Language Change

phonology - rules relating to the sounds of words and their constituent vowels and consonants.

“The History of the English Language”. http://www.uni-due.de/SHE/. Univ. of Duisburg Essen. April 2013. Web 4 Oct. 2013.

have you ever read an older piece of text and noticed anything different? such as the way the language was spoken/written. The reason our language differs from then is because of the influence of other languages around the English language its self. This influence help to create the modern English language we know today.

In this task I am going to identify 2 different theories of language development I am going to be doing, Naom Chomsky and Jean Piaget.

I will determine whether [æ] and [eʌ] appear to be allophonic or contrastive by examining those target sounds in “Dataset B” and “Dataset A”. Both sounds are present in the datasets but they are never seen together in the same word. The environments of the sounds are determined in (i) and organized by sound to see if there are any patterns that arise.

b) with forms and the structure of words (morphology) and with their customary arrangement in phrases and sentences (syntax )

Phonology – use of sounds and how sounds are organized and used in natural languages.

Changes over the last two hundred years has seen a marked increase in the evolution of semantics in the

Furthermore, segregating words through onsets –rimes patterns, and learning how to blend sounds through phonemic awareness all play a vital role

Sound changes don’t have randomly; it follows sound change rules. For instance, English and Spanish are both in the Proto-Indo-European language family and the origin constant P in the Proto-Indo-European became F in English but maintain same pronunciation in Spanish, such that the word father in English, is padre in Spanish.

Language change happens every day. New words are constantly being added and new dialects are forming. People have always argued about the causes of language change and tried to control the changes that occurred but ultimately they accomplished nothing. Languages changes and spread as a result of the people who use it daily. African American English and California English are both examples of the different ways language can change. People try to resist the changes in their language because they do not want to see it change. Language change is a natural process that can be affected by others but never stopped. This course has done an excellent job explaining how language change starts and spreads.

Among the most important concepts to emerge are those relating to dialects and language standards. Sociolinguists have documented the presence of dialects in every language. These dialects, all of which are legitimate, are associated with educational, economic, social and historical conditions. Hence, even if an individual scrupulously studies all the possible dictionaries of a random language, he would still be somewhat of a stranger to that language since he is unaware of all the dialectal changes.

Think of things that morph over time. What comes to mind? People may think about a music artist’s change from YouTube videos recorded on iPhones to sold-out concerts. Or, they may think about the changes an athlete makes from childhood to becoming a professional athlete. However, did you think about how much a language changes over a couple of years? Every year words are added to and taken from the dictionary. Words are formed and forgotten. Language changes because of a person’s vocabulary and location, but what happens to a language, like the English language, that is spread across the whole world?

It has been noted that while considering changing word meanings is vital to the diachronic study of language, the notion and practice of studying them has been historically belittled as an intellectual pursuit. Semantic change is often irregular and arbitrary as a concept, as its causes are wide-ranging and multi-faceted. However, critics such as Willem B. Hollmann now give weight and notoriety to studying semantics synchronically . By considering individual cases, one can explain some word changes and apply common rules. These often occur intra-linguistically or through common social or political changes, especially surrounding class conflict. However, although we can catalogue the semantic change of similar or groups of words, word

Every language constitutes its own sound system, and this sound system is a very important aspect when learning or studying a language. Along with this sound system are the prosodic features of a language. This study is about the phonological system and the prosodic features of