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generalization/broadening
Semantic (meaning) change whereby a word comes to have a wider, more general application. I.E. Coke to carbonated beverages.
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Narrowing
Semantic (meaning) change whereby a word comes to have a narrower definition: I.E. The OE word fethr meant both wing and feather but lost "wing"
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conditioned change
linguistic change caused by the influence of neaby sounds or other ling. features. I.E.: "con" in coMmit coLlect and coRrect.
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unconditioned change
Change unattributed to nearby sounds or ling. features.
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assimilation
When neighboring sounds become similar.
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deletion
Deletion is a linguistic process by which a sound present in its underlying phonemic form is removed from the phonetic form in certain environments. For instance, the word infrared is often pronounced [ɪnfərɛd]. Deletion is similar to the process of dissimilation or assimilationbecause the pronunciation is made easier. However, only in deletion is the segment or sound entirely removed.
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regularization
In linguistics, regularization is the process of making irregular forms regular (e.g., "oxen" becomes "oxes;" "grew" becomes "growed").
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backformation
In etymology, back-formation is the process of creating a new lexeme (less precisely, a new "word") by removing actual or supposed affixes.
I.E. The assumption that foggy meant like fog, leading to the creation of the word "Fog".
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hypercorrection
In linguistics, hypercorrection is defined as usage of pronunciation or linguistic rule that many informed users of a language consider incorrect, but that the speaker or writer uses through misunderstanding of prescriptive rules, often combined with a desire to seem formal or educated
I.E. : End in preposition: "This is the kind of tedious nonsense up with which I will not put!"
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cognates
Cognates in linguistics are words that have a common etymological origin.
Starve (eng) Sterben (german for "to die")
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reflex
The result of the historical development of an earlier form:
PDE: Oak Ger: aik-
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spelling pronunciation
spelling pronunciation is a pronunciation that, instead of reflecting the way the word was pronounced by previous generations of speakers, is a rendering in sound of the word's spelling. Spelling pronunciations compete, often effectively, with the older traditional pronunciation.
clothes was historically pronounced the same way as the verb close ("Whenas in silks my Julia goes/.../The liquefaction of her clothes" --Herrick), but many speakers now insert a /ð/
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Understand the effect of writing and widespread literacy on the speed and direction
of language change.
Writing created a visible, easily transferable form of linguistically rules that slowed language change by creating a more definite idea of "correct" grammar. Decreased dialect variation and irregular forms.
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Know some of the problems with depending exclusively on written texts for
information on previous stages of a language. Understand why less educated
writers may be a good source of historical language data.
- Educates do not represent the grammar of the common people or phonetics.
- Less educated writers represent the common dialect, and phonetics due to their misspellings.
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Understand the two possible ways that a language can come to be considered “dead.”
- No longer used.
- Evoles into a new language.
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schwa
An unstressed and toneless neutral vowel sound in some languages, often but not necessarily a mid-central vowel. Such vowels are often transcribed with the symbol <ə>, regardless of their actual phonetic value.
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diphthong
In phonetics, a diphthong, is a contour vowel—that is, a unitary vowel that changes quality during its pronunciation, or "glides", with a smooth movement of the tongue from one articulation to another, as in the English words eye, boy, and cow. This contrasts with "pure" vowels, or monophthongs, where the tongue is held still, as in the English word papa
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thorn
the weird "th" symbol that looks like a cross onna hump. Softer than the THETA (crossed out zero) symbol.
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weak verb
spread/spread-ed <--- verbs that need "ed or d" for past.
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strong verb
- Run/ran, come/came
- Internally becoming past.
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Know the basic stress pattern of OE
The frist syllable of every native content word was stressed, but function words were unstressed and loanwords attempted native stress.
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Be able to list at least three reasons for the loss of inflectional morphology
across the period of OE and later
- 1. Less case sensitive language. became less synthetic (lots of morphology) to a more analytic language (relies more on syntax).
- I.E. Male/female nouns were less germanic, no longer represented by their endings but by different words. (Frol, frollein, Boy/girl)
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Know how OE compared to Common Germanic in how flexible the word order was.
Word order was becoming more fixed in OE but looser in the possible order of adjectives and adverbs.
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Know which language(s) OE borrowed more (and less) from.
- More from Latin
- Less from Norse, celts.
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Know approximately what percentage of total OE vocabulary and of the most
common OE words have been maintained into PDE.
- 65-85% of OE voc. was lost
- 96% of PDE's most common were OE words
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