24 The History of English

undertaker was originally a euphemistic term with a very different range of meanings from the principal one which it now carries: the word used to mean ‘helper’, ‘contractor’, ‘publisher’ and ‘baptismal sponsor’, among others (Pyles and Algeo, 1982: 249).

Sometimes euphemistic terms undergo pejoration if the social taboos remain strong, as can be seen in terms for subjects such as excretion. English speakers of particular generations (mine included) feel extremely uncomfortable saying I’m going to the toilet and if we have to make such an announcement, are much more likely to use terms such as loo, restroom, the American-influenced bathroom, or (depending on who we are talking to) jokingly childish alternatives such as I’m going to have a wee/pee. It is worth noting though that toilet is not pejorated for everyone – the majority of my students, who are in their late teens or early twenties, say they have no problem using the word, and typically find euphemisms used by much older generations, such as little boys’/girls’ rooms, or spending a penny, laughable. To return to the cycle of pejoration that such terms can undergo, however, toilet was in fact a euphemism (deriving ultimately from French toile ‘cloth’) introduced to replace pejorated terms such as privy, latrine and lavatory – each of which was initially euphemistic (see Pyles and Algeo, 1982: 250).

The fact that people react negatively to certain issues and topics has led, in some instances, to an arguably deliberate use of euphemistic terms. An explicit, current example can be seen in the myriad expressions used by the nuclear industry to detract from the potentially horrific results of their weaponry. This technostrategic language (a term used by Cohn, 1987) includes terms such as clean bombs, counter value attacks, collateral damage and surgically clean strikes, which all obscure the actual scale of death and destruction. Weapons are also often given either innocuous names which ‘domesticate’ them, such as daisy cutter and cookie cutter, or romanticized labels which have connotations of godly (and therefore beneficent) power, such as Titan and Polaris. In another example of rendering the terrifying more familiar, silos, in which launch-ready missiles are kept, are referred to as Christmas tree farms. Such terms are not only used within the nuclear industry but have also entered the public consciousness via diffusion through the media. Their positive effect, however, remains questionable: during the 2003 furor over war in Iraq, for example, letters to newspapers such as the London Metro frequently complained that the use of euphemistic expressions allowed governments to hide from the grim consequences of war.

1.5 Morphological Change

Changes in morphology essentially means changes in word structure. However, since words are ultimately made up of sounds and in themselves make up utterances, a language’s morphology is integrated with its phonology and syntax, and can be affected by changes they undergo. For instance, the process of i-mutation (see Section 1.2) for plural formation was a phonologically conditioned change, but the loss of conditioning –i (and hence of the process) has simply rendered words such as feet and geese morphologically ‘irregular’. As an

English as a Changing Language 25

example of syntactic change influencing morphology, consider that a ‘full’ verb (that is, one which carries meaning and can be used as a main verb) can eventually become a verbal affix and hence, part of a language’s morphology. Thus, the endings –ás and –án in Spanish verb forms, such as tu comprarás ‘you will buy’ and ellos comprarán ‘they will buy’, have actually developed from ancestral Latin habe¯re ‘to have’ (a full verb). We will revisit this process of grammaticalization in more detail in Section 1.6 but let us now turn our attention to some of the major ways in which morphological change can occur.

Re-analysis of a word’s structure can result in changed morphological forms. We have already seen an example of this in Section 1.3 with the re-analysis of bikini. Re-analysis has also led to the development of umpire from noumpere and apron from napron (consider related napkin, napery): it seems that (Middle English) speakers analysed the initial nasal as part of a preceding indefinite article a(n). The same kind of re-analysis, but with the opposite effect, gave English nickname from (an) ekename and newt from (an) ewt.

A great deal of morphological change appears to occur through the operation of analogy, a concept initially devised and explored in diachronic studies of sound change undertaken by the nineteenth-century scholars known as the Neogrammarians. A principle of the Neogrammarian approach was that certain sound changes operated with ‘blind necessity’ (McMahon, 1994: 20); that is, they occurred because they were inevitable and despite any consequences they might incur for the rest of the grammatical system. Thus, a sound change could result in the creation of opaque irregularities that left no trace of the fact that they were once the product of a regular process: witness again the example of i-mutated plurals. The Neogrammarians believed, however, that analogy would come into play after a sound change had operated, making irregular forms conform to a regular pattern. Thus, although other nouns, such as book (OE bo¯c) should have historically followed the i-mutation pattern of feet, geese and others, they instead conformed to the more widespread one of forming plurals with –s, in this case giving modern English books and not, as might be expected, beek. We can see from this example, however, that the operation of analogy is in itself sporadic – if it were not, we would now have foots and gooses. This interaction between sound change and analogy is neatly summed up in Sturtevant’s Paradox: sound change is regular but creates irregularity, whereas analogy is irregular but creates regularity. We will return to this below.

Analogy has also been invoked as a general explanatory principle in morphological change. One of its incarnations is analogical extension, which involves ‘the generalisation of a morpheme or relation which already exists in the language into new situations or forms’ (McMahon, 1994: 71). A typical example of this process lies in an area of English morphology that we have already mentioned a few times, namely the formation of the plural. As we will see in Chapter 3, Old English nouns, which were gendered, belonged to different inflectional paradigms which carried information on case and number. Thus, the plural form of a word like stone (OE sta¯ n; masculine gender) was sta¯ nas when used as a subject and sta¯ num when an indirect object. On the other hand, the plural form of ship (OE scip; neuter gender) when in subject position was scipu but scipa

26 The History of English

when used in the possessive. Such inflectional declensions were substantially reduced by the end of the ME period (see Chapter 4). However, the –as ending of nouns such as sta¯nas was retained, later becoming –es/–s. This inflection was initially re-interpreted as the only plural suffix for nouns belonging to the same class as sta¯ n and then, through analogical extension, was generalized (in the form –es/–s) to other noun classes which had originally made use of different inflectional paradigms (such as scip). It is now considered the characteristic, regular plural marker for nouns in English, and continues to be extended to most new additions, either made up or borrowed, as we saw in Section 1.3.

Cases of analogical extension are sometimes described in terms of proportional analogy, or four-part analogy, since speakers appear to invoke a kind of fourelement equation in their analogical argument. If a child, for example, produces a plural such as mouses and is corrected, she will typically defend her choice with a proportional argument: if the plural of house is houses, then that of mouse must be mouses. If you need further convincing, think about what the plural of a word like mongoose might be (without looking at what a dictionary suggests!). You will probably initially focus on the second syllable and think that if the plural of goose is geese, then more than one mongoose has got to be a gaggle of mongeese. But the fact that mongoose is a different lexical (and physical) entity from goose may give you pause for thought, and your second suggestion will be based on comparison with other plural forms that you are familiar with in English: could it be mongooses in analogy with other –s plurals, or perhaps even an unmarked plural like deer or sheep? The point is that in each case, you will draw a proportional analogy with singular : plural forms that you already know and try out those patterns in coming to a decision. Incidentally, dictionaries appear to generally recommend mongooses, although two wits on the Wikipedia message board10 individually suggest alternatives such as polygoose (re-analysing the first syllable of mongoose as mono ‘one’) and using phrases along the lines of ‘a mongoose, and while you’re at it, send me a second mongoose’.

Analogical extension has also occurred throughout English’s history with verbs. The language has long had classes of strong verbs, which generate preterite and past participle forms through vowel change (as in sing : sang : sung) and weak verbs, which do so with an inflectional –ed suffix (as in walk : walked : walked) (see Chapter 3). The majority of verbs have historically belonged to the weak verb class, and throughout the centuries, some originally strong verbs (such as help and creep) have moved to using the –ed inflection (see Chapter 4). Just as analogical extension of plural –s for new nouns continues today, so too does the use of –ed for new verbs: witness she texted me yesterday; I’ve e-mailed my CV; you know when you’ve been tangoed!

As the mongoose example shows, analogical extension does not necessarily involve comparison with dominant, regular patterns. The analogy that generates mongeese, for example, is based on a method of plural formation that is no longer productive in English. Trask (1996: 106) gives a nice example of extension based on a small class of nouns in English derived from Latin and typically used with Latin plurals, such as cactus : cacti, succubus : succubi, radius : radii. English also has a singular noun octopus, which looks like a Latin derivative (given the –us

English as a Changing Language 27

ending) but which is in fact a Greek loanword. If we were to use the Greek plural, we would say octopodes, but (putting aside the occurrence of regular octopuses) many English speakers, through analogy with the Latin forms, actually produce octopi, making use of a generally unproductive pattern. Similarly, although the majority of verbs in English conform to the –ed past tense and past participle pattern, there have been cases where originally weak verbs have developed strong forms. A famous example is dive, originally a weak verb (dive : dived) but which, through analogy with the strong verb drive (drive : drove) developed a preterite form dove that is still in use. As a result of the same kind of analogy, English speakers sometimes use brung ‘brought’ (on the pattern of sung) and jokingly, thunk ‘thought’ (on the pattern of sunk).

Finally, in the context of our examples, we should again note the truism that analogy creates regularity, but is in fact irregular in its application. Despite the productivity of –s plurals and –ed past forms, English still retains nouns and verbs which not only do not conform to this pattern, but also display no intention of doing so: we do not seem to be in any hurry to get rid of plural teeth, oxen and sheep, nor of preterite broadcast, swam and bought. It is difficult to say for certain, but it is possible that such ‘fossilizations’ remain because of literacy, which tends to inhibit analogical change. Written conventions of English preserve these as ‘correct’, which may well reinforce their use in spoken language, particularly from carers to children, who will correct analogical forms such as tooths and buyed.

Another type of analogical process is analogical levelling, which essentially affects paradigms of inflected words (such as the Old English nouns, verbs and adjectives we will look at in Chapter 3). In instances where sound changes affect paradigm forms, creating allomorphs (or morphological alternations in what is essentially the same word), analogical levelling may eventually ‘level out’ the resulting diversity. As an example, consider the Old English forms of the verb ‘to choose’ in Example 1.2 which, through the application of various sound changes, constitute an irregular paradigm. In modern English, the irregularity has been levelled out by the application of one alternant throughout, making the relationship between forms in the paradigm much more transparent.

Example 1.2 Verb paradigms for ‘to choose’ in Old English and Modern English

Both extension and levelling are considered systematic and regular types of analogy: they occur quite frequently, operate in the contexts of established patterns and paradigms, and can affect a fair number of forms. Analogy can, however, also be applied sporadically, as can be seen in instances of back-formation, contamination and folk etymology. As we noted in Section 1.3,

English as a Changing Language 29

In inflecting, or synthetic, languages like Latin, Greek and Old English, morphs may carry more than one unit of lexical/grammatical information. For example, in an Old English form such as scipu, final –u indicates that the noun (scip) has neuter gender, is plural and is functioning in either nominative or accusative case. Similarly, the –e in OE fere indicates that the verb form (‘carry’) is third person, singular and present indicative (see Chapter 3).

Not all languages actually fit easily into one of these three categories – for example, English has isolating/analytic characteristics (I will see you tomorrow), as well as those indicative of agglutinating (tree s {plural} trees) and inflectional/synthetic (sleeps third person singular present indicative) natures. Nevertheless, it seems that many languages display a tendency towards one morphological type more than another, and can therefore be approximately classified as such.

Nineteenth-century linguists such as Schleicher assumed that languages naturally ‘progressed’ through these morphological types in a cyclic process of isolating to agglutinating to inflecting. In this perspective, the attainment of a synthetic state was the ultimate, ideal achievement. However, for some languages, the only movement possible from that high point was ‘downward’, and an inflecting language was likely to eventually find itself moving back to an analytic state: a process that was viewed as ‘decline’ and ‘decay’. For Schleicher, the rate of decay was dependent on the extent to which speakers participated in ‘historical life’ or civilization. In essence, the more ‘civilized’ the people, the more advanced the linguistic ‘decay’. Thus if a language did not consistently undergo inflectional decline, then it belonged to a people ‘unfitted for historical life’ who could only ‘undergo retrogression, even extinction’ (Schleicher, 1864, cited in McMahon, 1994: 322). Paradoxically, then, although a language may have attained synthetic perfection, its retention signalled its (and its speakers’) impending demise.

Linguists such as Schleicher were right in assuming that typological change does happen, and that it could occur in particular directions, such as isolating to agglutinating. Trask (1996: 127) points out that classical Chinese appears to have been an isolating language but modern Chinese shows agglutinative tendencies by using morphs as affixes, such as the plural suffix –men, as in woˇ ‘I’, woˇmen ‘we’; ta¯ ‘he’, ‘she’, ta¯ men ‘they’. However, such movement is neither inevitable nor uni-directional. ‘The isolating languages of West Africa’, for example, seem to have experienced the reverse movement, appearing to have descended from an agglutinating ancestor (ibid.). English shows signs of having descended from a highly inflecting language but, as we have seen, has increasingly developed both agglutinating and analytic tendencies. In addition, ideas of linguistic decay and perfection are no longer accepted in modern linguistics: such notions imply that certain characteristics, and by extension certain languages, are better than others, and no sensible, objective criteria for such evaluations exist. Finally, we now know that a language’s morphological type – part of its basic system – signals neither its current vitality nor its impending demise. A language will not inevitably become extinct if it remains inflected; its potential for loss is instead directly linked to socio-political factors.