LANGUAGE

CHANGE
Rokaiah
Hazilawati
Siti Murshida

Variation and Change

How do changes spread
How do we study language
change
Reasons for language change
Articles on language change

DEFINITION

Variation and change over time

in a language's phonetic,
morphological, semantic,
syntactic, and other features.

VARIATION & CHANGE

Over time

3 MAJOR WAYS

In physical space

Socially

Current variation
Regional and social variants provide the basis

POST VOCALIC [R]

TextBook : PAGE 208 : Example 3

Rhotic
Ac cent with p ost-v oc alic [r]
Prestige in New York, regard ed as rural & uneducated in England
Cha ng es From Abov e
People are conscious of their s ig nifi cance as d esirab le or
p res tig e feature s of s peec h.
2 n d meaning - the source of change
A fea ture is s pread ing d ownw ard s throug h the social group s in a
s peech community.

THE SPREAD OF VERNACULAR

FORMS

TextBook : PAGE 210 : Example 4

Changes from below

Changes in the pronunciation and vowel
A change which spreads from lower social
groups upwards to the higher social groups
Such changes may or may not be above the
level of conscious awareness.

KOINES & KOINESATION

KOINE
A variety which is the result of dialect contact
Have some features from contributing
dialects, with most features coming from the
largest group of speakers

KOINESATION
A new dialect or variety emerges when people
who speak diff erent dialects come into
contact in monolingual communities

KOINES & KOINESATION

I n linguistics, a koin lang uag e ( c ommon lang uag e in
Koin Greek) is a standard language or dialect that has arisen
a s a res ult of contact b etw een tw o or more mutually inte lligible
v a rieties ( dialects) of the sa me lang uag e.
S ince the s peakers hav e understood one another from b efore
the a dv ent of the koin, the koineis ation p roc es s is not as
d r a stic as pidginization and creolization. Unlike p id g inization
a nd c reolization, there is no 'targ et' within Koine formation. It
inv olv es continuity , in tha t sp eakers d o not need to aband on
their ow n linguis tic varietie s.
Normal infl uence b etween neighbouring d ialec ts is not reg arded
a s koineis ation. A koin v ariety emerges as a new sp oke n
v a riety in ad dition to the origina ting dialects; it does not
c ha ng e any ex isting dialect. This s ep arates koineisation from
norma l evolution of d ialects.

HOW DO CHANGES SPREAD

From group to group

CHANGE

From style to style

From word to word lexical

diffusion

FROM GROUP TO GROUP

Time 1

Time 2

Time 3

A
C

Time 4

A B C
CC

FROM STYLE TO STYLE

Change spread from one style to
another
Formal speech more casual
speech

FROM WORD TO WORD LEXICAL

DIFFUSION
Sound changes typically spread
through different words one by one