to that of another phoneme, the two original phonemes can merge into a single phoneme, reducing the total number of phonemes the language contains.

Determining the exact course of sound change in historical languages can pose difficulties, since the technology of [[Sound recording and reproduction|sound recording]] dates only from the 19th century, and thus sound changes before that time must be inferred from written texts. The [[Orthography|orthographical]] practices of historical writers provide the main (indirect) evidence of how language sounds have changed over the centuries. Poetic devices such as rhyme and rhythm can also provide clues to earlier phonetic and phonological patterns.

A principal axiom of historical linguistics, established by the linguists of the [[Neogrammarian]] school of thought in the 19th century, is that sound change is said to be "regular"—i.e., a given sound change simultaneously affects all words in which the relevant set of phonemes appears, rather than each word's pronunciation changing independently of each other. The degree to which the Neogrammarian hypothesis is an accurate description of how sound change takes place, rather than a useful approximation, is controversial; but it has proven extremely valuable to historical linguistics as a [[heuristic]], and enabled the development of methodologies of [[comparative reconstruction]] and [[internal reconstruction]] that allow linguists to extrapolate backwards from known languages to the properties of earlier, un[[attested language]]s and hypothesize sound changes that may have taken place in them.

===Lexical changes===
{{Main|Lexical innovation}}
The study of lexical changes forms the [[Historical linguistics|diachronic]] portion of the science of [[onomasiology]].

The ongoing influx of new words into the [[English language]] (for example) helps make it a rich field for investigation into language change, despite the difficulty of defining precisely and accurately the vocabulary available to speakers of English. Throughout [[History of the English language|its history]], English has not only [[loanword|borrowed words]] from other languages but has re-combined and recycled them to create new meanings, whilst [[Changes to Old English vocabulary|losing some old words]].

[[lexicographer|Dictionary-writers]] try to keep track of the changes in languages by recording (and, ideally, dating) the appearance in a language of new words, or of new usages for existing words. By the same token, they may tag some words eventually as "archaic" or "obsolete".

===Spelling changes===

Standardisation of [[spelling]] originated centuries ago.{{Vague|date=October 2016}}{{Citation needed|date=July 2008}} Differences in spelling often catch the eye of a reader of a text from a previous century. The pre-print era had fewer [[literacy|literate]] people: languages lacked fixed systems of orthography, and the manuscripts that survived often show words spelled according to regional pronunciation and to personal preference.
<!--- These paragraphs might belong in the entry on [[English orthography]], but it's not clear at all what they have to do with spelling changes over time in languages in general

The development of the [[printing press]] in the 15th century, however, presented printers with dilemmas of standardisation: texts from the fifteenth through to the seventeenth centuries show many internal inconsistencies, with the same word often spelled differently within the same text. Writers contributed to the variety: famously, [[William Shakespeare|Shakespeare]] spelled his own name in many different ways. Additionally, typesetters sometimes selected various spellings based on [[typographical]] criteria, such as aiming for uniform line-lengths when assembling type pieces on a composing stick. As typesetters found it easier to make one of the lines of type longer than to make the other lines shorter, word lengths tended to standardize on the longer spellings.

Modern English spellings do not result from a single consistent system; rather, they show evidence of previous pronunciations which changed over time. For example, the spelling of words such as "night" hints at an older pronunciation, the "gh" representing a sound similar to that conveyed by "ch" in the Scottish pronunciation of ''loch'' {{IPA|[x]}}. Other examples include the "k"-sound once pronounced in words like "knee" or "knight", and the "ch" in "chicken" or "cheese", which English-speakers once pronounced as 'k'. Note too the use of hard [[yer]]s in older Russian orthography, and phasing out of 'th' in favour of 't' in many German words in the [[{{ill|de|Orthographische Konferenz von 1876}} | spelling reforms of 1876]].

One could regard many of the conventions of English spelling as stuck in the 15th century: [[William Caxton]] (died ca. 1492) chose the [[East Midlands English|East Midland dialect]] (specifically the [[London]] variety) of English as the basis for his first printed English-language work in 1476. He had to discriminate against many synonyms used in other areas of England (such as [[East Anglia]], [[Northumberland]] and [[Mercia]]). For example, Caxton's public found the Southern word "eyren" mutually unintelligible with the Northern equivalent, "egges" (modern English: "eggs").
-->

===Semantic changes===
{{Main|Semantic change}}

Semantic changes are shifts in the meanings of existing words. Basic types of semantic change include:
* [[pejoration]], in which a term's connotation goes from positive to negative
* amelioration, in which a term's connotations goes from negative to (more) positive
* broadening, in which a term acquires additional potential uses
* narrowing, in which a term's potential uses become more restrictive

After a word enters a language, its meaning can change as through a shift in the [[Valence (psychology)|valence]] of its connotations. As an example, when "villain" entered English it meant 'peasant' or 'farmhand', but acquired the connotation 'low-born' or 'scoundrel', and today only the negative use survives. Thus 'villain' has undergone [[pejoration]]. Conversely, the word "wicked" is undergoing amelioration in colloquial contexts, shifting from its original sense of 'evil', to the much more positive one {{as of | 2009 | lc = on}} of 'brilliant'.

Words' meanings may also change in terms of the breadth of their semantic domain. Narrowing a word limits its alternative meanings, whereas broadening associates new meanings with it. For example, "hound" ([[Old English]] ''hund'') once referred to any dog, whereas in modern English it denotes only a particular type of dog. On the other hand, the word "dog" itself has been broadened from its Old English root 'dogge', the name of a particular breed, to become the general term for all domestic canines.<ref>{{Cite book|title=An Introduction to Historical Linguistics|last1=Crowley|first1=Terry|last2=Bowern|first2=Claire|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=2010|isbn=978-0195365542|location=New York, NY|pages=200–201}}</ref>

===Syntactic change===
{{Main|Syntactic change}}

[[Syntactic change]] is the evolution of the [[syntax|syntactic]] structure of a [[natural language]].

Over time, syntactic change is the greatest modifier of a particular language.{{citation needed|date=April 2017}} Massive changes – attributable either to [[creolization]] or to [[relexification]] – may occur both in syntax and in vocabulary. Syntactic change can also be purely language-internal, whether independent within the syntactic component or the eventual result of phonological or morphological change.{{citation needed|date=April 2017}}

==Sociolinguistics==
The [[sociolinguistics|sociolinguist]] Jennifer Coates, following William Labov, describes linguistic change as occurring in the context of linguistic [[heterogeneity]]. She explains that "[l]inguistic change can be said to have taken place when a new linguistic form, used by some sub-group within a speech community, is adopted by other members of that community and accepted as the norm."<ref>Coates, 1993: 169</ref>

The sociolinguist [[William Labov]] recorded the change in [[pronunciation]] in a relatively short period in the American resort of [[Martha's Vineyard]] and showed how this resulted from social tensions and processes.<ref>
{{cite journal | last1 = Labov | first1 = William 
| year = 1963 | title = The social motivation of a sound change | journal = Word | volume = 19 | issue = 3| pages = 273–309 
| doi = 10.1080/00437956.1963.11659799 
| s2cid = 140505974 
}}
</ref>
Even in the relatively short time that broadcast media have recorded their work, one can observe the difference between the [[Received pronunciation|pronunciation]] of the newsreaders of the 1940s and the 1950s and the pronunciation of today. The greater acceptance and fashionability of [[regional accents]] in  media may{{Original research inline|date=September 2009}} also reflect a more democratic, less formal society — compare the widespread adoption of [[language policy|language policies]].

Can and Patton (2010) provide a quantitative analysis of twentieth-century Turkish literature using forty novels of forty authors. Using weighted least squares regression and a sliding window approach, they show that, as time passes, words, in terms of both tokens (in text) and types (in vocabulary), have become longer. They indicate that the increase in word lengths with time can be attributed to the government-initiated language "reform" of the 20th century. This reform aimed at replacing foreign words used in Turkish, especially Arabic- and Persian-based words (since they were in majority when the reform was initiated in early 1930s), with newly coined pure Turkish neologisms created by adding suffixes to Turkish word stems (Lewis, 1999).

Can and Patton (2010), based on their observations of the change of a specific word use (more specifically in newer works the preference of ''ama'' over ''fakat'', both borrowed from Arabic and meaning "but", and their inverse usage correlation is statistically significant), also speculate that the word length increase can influence the common word choice preferences of authors.

Kadochnikov (2016) analyzes the political and economic logic behind the development of the Russian language. Ever since the emergence of the unified Russian state in the 15th and 16th centuries the government played a key role in standardizing the Russian language and developing its [[linguistic prescription|prescriptive norms]] with the fundamental goal of ensuring that it can be efficiently used as a practical tool in all sorts of legal, judicial, administrative and economic affairs throughout the country.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9781137325044|title=Languages, Regional Conflicts and Economic Development: Russia. In: Ginsburgh, V., Weber, S. (Eds.). The Palgrave Handbook of Economics and Language.|last=Kadochnikov|first=Denis |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan|year=2016|location=London|pages=538–580}}</ref>

==Quantification==
Altintas, Can, and Patton (2007) introduce a systematic approach to language change quantification by studying unconsciously used language features in time-separated parallel translations. For this purpose, they use objective style markers such as vocabulary richness and lengths of words, word stems and suffixes, and employ statistical methods to measure their changes over time.

==Language shift and social status==
{{main|Language shift}}
Languages perceived to be "higher status" stabilise or spread at the expense of other languages perceived by their own speakers to be "lower-status".

Historical examples are the early Welsh and Lutheran Bible translations, leading to the liturgical languages Welsh and High German thriving today, unlike other Celtic or German variants.<ref>{{cite book
|last= Barker
|first= Christopher
|title= The Bible in Welsh
|year= 1588
|location= London
|url= http://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/library/special_collections/early_books/pix/welsh.htm
}}</ref>

For prehistory, Forster and Renfrew (2011)<ref>{{cite journal | author=Forster P, Renfrew C |year=2011 |title=Mother tongue and Y chromosomes | url= http://www.rootsforreal.com/press_en.php | journal=Science | volume=333 |pages=1390–1391 | bibcode=2011Sci...333.1390F | last2=Renfrew | doi=10.1126/science.1205331 | pmid=21903800 | issue=6048|s2cid=43916070 | url-access=subscription }}</ref> argue that in some cases there is a correlation of language change with intrusive male Y chromosomes but not with female mtDNA. They then speculate that technological innovation (transition from hunting-gathering to agriculture, or from stone to metal tools) or military prowess (as in the abduction of British women by Vikings to [[Iceland]]) causes immigration of at least some males, and perceived status change. Then, in mixed-language marriages with these males, prehistoric women would often have chosen to transmit the "higher-status" spouse's language to their children, yielding the language/Y-chromosome correlation seen today.

==See also==
* [[Calque]]
* [[Dialect continuum]]
* [[Grammaticalization]]
* [[Koiné language]]
* [[Language transfer]]
* [[Morphemization]]
* [[Neologism]]
* [[Origin of language]]
* [[Phono-semantic matching]]
* [[Variation (linguistics)]]
* [[Wave model (linguistics)]]

== Notes ==
{{Reflist}}

==References==
;Journals
*{{cite journal |last1=Altintas |first1=K. |last2=Can |first2=F. |last3=Patton |first3=J. M. |title=Language Change Quantification Using Time-separated Parallel Translations |journal=Literary and Linguistic Computing |volume=22 |pages=375–393 |year=2007 |doi=10.1093/llc/fqm026 |issue=4|url=http://repository.bilkent.edu.tr/bitstream/11693/23342/1/Language%20change%20quantification%20using%20time-separated%20parallel%20translations.pdf |hdl=11693/23342 |hdl-access=free }}
*{{cite journal |last1=Can |first1=F. |last2=Patton |first2=J. M. |title=Change of Word Characteristics in 20th Century Turkish Literature: A Statistical Analysis |journal=Journal of Quantitative Linguistics |volume=17 |issue= 3 |pages=167–190 |year=2010 |doi=10.1080/09296174.2010.485444|url=http://repository.bilkent.edu.tr/bitstream/11693/38195/1/Change%20of%20Word%20Characteristics%20in%2020th%20Century%20Turkish%20Literature%20A%20Statistical%20Analysis.pdf |hdl=11693/38195 |s2cid=9236823 |hdl-access=free }}

;Books
* {{cite book
|last= Coates
|first= Jennifer
|title= Women, men, and language: a sociolinguistic account of gender differences in language
|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=aFFsAAAAIAAJ
|access-date= 2010-03-30
|edition= 2
|series= Studies in language and linguistics
|year= 1993
|publisher= Longman
|isbn= 978-0-582-07492-7
|pages= 228
}}
* [[William Labov|Labov, William]] (1994, 2001), ''Principles of Linguistic Change'' (vol.I ''Internal Factors'', 1994; vol.II ''Social Factors'', 2001), Blackwell.
* Lewis, G. (1999). ''The Turkish Language Reform: A Catastrophic Success.'' Oxford : Oxford University Press.
* Wardhaugh, R. (1986), ''An Introduction to Sociolinguistics'', Oxford/ New York.

== Further reading ==
* AlBader, Yousuf B. (2015) "[http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/9696/ Semantic Innovation and Change in Kuwaiti Arabic: A Study of the Polysemy of Verbs]"
* {{cite book |title=Like, Literally, Dude: Arguing for the Good in Bad English |year=2023 |first=Valerie |last=Fridland |publisher=Viking |isbn=978-0593298329}}
* {{cite book|title=Talk on the Wild Side: Why Language Can't Be Tamed |year=2018 |first=Lane |last=Greene |publisher=The Economist |isbn=978-1610398336}}
* Hale, M. (2007), Historical linguistics: Theory and method, Oxford, Blackwell
* {{cite book |title=Words on the Move: Why English Won't - and Can't - Sit Still (Like, Literally) |first=John |last=McWhorter |publisher=Picador |year=2017 |isbn=978-1250143785 |author-link=John McWhorter }}

==External links==
* [http://www.bl.uk/soundsfamiliar Sounds Familiar?] The British Library website provides audio examples of changing accents and dialects from across the UK.

{{Historical linguistics}}
{{Authority control}}

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[[Category:Historical linguistics]]
[[Category:Sociolinguistics]]