Linguistic change

As we have said above language is never static and changes are constantly going on at all its levels.

In studying the history of a language we are faced with a number of problems concerning the driving forces or causes of changes in the language.

These causes can apparently be of two kinds; external or internal. In the first case, language is influenced by factors lying outside it or extra linguistic factors. Such historic events as social changes wars conquests, migrations, cultural contacts, and the like/can hardly fail to influence a language, more especially its vocabulary.

The evolution of the English language is closely connected with the history of the English-speaking people or “external history” (Wherever possible, it will be shown what linguistic alterations are dependent on or caused by events in the history of the people. (e.g. mixing of languages, the appearance of new word and new words). Thus, the subject of this course is bound with that of the history of Britain.

On the other hand, many changes occur in the history of language, which cannot be traced, to any extralinguistic causes; the driving power in such cases is within the language itself. Most changes in the phonetic structure, of a language, and also in its grammatical structure, are due to internal causes.

While in most cases we can assert with great degree of probability that a particular change in a language is either caused by extralinguistic factors or by internal causes there are also phenomena, which admit a difference of opinion on this score. In stating the facts of a change, as established by linguistics, we shall, wherever necessary, raise the question of causes, and try to solve it so far as the state of our knowledge will allow.

The nature of linguistic change is largely determined by the general characteristics of language and its main functions in society. On the other hand, it is determined by the specific characteristics of a particular language or the group of languages to which it belongs, and by the historical conditions of its development.

As is known from general linguistics, the two main functions of language in society are to serve as a means of human communication (its communicative function) and as a vehicle for formulating and expressing thought (its expressive function).

The two main functions of language determine 'its basic linguistic properties”.

Regarded from a linguistic angle, language is defined as an organized structure of interdependent components. The system of the language is made up of smaller systems (subsystems) and elements, all interlinked and correlated (through regular affinities and oppositions. Systematic contrasts or oppositions, within the language make it possible to distinguish between the elements of the language (e.g. phonemes, morphemes), and to use them to convey a certain meaning and understand that meaning. In other words the systematic character of language is indispensable for its two main functions.

Since language must always fulfill its functions, it can never stop being an organized structure of components. Consequently, at all times the development of a language is slow and gradual. Unlike human society, language undergoes no revolutions and therefore we are quite justified in applying the term "evolution of the language in the same sense "history" or "development".

However, the evolution of language is not even: it may be faster or slower. Its evolution is not even in another sense either: its various levels change at different rates."

As shown above, the wordstock seems to change rather rapidly. Its innovations, rarely amount to more than isolated words or groups of words.

Since they are built in conformity with the existing ways of word-building they do not break up the system; on the contrary, they support it and in building new words or forms on the pattern of old ones show how it workspace the examples given above: typescript, telecast and others). If the new words are very numerous (as was the case when the vocabulary of English changes under the influence of French) it takes them several hundred years to enter into language, and then the changes in the vocabulary are slow too.

The sound system of a language changes very slowly because it must carefully preserve the contrast between phonemes essential for differentiation between morphemes. (Compare bat – hat, not - nod). Even rapid alteration of the whole system of phonemes (without impairing its oppositions) is incompatible with the nature, or rather the functions, of the language, for this kind of alteration would have hindered understanding between different generations.

Similarly the grammar structure of the language can only be subject to very slow modification; being the most abstract of linguistic levels it provides general frames and patterns for combining words, arranges them into classes, etc. The preservation of this general system embracing the other systems is indispensable for the functioning of the language.

It was also stated above that all the elements of the language are interlinked and interrelated. It follows that linguistic changes are interdependent too.

Interdependence between linguistic changes has a direct bearing on another general problem: their causes or motivation if it is not enough to decide what the change was and how it proceeded (e.g. slowly or otherwise) one must also try to determine what were the causes of the change (or why it occurred).

It is often said that a language develops together with the community who speaks it and its changes are thus caused by alterations in human society. This statement is true only in so far as the most general issues of linguistic evolution are concerned and also in respect of certain developments in the history of the wordstock. Thus when a group of ancient Germanic tribes in the 7th century settled in Britain they laid the foundations for the formation of English: as the tribes unified into one nation, their closely related dialects blended into the national English language. Some historical events that have caused changes in the word-stock have been mentioned above (the Norman conquest that led to the numerous French borrowings).

We can also say that the language develops together with the people to satisfy their growing and changing needs: every new discovery or concept requires a name and hence new words or new meanings of old words are developed.

But save for these most obvious instances it has been found difficult, and sometimes impossible, to trace any connection between the history of the people and the history of the language. No event in the history of Britain can account, say, for the modification of all long vowels in English in the Renaissance period (reflected in modern spellings see above) or some basic typological differences of English from other languages (e.g. the large number of vowel phone­mes in English or the abundance of compound verb-forms).

Since language is a specific phenomenon with its own specifically linguistic, properties, its changes are caused by internal linguistic factors rather than by external or extralinguistic factors. It is here that the systematic character of the language and interdependence between its components plays a most important role.

Many linguistic changes reflect the general tendency of all languages to develop more abstract and more universal systems and principles of correlation and contrast in place of the wore numerous systems and more varied principles: thus Instead of a variety of means used in Old English to show the difference of plural forms of nouns from singular forms an almost universal means -s, -es is used now.

Linguistic changes are interdependent or interrelated in that a minor change may serve as a cause of other changes in the same or different systems and also in that minor changes enter the framework of larger ones (and express general tendencies of development). Interdependence between alterations in different linguistic levels can be exemplified by some facts from the history of English: unstressed final syllables in English were gradually weakened and sometimes dropped. This phonetic development served as one of the factors that brought about the loss of some grammatical endings and thus affected the morphological system of the language. On the other hand, the weakening and lose of endings was only possible because a new, (syntactical, loans, prepositional phrases, could be used instead of former case-forms).

As stated above, every isolated change is a part of some general process of alteration embracing other elements or systems as well. The direction of these general processes in each particular language depends on the characteristics of the language or group of languages concerned the nature of their components and the general internal tendencies of their development. It is these specific tendencies (together with specific external conditions in the history of a language) that actually distinguish one language from another. In groups or fa­milies of languages there are many common traits and common tendencies of development (e.g. the tendency for developing analytical grammatical means in the Germanic group of languages). In the course of their indi­vidual histories, in various historical conditions, these common tendencies were differently transformed and new individual tendencies arose. Thus the tendency for developing analytical means proved to be much stronger in English than in German and, consequently, nowadays the grammars of the two languages are different; the intensive development of English in this direction may have been favoured by historical conditions and by radical changes in other linguistic levels.