Tuesday 23 April 2013

Lexical Change

Over the past few years, the adjective 'gay' has gained an extra meaning. It used to mean 'happy', whereas now it means 'homosexual'.
We are conscious of new words that have recently entered the English language e.g. 'alcopop' and 'CD ROM'.

Borrowing - when a word from a foreign langauage becomes part of the English language e.g. 'pan du chocolat'. The driving force for language change is cultural change.
Neglogisms - new words
Compounding - two or more existing words that are joined together e.g. 'bittersweet', 'girlfriend', 'couchpotato'
Blending - when two or more existing words are merged e.g. 'brunch'
Derivation - when a word (or acronym) is formed from the initial letters of other words e.g. 'dink' (dual income, no kids) 'nimby' (not in my back yard)
Abbreviation - when a word is shortened e.g. 'bike', 'celeb'
Root - when words are made up entirely, often for phonological effect e.g. 'nerd', 'dork'
Conversion - when a word transfers from one word class to another e.g. verb - noun, refil - a refil.
Backformation - new words are made by remaiming affixes from old ones e.g. 'editor' was formed from 'edit'.
Eponym - a new word is created from a person's name e.g 'Hoover'.

Many new words are coined every day but the vast majority of them are NONCES (temporary words that never properly entered the English language e.g. the eponym coined in the early 90s: to bobbit - this word is still alive, meaning to emasculate.

Meaning extention - a word's meaning widens e.g. in medieval times, the noun 'hierarchy' was only used to rank different angels, in the 17th century it was extended to the ranking of cleargymen and today, used to rank anything.
Meaning narrowing - a word becomes more specialised e.g. 'meat' (Old English mete) used to mean all food, 'deer' once described any animal.
Amelioration - a word gains positive connotations e.g. 'sophisticated' used to mean not highly developed.
Rejearation - a word develops negative connotations e.g. about women 'mistress'.

David Crystal states that contemporary English uses words borrowed from over 120 languages. Many of them are borrowed from Anglo Saxon times.
ask (Old English)
question (French)
interrogate (Latin)

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