Unit 3: Language Explorations

LANGUAGE CHANGE

Introductory Reading Pack Contents

From Much Ado About English by Richard Watson Todd:

1/1 ‘How old is an earthling?’

1/2 ‘The Welsh penguin’

1/3 ‘Wanted: A computer, female, age 18­25’

From The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, edited by David Crystal:

1/5 ‘The Sources of the Lexicon’

1/6 ‘Etymology’

From The Language Report by Susie Dent:

1/22 ‘Brokeback or Bounceback: How New Words Come About’

1/23 ‘Bubbling Under: The Words of the Moment’

From Words Words Words by David Crystal:

2/8 ‘Wordchanges’

From Teach Yourself Linguistics by Jean Aitchison:

2/6 ‘Language Change’ III How old is an earthling? ~ The number of new words appearing in English is so great Jl that several dictionary producers publish a whole sup­ plement every year. Many of these inventions fade away qUickly, but some stay around to become part of generally accepted English. Sometimes we can guess the date at which the word was introduced into English quite accurately. For example, the title Ms (as opposed to Miss or Mrs) originates in the fem­ inist movement following the Second World War. An edu­ cated guess might therefore put its first use in the 1960s. This is fairly close for its widespread adoption, although the title was first used in print in 1949. Similarly, is it possible to make an educated guess abo.ut when the 1914-18 world war was first termed the First World War? Clearly, during the actual war itself people did not know that it would be the first of two major conflicts. Indeed, it was often refer:red to as the war to end all wars, and its offi­ cial name was the Great War. It was only in 1931, when peo­ ple came to accept that there was a real chance of another global conflict, that the 1914-18 war was sadly termed the First World War. In trying to guess the original dates of first use of words, the nature of the word is important. Many of the old­ est words in English are linked to agriculture and nature. Indeed, for many farm animals, such as ewe, calf and ox, for traditional agricultural implements, such as plough and scythe, and for common trees, such as oak and elm, its impossible to give first dates as the words can be traced back with little change from Old English to Old German and beyond. Much Ado About English Origins

The dates of first use of other words are not as pre­ Condom (a preventive sexual sheath) dictable. For example, we might associate acid rain with the . a Dr Condom was a physician Who lived dUring the reign growth of the environmental movement in the 1960s, but the of King Charles II and gave his name to the condom. phrase was first used in print in 1858. And perhaps we would b Condom comes from the Italian con meaning with and anticipate earthling as dating to the first science-fiction novels dometa meaning protection. at the tum of the twentieth century, but the word is first c Condom is derived from the Italian for glove, guanto. found in print in 1593 (albeit in the sense of a man of the earth). While we might expect chairman to date back as far as Jazz (a style of music) 1654, it is noteworthy that chairwoman follows relatively a As a lively musical style, jazz comes from the Creole qUickly in 1699 (especially given that it took until 1971 for word jass, meaning strenuous sexual activity. political correctness to institute chairperson). b Jazz is a corruption of chase, indicating that the musi­ Its not only the dates of first use that can be surprising. cians constantly have to chase each other's notes in The origins of :words can also be unexpected. Abet derives playing jazz music. from the Old French word abeter, meaning to bait or harass c Jazz is an abbreviation of chastity music, a term used with dogs. This meaning later shifted to incite, which was ironically to describe the style. then changed again to encourage and help. Diaper meaning nappy comes from the Old French for an ornamental cloth, Pedigree (a line of ancestors) diaspre, and the word can still he used for fabric with a dis­ a The word pedigree was originally applied to people tinctive pattern, although it wouldn't go down well in adver­ rather than animals, and comes from the Latin paedo tising. Geeh is a variant of the Low German geck, meaning a for child plus ad gratia, meaning with favour. fool, which in tum derives from the Scandinavian for to b A person's pedigree used to be shown in genealogical croak, the sound made by fools. trees. Someone decided that these patterns resemoled Place names can also have surprising origins. Jeans a crane's foot, and described them thus, using the were originally made with a cotton cloth that was named after Middle French pie de grue. Jannes, the French word for Genoa in Italy where the cloth c Pedigree is a cross-linguistic combination of the was produced; and the first denim came from Nimes in Scottish word pet for tamed animal and the French France, so the fabric is 'de Nimes'. Laconic refers to a person phrase a gre, meaning favourable. from the region of Lakonia or Sparta in ancient Greece, whose inhabitants were renowned for the brevity of their speech. In fact, condom may be derived from the Italian word guanto; jazz comes from the Creole word jass; and pedigree originates Can you guess which of the following suggested derivations in the Middle French term pie de grue. is the correct one? Much Ado About English Origins

Seemingly unconnected words can have a single origin. For ~ is derived variously from the Scottish och aye, the instance, angle as a verb (meaning to fish), angle as a noun Finnish oikea and the Latin omnia correcta. (meaning a corner) and ankle are an ultimately derived from the Proto-Indo-European word ank, meaning to bend (Proto­ Of an of these, the first is probably the real derivation, a con­ Indo-European was a language thought to have been spoken clusion supported by no less an authority than the British in southeastern Europe around 5,000 to 10,000 years ago). In Privy Council. Nearly 100 years after its first recorded use, the case of ankle, the derivation from Proto-Indo-European OK was still causing problems. In 1935, the word became the came through the Old English word andeow to give its cur­ focus of a Privy Council court case that revolved around a rice rent meaning. The noun angle is derived from the Latin word merchants intentions in writing OK with his initials on for corner, angulum. For the verb angle, the Proto-Indo­ invoices. Their lordships launched an investigation of the European word for to bend became the root of the Old meaning of OK (British judges are notorious for being at least English word for fish hook, angel, which in turn led to the 100 years behind the times concerning popular culture and verb for to fish. language), and concluded that 'the letters hail from the U.S.A. While there is a general consensus about the origins of and represent a spelling, humorous or uneducated, of the the words above, for other words the derivation is a source of words All Correct'. much controversy A major bone of contention concerns OK, which has been adopted by more languages than any other word. First recorded in 1839, its suggested origins include that it: ~ stands for 011 korrect, a misspelling of all correct, often * attributed to President Andrew Jackson. ~ stands for Old Kinderhook, the nickname of President Martin van Buren. ~ comes from the French Aux Cayes, a port in Haiti. ~ . is a corruption of the Choctaw word oheh, meaning it is so. ~ comes from the initials of Obadiah Kelly; a shipping Clerk responsible for initialling numerous bills of lading. ~ stands for Orrin Kendall crackers, popular during the American Civil War. Origins '/2 The Welsh penguin By the sixteenth century and Shakespeare, Modem English was emerging and most of the language looks familiar to us ~ nowadays, even if not every word is immediately clear: ~e earliest recognisable version of the English language II is Old English, a Germanic tongue spoken in the north It is Othello~ pleasure, our noble and valiant general, that, of Germany and introduced into Britain through the Anglo­ upon certain tidings now arrived, importing the mere perdi­ Saxon invasions. The poem Beowulf (probably created around tion of the Turkish fleet, every man put himself into 700 CE and written down around 1000 CE) is the best-known triumph. example of Old English. A quote from the poem shows how much English has Since Shakespeare's time, of course, English has continued changed: changing and other languages have had a vast influence. Even though the ultimate source of our language is Germanic Old Da wres on burgum Beowulf Scyldinga, leaf lead(:yning, lange prage English, only about half the words we use in English are foleum gefnege (freder ellor hwearf, aldor of earde), apl,1ret him eft Germanic; the rest come from a variety of languages, with onwoc heah Healfdene French and Latin predominating. One reason for the richness This seemingly foreign language apparently means: of English is its incessant borrowing of words from other lan­ guages. Indeed, Booker T. Washington has described this Now Beowulf bode in the burg of the Scyldings, leader constant acquisition of new words from other languages as beloved, and long he ruled in fame with all folk (since his more than borrOwing: father had gone away from the world), till awoke an heir, haughty Healfdene We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pur­ sued other languages down alleyways to beat them uncon­ Over the years and especially with the Norman invasion, scious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary. English slowly changed into the vaguely comprehensible Middle English. These borrowings often occur when someone fluent in two The best-known work of that time is Chaucer's languages starts using words from one in the other. When Canterbury Tales from the fourteenth century: they use such words to someone who only speaks one of the languages, the words clearly sound, and indeed are, Whan that the Knyght had thus his tale ytoold, foreign. In al the route ne was ther yang ne oold Even modern English contains many words and That he ne seyde it was a noble storie. phrases that sound foreign, such as raison d'etre from French and, my favourite, Paleowdtschmerz from German (it refers to Much Ado About English Origins the theory that the dinosaurs became extinct through sheer the root for the name of a bird found only in the southern boredom with the world). As time passes and these 'foreign' hemisphere, one explanation goes that the Welsh for. white words continue to be used, they become conventionalised head, pen gwyn, was originally used by Welsh sailors for the and accepted as part of English. great auk, a now-extinct bird similar to the penguin found in Scandinavian languages had an early influence on bor­ Newfoundland that had a white spot in front of each eye. rowings, still seen in the use of nay, meaning no, in dialects Other surprising origins include the Hebrew source of in the north of England. After the Norman Conquest, French jubilee. The Hebrew word yobhel, meaning trumpet, is the became the main language to be plundered. These adoptions root here. Originally all slaves were emancipated every 50 from French often complemented English words, with subtle years in a ceremony proclaimed by trumpets. This 50-year differences reflecting the social uses of the two languages. cycle eventually became a jubilee. Another strange one is the French was the language of the aristocracy; the court and offi­ Gaelic sluagh-ghairm, literally meaning army call or an Irish cialdom, while English was for rustics. Thus for farm animals, battle cry; which over the years became slogan. such as lamb and COW, we use English forms, but their culi­ But perhaps the most bizarre derivation is that of nary equivalents' (mutton and beij) are derived from French. A bizarre itself. Bearded Spanish soldiers fighting in France rural job like shepherd is English, whereas an urban occupa­ made a strange impression on the locals, who used the tion, such as haberdasher, is French. Basque word bizar, meaning beard, to show how odd these More recently; English has borrowed words from just soldiers looked. Bizarre was then borrowed from French into about every language imaginable. For many of these, the English, and a word that originally meant beard came to place where the object referred to by the word was first mean strange. encountered provides a good indication of the likely source language.

Can you guess which language the following words were ~ borrowed from? tornado curry mosque wombat bog tsunami

While Spanish tornadoes, Arabic mosques, Gaelic bogs, Tamil curries, Aboriginal Australian wombats and]apanese tsunamis may be logical, who would ever think that penguin may come from Welsh? If you're now wondering why Welsh could be Origins \/3 Wanted: A computer, female, age 18-25 old. Gay is an example of this. The original meaning of lively is now almost lost, although some of the older generation still ~ use the word in this way. Nowadays, gay is far more likely to ver the last 30 years, the biggest source of neologisms mean homosexual. O or new words in English has probably been computing. One of the most extreme examples of a word with a Internet first appeared in 1986, for instance, and has since changed meaning is egregious. Originally meaning outstand­ become an everyday word for many people. E-mail first ing or exceptional, a couple of authors used it ironically in appeared in 1982 and blog in 1998. discussing problems. This ironic use was taken up by other New ideas are not only expressed by coining words. writers, so that now egregious means conspicuously bad,. the Even more common is adding fresh meanings to existing complete opposite of its Original sense. Other strange changes words. Still within the computing field, the words mouse, in meaning include commonplace, which also Originally meant hardware, program, virus and monitor have all taken on new its opposite - notable - and lewd, which used to mean meanings in the last 50 years, but they continue to be used uneducated. with their original senses - a mouse is still a small rodent as well as a computing device. Here are some words that have changed meanings. Can When a new meaning is added, however, the original you guess what their original meanings were? sense is not always retained. A computer used to be a role crafty commendable involving lots of longhand addition and subtraction. With the fond lucky introduction of calculators and machine computers, there happy strong was no longer any need for human computers, and the job­ I plausible foolish related meaning of the word became obsolete. Nowadays, a 1930s recruitment advert such as the one in the title of this I While words like crafty (from strong to cunning). fond (from chapter sounds very strange. foolish to affectionate), happy (from lucky to cheerful) and The meanings of other words have also been dictated I plausible (from commendable to possible) have only under­ by the times. In the Victorian age, imperialism and colonialism . i gone a single change in meaning, some words have been were seen as bright, positive goals for nations. Now they are through a whole series of changes. For instance, both silly and pejoratives. Similarly, prior to the Second World War appease­ ~ nice have had at least seven distinct meanings at various f ment was a positive way of avoiding conflict, but now it con­ f times. Silly Originally meant either happy in Old Norse or notes cowardice. blessed in Old High German. It shifted sense through pious For other words, especially adjectives, that have gained [ to innocent at the start of the thirteenth century. Within the new meanings, the newer sense steadily takes over from the F next century the meaning changed to harmless, pitiable and \rr ~ Much Ado About English then weak, until it reached its current sense of foolish in Who is that word? 1576. The last of these was the original meaning of nice around 1290. Over the following 200 years that word ~ changed sense to timid, then fussy, then delicate and then ne of the best ways to gain a kind of immortality is to carefuL By the mid-eighteenth century nice had the more O have the scientific community name something after familiar meaning of agreeable, with the final sense of kind you. Most commonly this is the Latin name for an animal or added on in 1830. Perhaps in another 500 years or so, silly plant, such as the frog Rhinoderma danvinii, the fungus will follow nice and change its meaning another seven times Cyttana darwinii or the tree Lecocarpus danvinii (although to eventually mean kind too. Charles Darwin is in far less need of the extra renown than most of us). Since most people don't use Latinate species names too often, better still would be to get yourself into the common species name, such as Darwin frog (yet another men­ + tion for the great Victorian biolOgist) or even Magnolia, named after botany professor Pierre Magnol. Alternatively, you could leave biology and aim for another of the sciences. Perhaps a unit of measurement, such as a joule or a newton (another scientist not needing the fame), would be nice. Or a special molecule would be a neat way of being commemo­ rated, such as buckminsterfullerene, which is shaped like the geodesic domes its namesake was famous for. None of these scientific approaches to nominal immor­ tality is likely to have much impact on everyday life. To be commemorated by millions of people every day, you need to get a nonnal English word or phrase based on your name. There are a few of these around already

Who do you think the following were named after? algorithm guy dunce teddy bear ~ I. While the words may be used frequently, the users are often t not aware of their roots. After all, who thinks of al- 'IS 9 · THE SOURCES OF THE LEXICON

How is it possible to see order. in the vocabulary of '- / English, if there are a million or more lexemes to deal THE COMMON CORE SQ~ IV~~ . i E R .<\ <.:O~x."'~~ with (§8)? A common approach looks at origins, and The diagram used by the C''-., \ -9 / first editor of the Oxford asks: Where have the items in the lexicon come from? -.J -'- English Dictionary, James __ C 0 M M 0 N , Murray, in the section ~\Cf>.\; C' " DIA,lc, called 'General Explana­ 'y,,<.:.C'>(\ ° ?- Ci'A,l...... NATIVE VOCABULARY tions' which preceded l. L O,Q ' ll Voll.lme 1 (1888): 'the \!l . English Vocabulary con­ z Many lexemes have always been there - in the sense tains a nucleus or central ~ that they arrived with the Germanic invaders, and have mass of many thousand 'f never fallen out of use (§l). The Anglo-Saxon.lexical . words whose" Anglicity" field, meadow, hedge, love, say, be, do, go, is unquestioned; some of hill, wood, oak. shove, kiss, have, live. character continues to dominate everyday conversa­ them only 'literary, som'e Domestic Life: house, tion, whether it be grammatical words (in, on, be, thai) , of them only colloquial, home, stool, door, floor, The fact that most of lexical words (father, love, name), or affixes (mis-, un-, the great majority at once weave, knit. these words are short and literary and colloquial, -' Calendar: sun, moon, day, concrete has often been -ness, -less). Although Anglo-Saxon lexemes comprise they are the Common month, year. noted as a major stylistic only a relatively small part of the total modern lexico n, Words of the language'. Animals: horse, cow, feature of the Anglo­ they provide almost all the most frequently used words Just h.ow common they sheep, dog, hen, goat, Saxon lexicon. Some may are can be judged from swine, fish. be surprised that the in the language. In the million-word Brown Universi­ this list of examples: Common adjectives: 'four-letter words' do not ty corpus of written American English (p. 438), the black, white, wide, long, figure in the list; but nei­ . 100 most frequently used items are almost all Anglo­ Parts of the body: hand, good, dark. . ther fuck nor cunt are foot, arm, eye, heart, Common verbs: fly, drink, recorded in Old English Saxon. The exceptions are a few Scandinavian loans chin, bone. swim, help, come, see, (though shit, turd, and (such as they and are); there is nothing from Romance Natura/landscape: land, eat, sit, send, sell, think, arse are). sources until items 105 (just) and 107 (people). .

LEXICAL TWINS AND TRIPLETS ORWELL, et al. ground from their Anglo­ Saxon opposite numbers ... .A good way of developing a feel for the Anglo-Saxon element in the leXicon is to place Old English lexemes . I am going to translate a alongside lat er French or latin borrowings. Disregard­ passage of good English ing any differences of meaning, the later forms are into modern English ofthe usually more formal, careful, bookish, or polite. worst sort. Here is a well­ known verse from Old English French Latin Ecclesiastes: guts courage I returned, and saw under clothes attire the sun, that the race is not He comments·: 'This is a parody, but not a very climb ascend to the swift, nor the battle gross one .. .' sweat perspire to the strong: neither yet George Orwell (1903-50) bread to the wise, nor yet The English humanist happiness felicity held strong views.about riches to men of John Cheke (1514-57), house mansion what he perceived to be a understanding, nor yet expressed a similarly strong wish desire modern trend to replace favour to men of ski II; but opinion 'that our own tung shold be written deane weariness lassitude Anglo-Saxon words by time and chance classical ones. He writes in happeneth to them all. and pure, vnmixt and . There are also several 'lexical triplets', in which French h is essay Politics and the vnmangeleq with and ~ati. n forms have both joined an original Old English Language (1946): Here it Is In modern borrowing of other tunges' Eng !ish Item. The readiness of English to acquire near­ English: (letter to Thomas Hoby, synonyms has been an important factor in the devel­ 'Bad writers, and especially 1561). Thus, in his opment of the styl istlc versatility of the modern scientific, political and Objective consideration of translation 6fthe Bible he language. sociological writers, are contemporary phenomena replaced lunatic by nearly always haunted by compels the conclusion mooned, centurion by Old English ' French Latin the notion that latin or that success or failure in hundreder, prophet by Greek 'words are grander competitive activities foresayer, crucified by rise mount ascend than Saxon ones, and exhibits no tendency to be crossed, and resurrection ask question . interrogate unnecessary words like commensurate wit h innate by gainrising. Three fast firm secure expedite, ameliorate, ~apacity, but that a hundred years later, his kingly royal regal predict, extraneous, considerable element of sentiments would be given deracinated, clandestine, the unpredictable must unequivocal support in the holy sacred consecrated subaqueous and hundreds inevitably be taken into writing of William Barnes fire flame conflagratio of others constantly gain account: (see facing page). 9 . THE SOURCES OF THE LEXICON 125

SAXONMANIA

Many wrlters:- among them; Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and George Orwell- have enthused about the sup­ posed 'purity' of Anglo­ Saxon vocabulary, but never was this enthusiasm be a psychological benefit, so strong as in the 19th too: a. English came to . century, as part ofthe reassert its identity with its English Romantic move­ Germanic origins. ment. In the case of the What made his approach Dorsetshire poet, William so distinctive was his cre­ Barnes (1801-86), the con­ ativity. Not only did he use cern became an obsession. surviving Anglo-Saxon lex­ Barnes left school at 15, emes in place of foreign then studied Classics pri­ ones, he did not hesitate to vately, developing a fasci­ resuscitate long-dead nation with philology. He Anglo-Saxonisms, or to opened a school, and in his devise completely new lex­ 40s became a country par­ emes using AnglO-Saxon son. He is best known for roots. Thus, he resurrected his several books of poems Old English in wit for con­ written in the Dorset science, and coined such dialect, but his other writ­ forms as bird/ore'for So I unto my selfe alone Calander' (1579), draws l"nglish, and is particularly. ing includes an Anglo­ ornithology and mateword­ will sing; ' attention to a critical fea­ scathing of those authors Saxon primer, An Outline ing for synonym. Contem­ The woods shall to me ture of the poet's style: who in his view have of English Speech-Craft porary lexicographers, answer, and myeccho (1878), whose title aptly however, paid him little ring, 'It is one special prayse, of 'patched upthe holes with reflects h is story. attention. A tiny number of many whych are dew to peces and rags of other Barnes' aim was to pro­ his coinages found their The serenity of the refrain this poete, that he hath languages, borrowing here mote a kind of English way into the Oxford English from Edmund Spenser's laboured to restore, as to of the French, there of the purified of allen (that is, Dictionary (such as speech­ 'Epithalamion' (1595) is theyr rightful! heritage, Italian, every where of the non-Germanic) borrow­ craft for grammar, and reflected in John Consta­ such good and naturall _ Latine ... so now they have . ings. In particular, the starlore for astronomy), but ble's painting ('The Hay English words as have ben . made our English tongue a removal of French, Latin, the vast majority were Wain', 1821). long time out of use and gililimaufray or hodge-­ and Greek words would, Ignored, and are now likely E.K" the anonymous almost c1eare disherited .. .' podge of al other speches,: he felt, make the lan­ to be encountered only in author of an Epistle pre­ guage more accessible and the pages of wordbooks ceding Spenser's first major E.K. goes on to lament In this he is at orie with '.. intelligible. There would like this one. work, 'The Shepheardes what has happened to 'Barnes and Orwell. ., :. .. THE LEXICAL CONQUEST A sequence from the Bayeux Tapestry, depicting the Norman invasion of England, and thus symboliz­ ing the most significant change of direction in the history of English vocabu­ lary. By 1400 about 10,000 new lexemes had come into the language from French, and several thousand more had entered from Latin. By the end. of the Middle played here shows the ANGLISH To be, or not to be: that is booklore 'literature English period, the surviving arrival of the Normans on the ask-thing: breaksome fragile Old English lexicon was the English coast. The text What would have hap­ Is't higher-thinking in the folkdom democracy already In the minority. says 'Here the horses are pened to the lexicon had brain to bear forewit prudence disembarkinf}:.trom the William the Conqueror The ~lings and arrows of gleeman musician The tapestry, a linen band ships and he:r~ the knights been conquered? A possible outrageous dooming hareling ·Ieveret 231 feet long and 19.5 inch­ have hugied:off to [Hast­ answer was given by British Or to take weapons 'gainst hearsomeness obedience es wide (70 m by 50 cm), is ings]'. ?". humorist Paul Jennings in a a sea of bothers lorefess Ignorant now displayed in the spe­ 1966 edition of Punch cele­ And by againstwork end outgate exit cially-designed B"yeux brating the 900th ann.iver­ them? soothfastness veracity Tapestry Museum at the sary of the Norman Con­ water-giver reservoir William the Conqueror Cen­ quest. Here is the opening Barnes himself created yeartide anniversary tre, Bayeux. The events are lines of a famous soliloquy, thousands of neologisms. summarized in a Latin' nar­ turned (apart from outra­ The following dozen exam­ rative. The sequence dis- geous) into 'Anglish': ples captures their flavour: 126 PART II • ENGLISH VOCABULARY

FOREIGN BORROWINGS

"When one language takes lexemes from another, the new items are usually called loan words or borrowings - though neither term is really appropriate, as the receiving language does not give them back. English, perhaps more than any other language, is an insatiable borrower. "Whereas the speakers ofsome languages take pains to exclude foreign words from their lexicons, English seems always to have welcomed them. Over 120 languages are on record as sources of its present­ day vocabulary, and the locations of contact are found allover the world. The borrowing began soon after the Anglo-Saxons arrived (§3). There are very few Celtic loans during that period, but the influence of Latin is strong, espe­ cially after the arrival of Christianity (e.g. bishop, church, priest, school giant, lobster, purple, plant). The Viking invasions alone resulted in about 2,000 Scan­ dinavian words coming into English (e.g. dirt, egg, kid, leg, skin, sky, window). After the Norman Conquest, the influx ofwords from the continent ofEurope, espe­ cially French, doubled the size of the lexicon to over 100,000 items (p. 46-7). By the end of the Renais­ sance, the growth in classically-derived vocabulary; especially from Latin, had doubled the size of the lex­ icon again. "While these periods represent the peaks of borrowing activity in the history of English, there was no reduction in the underlying trend during. later centuries. Since the 1950s, a fresh wave of borrowing has been taking place, which eventually may exceed the totals encountered in the Middle English period. The emer­ gence of English as a world language (§7) has pro­ moted regular contact with an unprecedented number of languages and cultures, and the borrowings have shown an immediate and dramatic upturn. New fauna and flora, 'political groups and institutions, landscape features, industrial products, foodstuffs, inventions, leisure activities, and other forms of behaviour have all generated thousands of new lexemes - and continue to do so. The growth of local nationalism has had its . A a~atomYI cellar, chocolate, cro~odile, effect, too, with people seeking fresh lexical ways of o ~i~~~~~~~il~~~~er~~~~uf3:;in~gJerg~rten, ., OJshion, entrance, grotesque, Increase, jewel, langulsli, medicine, passport. showing their local identity within the undifferentiat­ chutzpah, gel~ kosher, nosh, precious, sergeant, trespass, sculpture, ed domain of international Standard English. oy v.y. "hmuk (Yiddish) vogue f) cimbalom, goulash, hussar (Hungarian) Ofcourse, not all the new items will be widely intel­ o ~;~~c~~;~7o~;;,lp~~~~~~~ e howitzer, pistol, robot (Czech) ligible. In the late 19805, alongside intifada, perestroi­ • cravat, slivovitz (Serbo-Croat) ka, and glasnost we find pryzhok (Russian, 'leap'), e altar, circus, frustrate, indude, interim, legal, monk, nervous, visagiste (French, 'beautician'), and zaitech Qapanese, onus, quiet ulcer, vertigo (Latin) 'large-scale company financial speculation') - all found balcony, ciao, concerto, falsetto, giraffe, fiasco, mafia, opera, in English newspapers and periodicals. Several of the violin (~.Ii,") items in the world map are of this kind, requiring an o banan •• bon.nza. cannibal. cor~ t guitar, hacienda, hammock. mosquito, up-to-date dictionary before one can be sure what they sombrero mean. But that is always the way of it, with loan words. 9 . THE SOURCES OF T HE LEXICON 127

Notes: No indication is given about the Outside Europe, the locator arrows do not period during which a lexeme entered the always relate clearly to specific countries or language: old and new Items are listed states, but Indicate broad linguistic areas, together without distinction. such as 'Central Africa' or 'Polynesia'.

',; . " 128 PART II • ENGLISH VOCABULARY

(§ 14). But the importance of word-formation to the LEXICAL STRUCTURE development of the lexicon is second to none, and accordingly the matter needs to be reviewed in this sec­ Most English vocabulary arises by making new lex­ tion also. After all, almost any lexeme, whether Anglo­ emes out of old ones - either by adding an affix to pre­ Saxon or foreign, can be given an affix, change its word viously existing forms, altering their word class, or class, or help make a compound. Alongside the Anglo­ combining them to produce compounds. These pro­ Saxon root in kingly, for example, we have the French cesses of construction are of interest to grammarians root in royally and the Latin root in regally. There is no as well as lexicologists, and much of what is involved elitism here. The processes of affIxation, conversion, in word structure will be reviewed on other pages and compounding are all great levellers.

57 VARIETIES OF dis- -connect, -infect pan- -African, -American PREFIX un- -do, -mask super- -script, -structure There are three possible types of affix (p.198): those tele- -scope, -phone which occur before the root or stem of a word (pre­ This list gives all the com­ Disparaging trans- -plant, -atlantic fixes), those which occur after (suffixes), and those mon prefixes in English­ mal- -treat, -function which occur within (infixes). English does not have though not all the variant mis- -hear, -lead Time and order affixes in large numbers - only about 50 common forms. The prefix in-, for pseudo-~-intellectual ex- -husband, -president fore- -warn, -shadow prefixes, somewhat fewer common suffixes, and no example, becomes i/­ Size or degree before words beginning neo- -Gothic, -classical clear instances of infixes. But these limited resources arch- -duke, -enemy with III (as in iIIibera/). Nor paleo- -lithic, -botany are used in a complex and productive way, as older co- -habit, -pilot does the list Include,sclen­ post- -war, -modern children sense when they play with such forms as hyper- -market, -card tific and technical items pre- -school, -marital antidisestablishmentarianism. Not all affixes have a 'mega- -loan, -merger which are commonly used proto- ' -type, ~Europe);n strong creative potential, of course: the Old English - mini- -skirt, -bus in compounds, such as re- -cycle, -new th ending, for example (found in warmth, length, out- -class, -rur) bio-, Euro-, and techno­ depth, width, sixth, and a few other items), is hardly over- -worked, -flow Number (see facing page). ever used now to create new words - though zeroth sub- -normal, -conscious bi-, -cycle, -lingual Some prefixes appear and coolth are interesting exceptions. On the other super- -market, -ma'n demi- -god, -tasse more than once in the list hand, there are tens of thousands of lexemes which -tax, -charge di- ~oxide" -graph because they have more sur- 'either exist or are awaiting creation through the use ultra- -modern, -sound mono- -rail, -plane than one meaning. There ,of the ending '-ness. under- -charge, -play multi- -racial, -purpose isa difference between vice- -chair; -president po/y- -techniC, -gamy unexpected (which means semi- -circle, -detached simply 'not expected') and Orientation tri- -maran, -pod a highly abstract unwrap (which adds the anti- -clockwise, -social uni- -sex, -cycle meaning, difficult to , specific sense of reversing auto- -suggestion, define precisely: one,of a previous action). -biography , , Grammatical conversion -tion, "ship, -ness, -able, the meanings of -ery is contra- -indicate, ·flow Verb to Adjective Negation a- -stride, -board -el)', -ese, -ling, -like, -let, 'the quality or state of a- -theist, -moral counter-' -clockwise, -act Noun to Verb -esque, -ette, -ess, -ism, having 11 particular trait' dis- -obey, -believe pro- -socialist, -consul -ite, -ish (snobbery).' be- -friend, -witch in- -complete, ,-decisive Location and distance -flame, -danger Suffixes do more than en'- non- -smoker, -medical -terrestrial, -mural Th~se are some of the atter the meaning of the extra- un- -wise, -helpful fore- -shore, -leg commonly occurring word to which they are Reversal inter- -marry, -play English suffixes. A attached. Many of them de- -frost, -fraud intra- -venous, -national number of them have a also change the word's meaning which is fairly grammatical status - for easy to state: -ess, for example, the -ify ending example, means 'female turns the noun beauty cause words to change of' (lioness). Some have into the verb beautify, their class, and are thus several meanings: -ette and the -ing ending turns best discussed under the can mean 'female of' the concrete noun farm heading of grammar. A (usherette), 'small version into the abstract one complete list of suffixes, of' (kitchenette), or farming. In this respect, accordingly, is given in 'substitute for" suffixes differ from the section on (/eatherette). Some have prefixes, which rarely morphology, p. ,198. 9 . THE SOURCES OF THE LEXICON 129

CONVERSION

Lexemes can be made to change their word class without the addition of an affix - a process known as conversion. The items chiefly produced in this way are nouns, adjectives, and verbs - especially the verbs which come from nouns (e.g. to bottle) and the nouns which come from verbs (e.g. a doubt). Not all the senses of a lexeme are usually carried ' through into the derived form, however. The noun paper has several meanings, such as 'newspaper', 'wallpaper', and 'academic article'. The verb to paper relates only to the second of these. Lecturers and editors may paper their rooms, but not their audiences or readers.

THE CONVERTED Grammatical word to noun Verb to noun too many ifs and buts a swim/hit/cheat/ that's a must bore/show-off/ the how and the why drive-in Affix to noun Adjective to noun ologies and isms a bitter/natural!final! monthly/regular/wet Phrase to noun a has-been /free-for-all/ Noun to verb to bottlelcatalogue/oil/ also-ran/down-and­ out bra kef referee/bicycle Grammatical word to Adjective to verb to dirty/empty/dry/ verb to down tools/to up and calm down/sober up do it Noun to adjective it's cotton/brick/ reproduction

COMPOUNDS sequence of two independent words), we need to look carefully ANGLO-COMPOUND-O-MATICS A compound is a unit of at the meaning of the vocabulary which consists of sequence and the way it is There is an interesting formation in which one of the elements does not more than one lexical stem. On grammatically occur as a separate word. These forms are usually classical in origin, and the surface, there appear to be used. This question turns up are linked to the other element of the compound by a linking vowel, two (or more) lexemes present, . especially in American English, usually -0-, but sometimes -a- or -i-. They are traditionally found in the but in fact the parts are which uses fewer hyphens than domains of science and scholarship, but in recent years some have become functioning as a single item, does British English. . productive in everyday contexts too, especially In advertising and which has its own meaning and Compounds are most readily commerce. grammar. So, flower-pot does classified into types based on the First element not refer to a flower and a pot, kind of grammatical meaning agrl- -culture, -business but to a single object. It is they represent. Earthquake, for blo- -data, -technology pronounced as a unit, with a example, can be paraphrased as single main stress, and it is used 'the earth quakes', and the micro- -chip, -electronics grammatically as a unit - Its relation of earth to quake is that Euro- -money, -feebleness plural, for example, is flower­ of subject to verb. Similarly, a psycho- -logy, -analysis techno- -phobia, -stress pots, and not 'flowers-pots. crybaby is also subject + verb The unity of flower-pot is also ('the baby cries'), despite its Second element signalled by the orthography, but back-to-front appearance. -aholic work-, com put- this is not a foolproof criterion. If Scarecrow is yerb + object ('scares -athon mar-, swim-, read- the two parts are linked by a crows'). Some involve slightly -rna tic coffee, wash-o- hyphen, as here,.or are printed trickier grammatical relations, -rama sports-a-, plant-o- without a space ('solid'), as in such as playgoer, windmill, flowerpot, then there is no goldfish, and homesick. A list of Such forms might well be analysed as affixes, but for the fact that their difficulty. But the form flower grammatical types (In~luding the meaning is much more like that of an element in a compound. pot will also be found, and in analysis of these examples) is Euromoney, for exam ple, means 'European money'; biodata means such cases, to be sure we have a given in the section on syntax, 'biological data'; swimathon means 'swimming marathon'. compound (and not just a p.220. 130 PART II . E N GLISH VOCABULARY

It is common in English to.form a new I.exeme by adding a prefil(or a suffii! to an old one (p; 128). From happy We get unhappy; from inspecfwe get inspector. Every so often, however, the process works the other way round, and a shorter word Is derived from a longer one by deleting an Imagined affix. Editor, for example, looks as if it comes from edif, where­ as in fact the noun was In the lan- ' guage first. Similarly, television gave. rise to televise, double-gla?ing pre­ ceded double-glaze, and baby-sitter preceded baby-sit. Such forms are known as back-formations. Each year sees a new crop of back­ formations. Some are coined because they meet a real need, as when a group of speech therapistS iii Read­ ing in the 1970s felt they needed'a new verb to describe what they did _ to therap. . Some are playful forma­ tions, as when a tidy person is described as couth, kempt, or shev­ elled. Back-formations often attract criticism when they first appear, as happened in the late 1980s to explete (to use an expletive) and accreditate (from accreditatIon).

BLENDS Yale + Harvard =Yarvard ates a series of shop toys), tional. TV provides drama­ slang + language = lexical blend, as its name not a kind of toy. cons, docufantasies, and A slanguage suggests, takes two lex' Blending seems to have rockumentaries. The forms guess + estimate = increased in popularity in are felt to be eye-catching emeswhich overlap in guesstimate form, and welds them the 19805, being increas­ and exciting; but how + m together to make one square aerial squaerial ingly used in commercial many of them will still be + (p. 120). Enough of each toys cartoons=< toytoons and advertising contexts. around in a decade remains breath + analyse~= lexeme is usually retained Products are sportsationa/, an open question; breathalyser so that the elements are swimsational, and sexsa- affluence + influenza recognizable. Here are = affluenza some long-standing ex­ information + commercials amples, and a few novelties from recent publications. .= infomercials dock + condominium = motor + hotel =motel dockominium breakfast + lunch =brunch In most cases, the second helicopter+ airport; element is the one which heliport controls the meaning of smoke+fog=

PORTMANTEAUX In Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871), Lewis Carroll has the egotistical linguistic philosopher, Humpty Dumpty, deal with the question of blends. He calls the'm portmanteau words. - a term which has since achieved some currency in linguistic studies. 'You seem very clever at explaining words, Sir', said Alice. 'Would you kindly tell me the meaning of the poem called " Jabberwocky"?' 'Let's hear it: said Humpty Dumpty. 'J can explain all the poems that ever were invented - and a good many that haven't been Invented just yet.' This sounded very hopeful, so Alice repeated the first verse: 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves , Did gyre 'and gimble In the wabe: All mimsy were the borogroves, And the mome raths outgrabe. 'That's enough to begin with: Humpty Dumpty interrupted: 'there are plenty of hard words there. "Brilllg" means four o'clock in the afternoon - the t ime when you begin broiling things for dinner.' 'That'll do very well,' said Alice: 'and "slithy"?' 'Well, ' slithy" means "lithe and slimy." "Lithe" is the same as "active." You see it's like a portmanteau - there are two meanings packed up into one word.' 'I see it now: Alice remarked thoughtfully: 'and what are f'toves"7' ... 'Well, "toves" are something like badgers - they're something like lizards - and they're something like corkscrews.' 'They must be very curious-looking creatures.' 'They are that,' said Humpty Dumpty: 'also they make their nests under sundials - also they live on cheese:

,.. "" .

TALKING NONSENSE (On addressing the United Nations) 0 joyful peoplodes! Quick vizzy 'Professor' Stanley Unwin, British stage Intercapitoles, round table and freedom and film comic personality, renowned In talkit with genuine friendly eyebold the 1960s for the fluent neologistic style gleam ... of his academic opinions. The humour (On boxing) Oh the self destructibold of cannot be totally captured by writing the human beale, while we dig in the the words down. The comic effect pokky for a ringside seal towards his depends not just on his bizarre lexical fateful and cheer for a bashy·ho. Tutty creations but on the way these are tutty. uttered deadpan using a perfectly routine conversational style. In his autobiography, Deep Joy (1984), someone describes'him as 'The .' gentleman who gets his words all intertwingled' - an accurate enough summary of anyone who speaks like this: 132 PART II . ENGLISH VOCABULARY

But there is never anyway of predicting the future, LEXICAL CREATION with language. Who knows, perhaps the English­ speaking world has been waiting decades for someone Anglo-Saxon forms, borrowings, and the use of affix­ to coin just this lexeme. It would only take a newspa­ es account for most ofwhat appears within the English per to seize on it, or for it to be referred to in an ency­ lexicon, but they do not tell the whole Story. People do clopedia, and within days (or months) it could be on some creative, even bizarre things with vocabulary, everyone's lips. Registers of new words would start from time to time, and a fascinating topic in lexicolo­ referring to it, and within five years or so it would have gy is to examine just what they get up to. The general gathered enough written citations for it to be a serious term for a newly-created lexeme is a coinage; but in candidate for inclusion in all the major dictionaries. It technical usage a distinction can be drawn between would then have become a neologism -literally, a 'new nonce words and neologisms. word' in the language. A nonce word (from the 16th-century phrase for the A neologism stays new until people start to use it nonce, meaning 'for the once') is a lexeme created for without thinking, or alternatively until it falls out of temporary use, to solve an immediate problem of com­ fashion, and they stop using it altogether. But there is munication. Someone attempting to describe the never any way oftelling which neologisms will stay and excess water on a road afrer a storm was heard to call which will go. Blurb, coined in 1907 by the American it a jluddle - she meant something bigger than a pud­ humorist Gelett Burgess (1866-1951), proved to meet dle but smaller than a flood. The newborn lexeme was a need, and is an established lexeme now. On the other forgotten (except by a passing linguist) almost as soon hand, his coinage ofgubble, 'to indulge in meaningless as it was spoken. It was obvious from #le jocularly conversation', never caught on. Lexical history con­ apologetic way in which the person spoke that she did tains thousands of such cases. In the 16th century- a not consider jluddle to be a 'proper' word at all. There great age of neologisms (p. 60) - we find disaccustom was no intention to propose it for inclusion in a dic­ and disacquaint alongside disabuse and disagree. Why tionary. As far as she was concerned, it was simply that did the first two neologisms disappear and the last two there seemed to be no word in the language for what survive? We also find effectua4 effectuous, effect{u4 effec­ she wanted to say, so she made one up, for the nonce. tuating, and effective. Why did only cWo of the five In everyday conversation, people create nonce-words forms survive, and why those two, in particular? The like this all the time. lexicon is full of such mysteries.

F IS FOR FLUDDLE THINGUMMYBOB deeleebob thlngummybob AND WHATSISNAME deeleebobber thingy Now that you have been introduced to fluddle, will diddleebob thingybob you start using it? Is it truly useful? Or is it just a little It is by no means clear diddleydo whatchacallem too marginal, or jocular, for your taste?- Five years after how we shou ld spell most diddleything whatchacalit the first appearance of this book, we should know. of the items in the follow­ diddleythingy whatchamacallit ing list - and accordingly dingus whatever they tend to be omitted dingdong whatsisname from diction-aries, whose dingy whatsit focus is generally on the dooda whatsits written language. They doodad whatnot are nonetheless an impor­ doohickey whosis tant ele-ment Ih the gadget whosit English lexicon, providing geega whosits speakers with a signal that gewgaw -widget they are unable to retrieve gimmick a lexeme - either because gizmo In addition, those with it has slipped their mind, goodie sharp ears (for such forms or perhaps because there - hootenanny are often said very rapidly) is a lexical gap in the lan­ lookit will hear many idiosyncratic guage. Such nonsense oojamaflop items - such as gobsocket, words occur in many vari­ thingamabob jiminycricket, and this ant forms and pronuncia­ thingamabobbit splendid blimd (from a pro­ tions, just some of which thingamajig fessor of linguistics, no less) are recorded here. thlngummy thingummycallit:

';" . 9 . THE SOURCES OF THJ:\ Lt;XICUN

BAGONIZING footbrawl physical violence associated with the game of soccer However many words there are in English litterate said of people who care about litter (p.119), the total will be small compared with iIIitterate said of people who do not care about those which do not yet exist. Native speakers, litter however, seem to have a mania fo" trying to fill catfrontatlon the cause of nightly noise when lexical gaps. If a word does not exist to express a 'you live in a neighbourhood full of cats concept, there is no shortage of people very , polygrouch someone who complains about ready to Invent one. Following a ten-minute pro­ everything gramme about neologisms on BSC Radio 4 in ' kel/ogulation what happens to your breakfast 1990, over 1,000 proposals were sent in for new cereal when you are called away by a 15- English lexemes. Here are a dozen of the more minute phone call, just after you have poured ingenious creations. milk on it potspot that part of the toilet seat which causes aginda a pre-conference drink the phone to ring the moment you sit on It circumtre,eviation the tendency of a dog on a hicgap the time that ~Iapses between when leash to want to walk past poles and trees on hiccups go away and when you suddenly the opposite side to its owner realise that they have blinksync the guarantee that, in any group - and, of course photo, there will always be at least one person Bagonize: to wait anxiously for your suitcase to whose eyes are dosed leximania a compulsive desire to invent new appear on the baggage' carousel (coined by Neil fagony a smoker's cough words McNicholas).

" Reliable comparative statistics 'organizers might liilVe called LOADSALEXEM ES , • are not.yet available, but it Encyclopedia-aid, but they' there does seem to have chos,e Encyc/opediathon. By " Loadsamon,ey, an informal label for someone been a trerid towards the the time the occasion was who flaunts wealth, first came to notice in 'fncreased,use of affixes as ' over, severa!other riovelty the mid-1980s as the name of a character a: means'of word-forma­ lexemes had been coined, invented by British alternative comedian tioninEngllsh in the last Including; ' , Harry Enfield. It caught on, and was given a , decade so: The trend ' ", " " ,' " boost in May 1988, when labour Party leader , ", or" encydopedlalkious Jookssettocontiriue. , encyclopedfaboom Neil Kinnock used it to label the Conservative '," Thepfdure shows aencyclopediararna ,': government's policy of encouraging the cre­ ation of wealth for its own sake. Journalists 'sp' onsor,ed, read, ing alou,d encyclopediaspeak '' ', ' ~ of tnewholeof The ' encydopediarism ~ began referring to a {oadsamoney mentality and the loadsamoney economy, and gradual­ ,~a:~r~1l~t~iac/~:a~ia I~ 'N~s a~h~n~~tdc~asi~n; ly the prefix began to take on a life of its ofover.300 people at inaidof charitY, and so" ' own. laterthat year we find in various news­ :,theUcheldre Centre In "fortunately there was no papers 'J10lyhead, N Wales in ': ", encyclopediagate. · ' loadsasermons, {oadsag{asnost, loadsaspace, "August 1992: The ' " ,y .. , - " , ' " and loadsapeople. Several affixes seem to have found new life in the 19aOs. Mega- , for example, was used with dozens of forms, such as -trendy, -sulk, -worry, -terror, -plan, -bid, -brand, and ~c1ty. The suffixing use of -friendly was found not only with user- (its original usage), but also with audience-, customer-, environment-, farmer-, girl-, nature-, and many more. Sexism brought a host of other -isms, such as weight­ ism, heightism, and ageism. Rambo-based coinages included Ramboesque and , Ramboistic. Band-aid gave birth to'Sport-ald and Nurse-aid. And the Watergate affair of the mid~1970s lived on linguistically, -gate continu­ ing to attach itself to almost any proper noun where there may be a hint of wi,cked goings­ on, as in {rangate, L1oydsgate, and the remark­ able Gospelgate (for the wrongdoings of US televangelists). 134 PART II • ENGLISH VOCABULARY

the extraordinary lexical coinages in his novel have LITERARY NEOLOGIZING their roots in perfectly everyday language. Certainly, it is our grass-roots linguistic awareness which enables us The more creative the language context, the more like­ to disentangle some of the layers of meaning in a ly we are to encounter lexical experiments, and find Joycean neologism. However, untutored native intu­ ourselves faced with unusual neologisms. The stretch­ ition will not sort everything out, as considerable use ing and breaking of the rules governing lexical struc- is also made of elements from foreign languages and a . ture, for whatever reason, is characteristic of several wide range of classical allusions . contexts, notably humour (p. 408), theology (p. 403), The style largely depends on the mechanisms and informal conversation (p. 400), but the most com­ involved in the simple pun (p. 408), but whereas puns plex, intriguing, and exciting instances come from the generally rely for their effect on a single play on words, language of literature. it is usual for Joyce's forms to involve several layers of These pages illustrate the range of neologisms used meaning, forming a complex network of allusions by several modern authors, with pride of place given which relate to the characters, events, and themes of to the chief oneiroparonomastician (or 'dream-pun­ the book as a whole. There is also a similarity to the namer' - the term is Anthony Burgess's), James Joyce. 'portmanteau' words of Lewis Carroll (p. 131), though Joyce himself called Finnegans 1%ke 'the last word in Carroll never tried to pack as much meaning into a stolen telling' , a remark which seems to recognize that portmanteau as Joyce routinely did.

JOYCEAN JABBERWOCKY tailor, soldier, sailor, Paul Pry or polish thurever burst? Someone he was, man. That's the thing I always want to whuebra they were, in a tactic attack In Joysprick (1973), Anthony Burgess know. or in single combat. Tinker, t ilar, soul­ drer, salor, Pieman Peace or Polista­ presents an illuminating analysis of (bl Tell me, tell me, how could she the linguistic processes involved in the mann. That's the thing I always want cam through all her fellows, the to know. development of what he calls Joyce's' neckar she was, the diveJine? Linking 'jabberwocky'. These successive drafts one and knocking the next, tapping a (a-c) of Finnegans Wake, p'ublished in flank and tipping a jutty and palling (dl Tell me, tell me, how cam she the 19205, show that the style is care­ in and petering out and clydlng by on camlln through all her fellows, the fully engineered, despite its apparent her eastway. Wai-whou was the first neckar she was, the divellne? Casting randomness and spontaneity. Each that ever burst? Someone he was, her perils before our swains from version introduces extra connotations, whoever they were, in a tactic attack Fonte-in-Monte to lidingtown and puns, and allusions, and a growing or in single combat. TInker, tailor, sol­ from lidingtown ·tilhavet. Linking one intricacy of lexical structure. The ver­ dier, sailor, Paul Pry or polish man. and knocking the next, tapting a sion which appears in the book (d) is That's the thing I always want to flank and tipting a jutty and palling in included for comparison. know. and pietaring out .and clyding by on her eastway. Waiwhou was the first (a) Tell me, tell me, how could she (c) Tell me, tell me, how cam she cam­ thurever burst? Someone he was, James Joyce (1882-1941) cam through all her fellows, the dare­ lin through all her fellows, the neckar whuebra they were, in a tac­ devil? Linking one ana knocking the she was, the diveline? Linking one tic attack or in single combat. next and polling in and petering out and knocking the next, tapting a Tinker, t il ar, souldrer, salor, . and clyding by in the eastway. Who flank and tipting a jutty and palling in Pieman Peace or Polistaman. was the first that ever burst? Some and pietaring out and clyding by on That's the thing I'm elways one it was, whoever You are. TInker, her eastway. Waiwhou was the first on edge to esk.

ECHECHOHOES OF Julnp To bigsing mitt (and there martined by his JOYCE Droolie are some of slnmlnstral hex­ frival sinxters Sawdust acordiality who have (Ping! wint the A good way of developing Siptumbler cheeped Nine! Nine! to so strongs of the an understanding of how Actsober supernumerapodical a val­ eadg be guitarn· Joyce's neologisms work is Newwinebar gar halluxination of their berg), put hexes to try to Imitate them, or Descendbeer He rro) it was harpbuzzing on his hocks and parody them. tags when, achording to said sex is funf, Burgess.suggests a game And a rather more complex Fussboden and Sexfanger, which is why he to fill long winter evenings. example: the gamut and spinet of It aspiered to a diet­ In response to an instruction was (AI 01 says Rholy with ty of worms and to 'pun baptise the names of· Construct a sentence in his Alfa Romegal that funf married anon the months from the view­ Joycean onelroglot, with at went Into sox and Queen (Moineau! Con­ point of a confirmed drunk­ least five long subordinate Kway was half dousin to her sparrocy!) after ard', he gives us: clauses and three or four sixther, so that our truetone he had strummed parentheses. The subject orchestinian luter (may his his naughntytoo Ginyouvery shall be the origin of the bother martins swallow frets on the door Pubyoumerry legend of Martin Luther's rondines and roundels of (fish can nosh Parch six toes on the left foot. Pre­ chelid.ons and their oves be tenders) and was Grapeswill sent Luther as both a bird eaved on the belfriars) dep­ eggscomeinacrated. Tray and a musical instrument. targmined not to be houses------9 • THE SOURCES OF THE LEXICON 135

'l"eologistic compounds There is perhaps a phonetic implication in such forms, 'oycean lexicoining is but one ofrhe several techniques suggestive of a difference in rhythm or speed of utter­ iescribed in earlier pages available to any author who ance when read aloud; but there is no grammatical or lVishes to neologize. For example, there may be a novel semantic change involved. A different kind of point is Ise of affixes: being made: to break graphic convention for its own sake reinforces the iconoclastic, irreverent tone with Altarwise by owl-light in the half-way house The gentleman lay gravc:watd with his furies; . which the Liverpool Poets of the 19605 came to be (Dylan Thomas, ~tarwise by Owl-light', 1935-6) identified.

)r an unusual word-class conversion: THE ICINGBUS we slipped thro' the frenchwindows and arminarmed across the lawn the littleman with the hunchbacked back (Roger McGougn, 'The Fish', 1967) creptto his feet to offer his seat But innovative compounds are particularly wide­ to the blindlady ;pread, and deserve special space. The staid set of compound lexemes illustrated on people gettingoff steered carefully around ? 129 does not even begin to capture the exuberant the black mound inventiveness which can be seen in English literature of his back From its earliest days. Old English was dominated by as they would a pregnantbelly its creative compounding (p. 23), as seen in. such forms the littleman IS hronrad'sea' (literally, 'whale-road'), and, much completely unaware . later, Shakespeare made considerable use of neologis­ of the embarrassment behind watched as the blind lady tic compounds: pity-pleading eyes and oak-cleaving fingered out her fare thunderbolts. Sometimes several items are joined in a * :ompound-like way: muchlove later he suggested that instead A painting of the Liverpool a base, proud, shallow, beggerly, three-suited­ ofa wedding-cake they shouldhave a miniaturebus Poets, 1985, by Peter Edwards: hundred-pound, fUthy woos ted-stocking made outot icing but she laughed (from left to right) Adrian knave, a Lilly-livered, action-taking, andsaid that buses werefor travelling in Henry (1932-), Roger whoreson, glasse-gazing super-seruiceable and notfor eating and besides McGough (1937- ), and Brian you cant taste shapes. (Roger McGough, 1967) finicall Rogue . (King Lear, II.ii.15) Patten (1946-).

It is not a great remove from here to the Joycean jux- . tapositions of Ulysses, 1922: ORWELLlAN tOMPOUNDSPEAK

a broadshouldered deepchested stronglimbed times 3.12.83 reporting bb ideological; and the 'C (there are no irregular frankeyed redhaired freely freckled shaggy­ dayorder doub/eplusun­ vocabulary' contains techni­ forms in Newspeak). bearded widemouthed largenosed longheaded good refs unpersons cal terms.The 8 vocabulary Other terms in Newspeak rewrite ful/wise upsub comprises only compound are not so much com­ deepvoiced batekneed brawnyhanded hairy­ antefiling words. Orwell describes it pounds as blends, Involving legged ruddyfaced sinewyarmed hero. as 'a sort of verbal short­ fragments of either or both This Newspeak message, hand, often packing whole of the constituent lexemes sent for re-editing to Win­ or to the lexical creations of Gerard Manley Hopkins, ranges of ideas Into a few (p.130): ston Smith, in George mixing hyphenated and solid forms: syllables'. Its aim is 'to Orwell's Nineteen Eighty­ Pornsec ('Pornography impose a desirable mental Four; is given the following Section'), Ficdep ('Fiction This darksome burn, horseback brown, attitude upon the person Oldspeak (standard English) Department'), Recdep using them'. Examples His rollrock highroad roaring'down ... translati.on: ('Records Department'), A windpulf-bonnet of fawn-froth include: thinkpol ('Thought Police'). The ;eporting of 8ig Broth­ Turns and twindles over the broth ... doublethink, goodthink, er's Order for the Dayin oldthink, erimethink, old­ The novel gives the impres­ ('Inversnaid', 1881) The Times of December 3rd speak, speakwrite, sion that there are hun­ 1983 is extremely unsatis­ though terime, .sexeri me, dreds of such forms. Of course, simply to print a series of words without factory and makes refer­ pro/efeed, dayorder, black- . Indeed, one ofthe charac­ spaces between them is hardly to create a compound, ences ·to non-existent white, duckspeak. . . ters (Syme) is engaged in the enormous task of com­ except at a most superficial level. A real compound acts persons. 'Rewrite it in full and submit your draft to These forms could be piling the Eleventh Edition as a grammatical unit, has a unified stress pattern, and higher authority before Inflected in the usual way. of the Newspeak Dictio­ has a meaning which is in some way different from the filing. For example, goodthink nary. In .fact, there are only ('orthodoxy' In Oldspeak), a few dozen Newspeak sum of its parts (p. 129). Many literary compoundsdo Newspeak uses three kinds could generate goodthlnk­ terms mentioned in the none of this, and have a solely graphic appeal, as in this of word: the 'A vocabu­ ing, goodthinkful, good­ novel and its Appendix, later line from Roger McGough's poem: lary' consists of everyday thinkwise, goodthinker, . though several of them are items; the '8 vocabulary' is and goodthinked used repeatedly. then you tookoff your other glove I/b 10 · ETYMOLOGY

Etymology is the study oflexical history_ It investigates the origins of individuallexemes (p.118), the affinities ETYMOLOGICAL ANSWERS to they have had each other, and how they have o punch Despite a widely held view ~o change, p. 245), and which retains its changed in meaning 'and in form to reach their present the contrary. the name of the drink has magical sense. Robert Burns links the two state. The subject exercises it remarkable popular fas­ nothing to do with the effect that the words, referring to gypsies who 'deal in mixture can have on the drinker. The glamour' and those who are 'deep-read cination. People readily ask where a word comes from, recipe originated in India, and the name in hell'S black grammar' (1781). Soon and are prepared to speculate at length about its ori­ comes from the Hindi word for 'five', after, glamour developed the sense of gins. Why is the drink punch so-called? How could sil(y because there were five ingredients 'enchantment' or 'charm', and by the Involved (spirit, water, lemon-juice, sugar, mid-19th century we find its current once have meant 'blessed', or sly have meant 'wise', or and spice). . . sense of 'alluring charm' - an association treacle have meant 'wild animal'? There is also an o sly The word came Into Middle English which for most people (though not for inevitable curiosity when it is known that two appar­ from Scandinavian, where the dominant this author) is missing from the modern meaning was 'cunning', with its implica­ term, grammar. ently unrelated words have the same origins. How can tion of special knowledge or wisdom. o treacle The term was formerly used for it be that glamour and grammar were once the same Sly is also related to sleight 'dexterity' a medicinal compound widely used as an word, or salary and sausage? Etymology has important and slay (originally, .'dexterous with the antidote against polsonlng ..lt came into hammer'). Middle English as triacle from French, links with questions of folklore: why, for example, is it .0 salary and sausage Salary came into and ultimately via Latin from Greek, the stork which brings babies? And the coiuinuing English via French from Latin, where where theriake had the meaning of 'anti­ popularity of books on 'Naming your Child' suggests salarium meant 'salt-money' (given to the dote against the bite of a wild beast' . soldiers to buy salt). Sausage also came Theriake, in turn, is derived from therion, the decision-making role that the subject can play. Peo­ via French from Latin, where salsicium a diminutive form of ther, the 'word for ple, in short, like to know where words come from, was something made from salted'meat: 'wild animal'. The modern substance was whether they be personal names, place names, com­ Salt is tl'1e common element, seen also in called treacle in the UK (US molasses) sauce and salad. because of Its similar appearance to the mon nouns, idioms,. abbreviations, proverbs, or any . o grammar and glamour Grammar is the original medicinal compound. other r~cognize d lexical domalll. In this book, rhere olcler form, recorded since the early 14th • storks and babies In Middle High Ger­ need be no apology for a section on etymology. century, coming into English via Old man, the related term Storch had the basic French and Latin, and ultimately from meaning of 'stick', specifically referring to c;ireek, where grammata meant 'letters'. such objects as a fishing rod, a tree stump, Arguing etymologically To the illiterate, grammar quickly came to . and - in a 15th-century Austrian medical During a discussion, reference to a word's earlier mean­ be Identified with the mysterious domain treatise - the male appendage (des of the scholar, and thus developed the Mannes Storch). Once the bird was nick­ ing can ofren influence the wayan argument proceeds. sense of 'learning' (in general), and then named 'a stick', it would not have taken In a recent debate on the way history should be taught of 'the incomprehensible', and even of long for the double entendre to have gen­ in schools - whether the focus should be on 'facts' or 'black magic'. Much later, in 18th-century erated the now familiar piece of folklore. Scottish English, a form appears which is (After W. Lockwood, 1976.) 'methods' - a supporter of the latter position referred spelled with an I (a common sound to the 'real' meaning of history as 'investigation' or 'learning by enquiry', as this was what was meant by The history of silly, showing the way pejorative senses have developed since the 17th Greek historia, from which the modern term derives. century. (AfterG. Hughes, 1988.) Several people were sWayed by the point, and referred the to it throughout the debate. When Sigmund Freud was Old English Middle English Modern English present investigating hysteria, he encountered resistance from 700 900 1100 1300 1500 1700 1900 his colleagues, who argued that, because the term hys­ teria derived from the Greek word for 'womb', the con­ DE s;Elig - 'happy', 'blessed' cept of male hysteria was a contradiction in terms. I Both these cases illustrate what has been called the I I ME seely _ 'innocent' etymplogical follacy - the view that an earlier meaning I of a lexeme, or its original meaning, is its 'true' or 'cor­ I I Mn E - silly 'deserving of compassion' rect' one. The fallacy is evident when it is realised that I I most common lexemes . have experienced several :iweak' 'feeble' changes in meaning during their history. Nice, for :----'----~-----­ I example, earlier meant 'fastidious', and before that :'simple', 'Ignorant' 1------'foolish' or 'simple', and ifwe trace it back to the equiv­ I I alent Larin form, nescius, the meaning is 'ignorant' l'feeble-minded' I (from ne 'not' + scire 'know'). Should we therefore say I that the true meaning of nice is 'fastidious', 'foolish', or . "foolish', 'empty-headed' 'ignorant'? The 'original' meaning of thelexeme is, 6f course, unknowable: sci- derives from a root probably 10 . ETYMOLOGY 137

meaning 'cut' in Indo-European; but no. one has any pairs of related forms (doublets) would be investigated. idea of what meanings existed before that. Contemporary etymological studies tend to adopt a The sense of a modern lexeme depends on the way broader . perspective, looking at the relationships it is used now, and not on its semantic antecedents, between whole sets of lexemes belonging to a particu­ which are often multiple and obscure. To argue lar area of meaning, or semantic field (p. 154). Exam­ etymologically is to impale oneself on the horns of ples of two such fields are illustrated here, showing the several dilemmas. Fascinating as etymologies are, in periods during which relevant lexemes entered the lan­ debate they can only be a rhetorical cheat .. guage. Neither example is complete in its lexical cov­ erage, but it is nonetheless possible to see broad trends Semantic fields in the way each field has developed. There is also a cer­ Etymology has traditionally focused on the study of tain intrinsic interest in seeing groups of lexemes set individual lexemes, tracing their earlier forms (ety­ out in this way. mom). Often, as in the case of grammar and glamour,

A HISTORICAL MENU ECONOMIC HISTORY This presentation of the semantic field of economic terms distinguishes two types of lexeme. The evolution of terms for food and drink Is an inter­ The first column lists items which have always carried an economic sense, such as.tax and esting reflection of the history ,of cultural contact cheque. The second column lists items where an economic sense has been added to a general between English-speaking countries and the rest of term, as with loan and cheap (in these cases, the date given is that of the emergence of the the world. (After G. Hughes, 1988.) economic meaning). The development of the field shows an interesting shift in the growth of the two cate­ Food Drink gories. Until about 1400, the vocabulary largely belongs to the first column; From about 1550 tacos, quiche, schwarma to 1700 the growth is mainly in the second column, Indicating a major Increase in items which pizza, osso bucco have developed a specialized economic meaning. 1900 paella, tuna, goulash It is interesting to observe that the vocabulary of the economy in recent times is rather dif­ hamburger, mousse, borscht Coca Cola ferent from that associated with science and technology, where neologisms (p. 132) predomi­ grapefruit, eclair, chips soda water nate. Rather than invent new terms, we seem for the most part to have adapted familiar ones bouillabaisse, mayonnaise to talk about the economy, perhaps reflecting the increasingly central role which monetary ravioli, crepes, consomme riesling matters play in our lives. There is, certainly, an immediate meaningfulness and accessibility 1800 spaghetti, souffle, bechamel tequila about such terms as inflation, demand, and consumption, deriving from their established ice cream general uses, which would be missing if these notions had been expressed neologistically. kipper, chowder (After G. Hughes, 1988.) sandwich, jam seltzer meringue, hors d'oeuvre .whisky welsh rabbit Original economic sense Date of earliest specialized economic sense 1700 avocado, pate gin 900 fee, buy muffin port 950 yield, rich vanilla, mincemeat, pasta champagne 1000 fellow, guild salmagundi brandy 1050 yoghult, kedgeree sherbet 1100 1600 omelette, litchi, tomato, curry tea, sherry 1150 chocolate 1200 tally, tithe canana, macaroni, caviar, pilav coffee 1250 pay, wealth anchovy, maize 1300 account, control. thrift sell, price, rent potato, turkey usury, debt, exchequer artichoke, scone sillabub 1350 money, bargain, salary wage, customs 1500 marchpane (marzipan) tax, exchange whiting, offal, melon 1400 broker, magnate company, save, bill pineapple, mushroom redeem, mercenary salmon, partridge expense, levy Middle venison, pheasant muscatel 1450 staple, commodity loan, charge English crisp, cream, bacon rhenish revenue biscuit, oyster (rhine wine) 1500 farm, excise, duty bribe, market, cheap toast, pastry, jelly claret 1550 monopoly, trade mark bank, chattel, interest (usury), purchase (n.), trade, ham,. veal, mustard traffic, credit, finance, goodwill, dues beef, mutton, brawn 1600 capitalist, cash, tariff embeZZle, fortune, profit, dividend, share, income sauce, potage commerce, pre-emption . invest, corporation, industry broth, herring 1650 jobber • concession, workhouse, factory meat, cheese ale 1700 cheque consumption, demand, economy, fund, note, stock Old cucumber, mussel beer interest, bull, bear, luxury, security, concern English butter, fish wine 1750 capitalist budget, business, currency, draft bread water scab stock exchange . 1800 exploitation exploit, speculatelor, firm, strike trade union crash 1850 entr~preneur inflation, blackleg,. limited (liability), nationalization 1900 boom (n.), devaluation cartel, dole, welfare, slump (n.), recession 1950 reschedule depression 138 PART II . ENGLISH VOCABULARY

SEMANTIC CHANGE EVIDENCE The lower example is Everyone knows that words can change their meaning. from a student's notes on We do not need to have taken a course in semantics to Othello and graphically illustrates the linguistic hold a view about what has happened to gay since the distance which exists 1%05. Some strongly disapprove of the new meaning between Shakespeare's which this lexeme has developed; some welcome it; but vocabulary and that of the 20th century. Some of the all native speakers of English recognize that there has notes are to do with biblio­ been a change, and are able to talk about it. Semantic graphical matters (the Qs change is a fact oflife . And those who have had to study and F refer to alternative · readings in the various older works of literature, such as a Shakespeare play, printings of the text), but will need no reminding of how l11uch of the vocabu­ several identify important lary has been affected by such changes. points of semantic change (e.g. peculiar 'particular', Linguists have distinguished several kinds of seman­ timorous 'terrifying'). tic change. Four particularly important categories are The upper example makes given below (for other types and examples, see the sec­ the same point, but rather more·neatly.lt is from the tions on euphemism (p. 172), cliche (p.·186), and fig­ Arden Shakespeare edition urative language (p. 421), and the various dimensions of The Tempest, edited by of 'political correctness' discussed on p. 177). Frank Kermode. • Extension or generalization. A lexeme widens its meaning. Numerous examples of this process have occurred in the religious field, where office, doctrine, novice, and many other terms have taken on a more general, secular range of meanings. • Narrowing or specialization. A lexeme becomes more specialized in meaning. Engine was formerly used in a general sense of 'mechanical comrivance' (especially of war and torture), but since the Indus­ trial Revolution it has come to mean 'mechanical source of power'. Several of the terms of economics (p. 137) also show specialization. • Amelioration A lexeme develops a positive sense of approval. Revolutionary, once associated in the capi­ talist mind with an undesirable overthrowing of the status quo, is now widely used by advertisers as a sig­ nal of desirable novelty. Lean no longer brings to mind FOR BETTER OR emaciation but athleticism and good looks. WORSE? • Pejoration or' deterioration. A lexeme develops a neg­ Whether you viewthe ative sense of disapproval. Middle English villein neu­ 'homosexual' meaning of trally described a serf, whereas Modern English villain gay as a semantic change forthe better is by no means neutral. Similarly, junta has acquired a (amelioration) or worse sinister, dictatorial sense, and lewd (originally, 'of the (deterioration) depends on .laity') has developed a sense of sexual factors that are more to do with personal taste and impropriety. morality than with tent or irrespon- language. Because of this, an IncomPke n or business: COWBOY 'br wor ma lexical change can often be such as cosmetics, would see in this term a Sl :bOY plumber:, cowboY controversial. hairdressing, and what in prime example oflexica I co . . 9 firm This is an Interesting example doub/e-glaz/n 'd 'tcan Shop namesfrequently inner-city side·streets Is deterioration - but those h rn Irelan ,I extend lexical meaning in euphemistically referred to leaving such a parlour 0'1 how a lexeme can ~ave Its • In No rt e b ot'a sectarian meaning deteriorate In several mean amem er controversial ways. Salon, as 'relaxation'. Parlour, probably would not. The directions at once. Cowboy . once a term belonging to formerly a part of a purr-words (p. 171) ofthe originally developed quite pOSI­ 9anln9American English, i~ can the French aristocratic social monastery or convent used property developer and • obilednver tive connotations, with its ~om­ mean an auto~ \low the rules scene, maynowbefound in for conversation, has commercial advertiser antiC associatIons ofthe Wild who does not 0 worker a II kinds of contexts wh ich developed a similar range of repeatedly provoke West To these have now been of the road or a piece­ have nothing at all to do street meanings. People who contradictory reactions in adde'd a number of distinctly ~~~~%e who does mor~ by his union or with the aristocracy or would never dream of this way. negative overtones in certam work norms se elegant social interaction, entering a relaxation parlour regional varietIes. 'IeHoW·workers . • In British English, itcan mean 10 • ETYMOLOGY 139

FOLK ETYMOLOGY PHYSICIST NEOLOGIST they simply do not like the sound of it. These difficulties are compounded In a I know the exact moment when I decided scientific subject, where there Is an under­ to make the word 'booJum' an interna­ ~en people hear a foreign or unfamiliar word for the standable conservatism, in the interests of t ionally accepted sdentific term. maintaining intelligibility (p. 372), and irst time, they try to make sense of it by relating it to Thus begins the opening chapter of David where terminological proposals are sub­ vords they know well. They guess what it must mean Mermin's book, Boojums All the Way jected to detailed peer-group scrutiny. -and often guess wrongly. However, if enough people Through: Communicating Science in a In the end, the term did come to be nake the same wrong guess, the error can become part Prosaic Age (1990). The year was 1976, recognized, but not without a great deal and he was returning from a symposium of effort. The proposal was first recorded >f the language. Such erroneous forms are called folk on the discovery of the superfluid phases as part ofthe published symposium dis­ Jr popular etymologies. of liquid helium-3. Superfluids, he cussion, but in quotation marks (as we Bridegroom provides a good example. What has a explains, are liquids in which currents can would expect). Mermln then gave a paper flow for ever, without succumbing to the a few months later In which he used the ~room got to do with getting married? Is he going to frictional drag that causes currents in term severa,l times. It was published in the groom' the bride, in some way? Or perhaps he is ordinary fluids to die away. Helium-3 is proceedings, and appeared in the index. :esponsible for horses to carry him and his bride offinto an 'anisotropic' liquid - one whose He then used the term at several other atomic structure In any little region points conferences. :he sunset? The true explanation is more prosaic. The along a particular line. The structure is A burst of correspondence followed Middle English form was bridgome, which goes back to especially noticeable in one of Its phases, between Mermin and the editor of a Old English brydguma, from 'bride' + guma 'man. and at the symposium the question was scientific journal to whom a paper had discussed of how the lines in this phase been submitted which included the term. However, gome died out during the Middle English would a'rrange themselves in a spherical The editor objected to boojum on the period. By the 16th century its meaning was no longer drop ofthe liquid. grounds that it would not be sufficiently apparent, and it came to be popularlyreplacedbyasim­ A theoretical pattern, elegant In its sym­ known to the international scientific com­ metry, is shown in Figure 1 below. Figure munity to justify its inclusion. Mermin Har-sounding word, . grome, 'serving lad'. This later 2 shows what happens as a vortex line responded by giving a definition ('any developed the sense of'servant having the care ofhors­ (the long funnel of a little whirlpool) con­ surface point singularity the motion of es', which is the dominant sense today. But bridegroom nects the point of convergence of the which can catalyze the decay of a super­ .lInes to the surface of the drop. The vor­ current') and pointing out that the lexical never meant anything more than 'bride's man'. tices draw the convergence point to the Item as such was already In the dictionary. Here are a few other folk etymologies: surface (Figure 3), resulting in a final pat­ However, the editor was not swayed, and tern; shown in Figure 4, where the sym­ the term Was rejected. o sparrow-grass A popular name for asparagus- though metry has collapsed, and the lines radiate Mermin continued his efforts, writing a this vegetable has nothing to do with sparrows. from a point on the surface. further article for another leading physics o cockroach The name came from Spanish cucuracha, What should this new pattern be called? journal, and adding a note on the etymo­ the first part of which must have been particularly Mermin was reminded of Lewis Carroll's logical background. The submission led to poem 'The Hunting ofthe Sna~k', where an in-depth dialogue with one of the obscure to English ears_ There is no connection with the last lines are 'He had softly and sud­ journal's editorial team, and this time it cock. denly vanished away (For the Snark was a was finally allowed to appear. As part of Boojum, you see'; As the symmetrical pat­ the discussion, there was a debate about o helpmate The form comes from a Bible translation of tern in the liquid drop had indeed 'softly which plural form to use: should it be Genesis 2.18, when God said 'I will make him a help and suddenly vanished away', the term booja, boojum, or boojums7 They settled meet for him'. Meet in this context is an adjective, ' seemed highly appropriate. on the last. And in 1978 a paper appeared In his book, Mermin tells the story of the which contained boojums In its title, and meaning 'suitable'; but the popular view preferred to difficulties he faced in getting his term which used the term throughout without take the word as a form of mate. accepted. It is rare for any new lexeme to apology (as the name of Mermin's book o salt-cellar In Old French, a salierwas a salt-box. When attach itself to the lexicon without reper­ indicates: 'boojums all the way through'). the word came into English, the connecrion with salt cussions, and this is what he found. Each Boojum therefore emerged in print with: lexeme has to elbow its way in, and find In a couple of years of its creation, to join was evidently not clear, and people started calling the an acceptable place in the semantic field such fashionable physics terms as quark, object a salt-saler. The modern form has no connection to which tt belongs. Its existence will . ,hedgehog, and charm. Whatever its future with a cellar. probably affect the definition of estab­ in physics, its place in etymological history lished lexemes. And people may object to is assured. It is unusual to find the gesta­ the new lexeme on a'whole variety of tion and birth of a lexeme given such a grounds, such as that it is not needed, or detailed tabulation. The first part of sirloin is simRly derived from the that other terms are better suited, or that French word sur 'above'. The form must have greatly puzzled the people ofthe early Middle English period. 'Unused to French, they etymologized the form to sir, and then thought up a iegend to make sense of it (the . story of the English king who found this joint of meat so ,splendid that he gave it a knlghthqod). .<0"'''' " .0"""'"'' How N,w ""d, (oj122 which one partner is gay or hu.." had a gay affair, ofl'ered a snappy example of how new words are born. Borrowed from the Annie Proulx novella and subsequent film Brokeback.l\1ountain, the subject of which is a gay love affair between two married cowboys, 'brokeback' crossed the fictional boundary of a novel and fil In and established iL~elf in mainstream usage with unusual speed. ''''11ether it'> future will remain forever linked to its fictional origin, or whether it '\\'illfind linguistic jndependeO(~e, is bard to judge: like any new word, it will depend on shared cultural allusions and 1~ how long they remain fresh in the mind. Nevertheless the move of ' brokeback' into other conte.xts demonstnttes one of the strongest Broi(ebacl( or Bounceback: mc(:hanisms behind language change. \Vords can jump across boundaries with ea.<;c, re-establishing themselves in a new How New Words Come About environment as required. Some may even change meaning in the process. Unlike 'brokeback', however, not all are entirely new.

The inv(~ ntion of entirely new terms is how mQst of us imagine the Get rea dy for the violentest, disembowelingest, vomit-inducing-est evolution oflanguage to be: certainly the notion of ncologiling is a Itchy and Scratchy Halloween Special ever! romantic one which is hard to resist. In fact, only one per cent of The Simpsons, Treehouse of Horror IX, 1998. all new words are entirely new creations. Language develops almost entirely through the continuous re-adaputtion of existing Next Tuesd ay President Bush is tal

They seiden he was a fool ... and that they sien neuere so Nise A man. In March 2006 the New York Times featured an article which Henry LO'lelich. The History of the Holy Grail, c. 1450. carried the leader 'Many Couples Must Negotia.te Terms of "Brokeback" Marriages', It reported on a study which found that Most of the words in everyday English have been in (and aJmost foul' per cent of married American men had had a sexual occasionally out of) circulation for centuries. A study of them ill a liaison with another man in the last {ive years. For word-watchers historical dictionar:r such as the Oa;ford Engli,sh Di.ct'iorutr:1J (Ok'D), the surprise of that statistic may have been offset by delight in the \vhich charL'S chronologically the story of a word from its birth to birth of a hrand-new term. Urokeback, an adjective used tl.'> a the present day, can fl.'veal startling changes in meaning. Samuel shortJumd in the artide to describe a current or former marriage in Johnson's 1755 Dictionary l1(the English Language describes a

8 9 the language report Brokeback or Bounceback: How New Words Come About pednut as 11 schoolmaster, and gives 'strong and vigorous' as the youth-speak oUers a good illustration of bad turned good, primary meaning for nervous. There are many other such including the now familiar bad, wicked, sat'agl.:\ bitcbin, and, examples.PrOJui!H:nous used to mean 'tontilsed' or 'undistin~ more recently, sick and shabby. But words have already moved on, guished', while a sL-xteenth-century punk was a prostitute, ,md so fam iliar are these already- those designed to be kept outside have long since scaled the wall-that they may now be The word uke, derived from Latin nesdvJJ, began life in the pronounced ch(:~csy and nmk (hQtll ofwhkh ean mean 'out of fi.mrt!;'Cntll century as a term for 'foolish' or 'silly'. from there it date') by those who werc the first to use them. embraced !ll(WY a negative quality, including 'wantonness, extravagance and ostentation, and cowtmlice and sloth. In the Sometimes words change me,ming because the point of reference Middle Ages j t took on the more neutral attributes of shynE-'Ss and to which they were once attached is no longer a part ofHfe. The reservation. It was society's admkatiQIl of such qualities in the fate of the word in question is either to become obsolete or to exist dghteenth century tllat consolidated the more positively eharged only as part of a historical record. Others- and language is indeed meanings of nice which had be(~n vying fe)f a place fOf much of the ahout the survival of the fittest-adapt tllClnselves to meet theil' word's history, and the values of respectability and vtrtue began to new cirCl101st,:'lllces. In Samuel Johnson's eighteentll-ccntury work, tal,!: precedence. Such positive associations remain today, when the a pet denoted a lamb taken into a house and reared by hand: over main meaning ofniee is 'pleasant'.lts stOlY, hO\vevet', is unlikely to time it broadened out to rnean any domestic animaL Meat began end there, and, given the irony with which it is ofttm iutiJsed (much as a broad term for food: as variety of diet increased, so it acquired like interesting, in fact) its trajectory may even take it back to its the specific meaning it has today. From this century, chav is per­ negative roots and nutke it the word of dl(}icc for danming \Vltl1 haps an obvious and highly topical elmmple. Once a Romany word ihint praise.. meaning 'child' (cJwvi), and llsed mainly in the Chatham area of Kent, it underwent a change ofmealling and was rela.unched quite In the early summer of2006, the straight-talking Radio 1 DJ Chris spectacularly in 2005 when it became one of the most powerful Moyles came under fire when he was seen to be legitimi1.ingtJle (and derog,dmy) sodallabels in recent memory. most rcc.ent meaning of the word g~ly on air. 'Gay', in contemporary teen shng, means something 'lame', or 'rubbish', It is a moot point Resurrection as to whether its users are aware of any latent homophobic message, but Moyles, his critks argued, should have known better. Many \'lords which stlil,e us as new are, in faet, simply older For linguist.'i, this was simply the latest tum in the histOlY of a words resurreeted as the current fashion 1U1d environment dictate. word whieh has shined easily along willI its times, Amongiliose \'lords enjoj1ng a renaissance i,<; fa.b-- an adjective unmistakably, at least till now, assodated with the sixties, Another Teenage slang is

10 11 ,".1" .

the language report Brokeback Of Bounceback: How New Words Come About

19:3:1, when it wa.,; associated fi rmly with bebop. It was greRtly form it new one. A recent Rei fhI' a clnilIow, R pillow that unf(}lds pt)pularized in ja72 drcl history and durability, or that it is as mini-drumtts so that viewers look out fol' tile neli:t; infonesia, an now even cooler than it was in the sixties and seventies. inahility to rememher the source of a pltl'tieular pieee ()finf01'ma­ tion; magalogue, a product catalogue designed to resemble a New tombinations magazine; tvehisode. a short film availahle exclusively on the vVeb; fal'mageddoll, t11(: conflict over genetically or otherwise modified The adaptation of estabHshedwords is one of the main ways in foods; guylinel', eyeliner fill' men; newarel" exe{~ptionally pure which language evolves. English is infinitely elastic, and we water teeyded from waste water which m

12 13 the language report B(oj

to frE!ewrite; to write in a streanN)f-consciousness style in order to encourage creative ,,,,riting llnd a f.'eeHo"". of thought. A topical example of how language is infinitely productive is the bounceback: resilience (al<;o boullcebackahility: see 'HIt's in a(tivity of the word scrapbook which, rather like blog, has the DictionuJ-Y: PP 142- 145). spawned a variety of new terms. Now a verb meaning simply 'to wantaway: someone '\vho wishes to leave a situation. The term keep a scrapbook" it has become a billion-dollar industry in the is particularly used in reference to footbal1ers who want to leave US. The keepers of the new kind of 'memory albums', which use their dub. acid-free paper, are scrap bookers or scrappers for short. They may create scm poetry and attend scrapdasses and scrapcrops where, as part of a scrapteam, they can avoid scrapper's block. Mint new coinages It is surely only a ma.tter of time before SWlpfever takes hold in Beyond the vocabulary created for entirely new vruieties or sub­ the W<' pockets of English are genuinely new creations whiclt may find a degree of permanence in society. That pemwncl1ce is usually because the word is llctively needed as a label for a new phenomenon, man-made or othenvise. Those words which fill a Trading places genuin(; gap are ,unong the most promising in terms of their likely Neologizing eall he a subtle process. Very often a word retains its shelf liie~ Medical, scientiflc, and te<:hnologieal advances are the meaning but takes a nc\v grammatic.al direetion: so, for example a. dear leaders in this category. Proteolllics, the study of all proteins noun or adverb develops a new part of speech and becomes a verb, in a single organism, ha.'> become according to some the new and vice versa. Such moves are some of the strongest character­ frontier of modern biology: the word was coined in the mid 1990s istics ofjargon, and are frequently lamented by language purists. on the model of'genornlcs', the study of an organism's complete sct Among recent shifts of this kind we find: of genmne; or DNA. Very recently, pitpcrs have been loudly debating the cthic.'l and safety of cugeroics (see 'Bubbling Under', to surface [something]: to raise (e.g. an issue). pp 17-30), drugs which may become a lifestyle choice thanks to to journal: to keep ajournaL their power to reduce the need for sleep and which c~m reportedly deliver an awake state for two days at a ti me. to sotuUOIi: to find a solution to something. to VoIP: to can a person using VolP (Voice over Internet That entirely new linguistic creations make up only around one Protocol) technology: in other words to make ChCilp calls using per cent of all ne." words added to our dictionaries is perhaps tin Internet connection rather Hum a conventional phone line. disappointing. Outside the printed pages, however, are thousands of words which reflect the enormous versatility of our language and its to mt1:$Sage: to make a statement; to deliver a clear message. users. Together with the results of the other mechanb'lTIs oflanguage to ad ~n ot: to ad-lib. change, ther make up a crowded showcase oflinguistic potential.

14 15 the language reflort 1/23,

Sometimes, as technology moves on, even the most successful new word may become defund, as happened with squarials in the 19905. Occasionally. however, a word becomes sufficiently embedded that it survives even as the very process or invention it describes moves on. Such words are sometimes called linguistic 'skeuoffiorphs' (a skeuomorph, a term from architecture, is an object that retains design elements which were necessarily present in the original but which are now entirely ornamental), They include dialling a number, bed Unen, Bubbling Under: typing a letter, and taping a film. The Words of the Moment

A round-up of the new words of any year (at least those that catch the lexicographer's eye) produces an unruly mix of the significant and the triviaL However ephemeral they might prove, the oc(:upants of.both categories provide as accurate a picture of prevailing attitudes and preoccupations as any history-writer could wish t(Jf. The newly minted lexicon of2005/fi suggests some important themes.

Technology has long been one of the greatest sources of new coinages. New discoveries require their own terminology, It: in the 1900s, the new technology oftrallsportaJion, film, ftnd radio dominated the new word scene, a hundred years on it is the Internet thaf continues to demand ic..xkul innovation. Blogging, the still recent phenomenon of online diary-Cor V\'eblog)­ keeping, 1S among the most highly productive generator of new terms, among them hlegging, !'II)log, and hlook Online business is another area of high linguistic turnover: going, it H~ems, are

16 17 the language report Bubbling Under: The Words of the Moment

nderenc:cs to 'doh~oms' and th(~ multitude of activities prefaced *,><1 with the once ubiquitous 'e-'. Cm:rent enterprises talk of going MP-she women: tile new generation of technologically savvy viral, and of the opportunities of s1ivcrcastiug and maslmps. femalt>.$ who, according to recent statistics, download more music to th(~(r Mr3 players fuan men and who are becoming a driving As well as new teehnologies, new experiences also demand force in the sales of digital do\vnloads. expression. The influence of new lifestyle trends is clear: spec£!­ frieutling, se~ettil1g. freecyding, 6a."iihpacldllg. fUld voluntour;­ ism al'eamong the leisure choices currently available. Mcanwhih~ sllven:asting! onlim) broadcasting \vhich is able to target It small the waparani and citi.zen journalisL'> chanlpion the power of the audience (a 'sliver' ofthe overall viewing base) and remain people in news reporting. financially viable thanks to cheap bl'oadband access a.nd ever­ decreasing set-up costs. No dktionary editor can hope to capture 1U00'e than a fracti()ll of the neologisms generated at any given moment in time. Nor would they want tn: lexieographers want to record only tIwsewords that WAGS: an acronym for 'Wives and Girlfriends', and Ii lRhe! much demonstrate staying power. But it is those areit'; of our eulture heard during the 2006 World Cup, which the partners of British which generate the biggest growth of new vocabulary-be it steady players were permitted to attend. Tabloid and broadsheet or

19 113 the language repurt BubbUng Under: The Words of the Mument

process Behrendt calis "he-tox"; enlisting a friend to be a "breakup buddy". subject to tissue-box-emptying phone caHs at all hours. ttl go vital: ((if an advert or marketing message) to spread quickly Wasl1lngtolt Post, November ;10°5, lmd widely. This idiom reverses the usual, negative Msociations of viral infection: 'going viral' via vil"ltJ m~ll'keting is now the aim of llU\jor brands as they h,mltlSS n(~w technology to target thousands of cnstomers. fratlre: this term, a blend of ,fraternity' and 'satire', has been coined to identifY a new genre ofliteratul'c, one 'which is essentially the The most .sut:(;essfu! ads may achieve the marketers' dream of 'going male equivalent of 'chick lit: Stories in the category, to use a viral' -finding their way into thousands of email irHrays and description from theA'ew York Times, 'combine ii fraternity hou8e­ spreading the message to otherwise hard-to-reach demographics. style cdehration of masculinity \vith a moddng attitude toward David Rowan's 'TrendsUffiog' column in the rimes magazine, April 2006, soda!. convention, traditionnl male roles and aspirations of power U11d authority'. The label is just one in a long history of literary genres, from Victorian 'shilling shockers' to the recent 'b()l1kbtlst(~r', speed-frlending: an alternative to 'speed-dating' which uses tbe 'git lit: and 'grit lit'. same principles, whereby people attend parties at whkh they sit The fratire writers are cyber·charaders, who hold themselves up as a across from each other and (:hat for a specific (and short) number paragon of backlash-cocksure in the discovery that the more of minutes before moving on to the next person. It: at a $peed­ misogynistic they are, the more attradive women seem to find them. friending party, friendship looks possible, the pair may s\vap The Guardian. April 2006. numhers. The term was coined by The Lunch Club in Nc-wYork; the service has now expanded to much of the US and may yet estrtbHsh itselfin the UK (although another recent social eugeroics: drugs which reduce the need to sleep. Although a phenomenon, 'cuddle parties', failed to make much impact whml term dating bat:k to the 19905, eugeroics (derived from Greek eus, it crossed the Atlantic). good, possibly combined with egeimin, meaning 'arousal'), were originally prescribed to treat sleeping (lisorders. In early 2006, however, they hit tile news ns the latest lifestyle drug which allows he4ux: a period after a break-up during which it woman makes no those who hike them to remain awake fbr up to 4,8 hours at rl titne. contact with het' ex-partner in a bid to get him out of her system. Unlike drugs such as amphetamines, eugeroks work wit}lOUt She may give up dating altogether. The term wa...:; coined by the co­ creating a sleep defIcit. author of the hest-selling self-help manual He $ Just Nelt That hlto According to leon Kreitzman, author of The 24-Hour Society, Greg Behrendt. ', •• eugerolcs ... are unraveUingthe mechanisms ofsteeplness. Once Behrendt's contributions to the to-do list are seven "commandments" you've done that you will end up in a world where the need to sleep is that, if slavIshly obeyed, will turn a breakup into a "breakove.". They optionaL I would say that will happen within the next quarter of a include cutting ()Jf alt contact with your former lover for two months, a century.' The Telegraph, january 2004.

20 21 the language report BubbUng Under; The Words of the Moment

rausomware: a type of mnJicioUf:i software which encrypts a person's freecycUn.g; the use of goods given away fOl' free by people who flO computer flies. The hacker then demands il ransom in return fin longer \Vliut or nee.d them. decrypting the files so that they may be a('e(~ss(~d again.

to jump the couch: to exhibit strange or random behmriour. The body spam: undesirable physical contact by strangers. The tcrm idiom was inspired by the actor Tom Cruise's appearance on The was apparently coined by Ben Schott. author of the hugely OpnifL Win/reI/Show, during which he jumped up and dO\,'11l on suceessful Schott:~ 1\1 iscellanieB series of books. her couch declaring his love for his fIancee Katie Holmes. It follcHvs the model of an earlier term, jumping the shark. which denotes the point at which. a successful TV programme begins to go BASSO: an ASBO (an anti-socia] behaviour order: a civil order downhill and which was hased on an episode (considered tn be far~ issued to it person deemed to have eallsed "Ial'm. distrcss, or fetched) of the series Happy Da,lj8 in which the main charru::ter, the harassment to othcl'S) designed for children under 10 years of age. Foltz, jumps over a shark while waterskiing. The term is a contraction of'haby I\"S£O'. Then, as president. he jumped the couch by pedaling thruugh the Mr B!airwants Sasbos for chftdren as young as five-the minimum guns of August-the growing carnage and chaos in Iraq and age for criminal responsibility is t()~to be part of his upcoming Afghanistan, RespectBHl. Maureen Oov-Id in the New York Times, August 200.5. Daily MIrror, October 2005.

Ufehacklng! making one's daily acthities more efi1cient. The term crotchfruit: a child; children. The term w,t-'l coined by propom~nL" draws on an analogy with the ca.n~do attitude of computer hackers of child-free public spaces in the US, but has siuce become slang and possibly the idea. of coping, of'hru::king it', among parents who USt~ it humorously or ironically. It carries a deliberate echo of the biblical term 'fruit orone's loins', helicopter mom: a. mother who micro-manages her ell ildren's lives and is perceived to be 'hovering' over every stage of their develop­ fobbit: a soldier or other military employee stationed at a fiu'Ward ment. The term joins a range of other 'mom' compounds coined in operating base; a person who is reluetant to move from a military recent yeitrs, induding Soccer mom, security mom (n. mother bas(~ or leave the wire, The word is it blend of the acronym 'FOB' wlwse overriding political interest is in maintaining the sRfcty of (t(}f\vard operating base) and 101kien's hole-dwelling 'hobbit'. A her fillnily),l\-ir Mom (a stay-tit-home father or a single father), similar term is Rl"llH:hair commando. bio-mom (a birth mother), and mini-van mom (the US equivalent

22 23 the language report Bubbling Unden The Words of the Moment

of the driver of the Chelsea traL1:or who drives a large (~

wingwoman: a professional matchmaker who eseorL<; a man to a bar or dub, engages in light conversation to draw in other females. and theuwithdraws in the hope that their client may find a date among them. The term comes from the 1986 film Top G1I.n, in whieh Tom Cruise is protected from the enemy while performing d;wgemus flying manoeuvres by a watehful colleague known as the 'wingman: a term whkh in fact dates b~lCk to the Second World \Var.

btegging: the soliciting of money or other forms of assistance on a blog. The term is a. blend of'blog' and 'beg' and is often used apologeticaliy by the hlt~ggers doing the asking.

sptog: a fake blog which contains links to sites affilia.ted to the keeper of the blog (the splogger), so that they lUay bendit from increased search-engine rankings or from payments made by a u advertisers on the site. The term is a bJend of'spam' and ;blog: maSRUp: information created by bringing together data from a number of different sources. The term begau, in the late 19905, as a descri ptor of a musical piece which combines two or more songs. bitlegglngl the net of downloading wpyright-protected digita.l I11C t\~'o meanings now cne-xist. music fil es {i'om the IntemeL The term plays on the idell of On the web, mashups ale usually created by taking data from two Of 'bootleggtng'-a term dating back to the early 1900s to describe more sources and combining them to' make sO'mething intere.sting and the illegal smuggling of alcohol--and It cQmputer bit or byte. new. ChkagoCrime. fO'r example, took police data for crime incidents and plotted them on street maps from Googie Maps. Now, if you were visiting an area you didn't know, you could check in advance whether it was the 50rt of place you might get mugged. and when . . The Guardian. February 2006.

2/1 25 "', . the language report Bubbling Under: The Words of the Moment

y~pplel an acronym for a 'young e..xperimenting perfection-seeker' $Otlettftlg: tnl.yei based around visits to film and TV sets or and a neW sociological category identified by 11 British think tank locations. for young people who are llnahle to commit, whether to a relationship, ClL'"'eer, or lifestyle. n ?$~ Yeppies ... are life shoppers Who browse ... in search of the dream playlistism: prejudice based on someone's taste in music as existence, putting offgrowll'up decisions and commitments until they reilected on the playlist on their MP3 player, The term daws hack i are satisfied they have exhausted all the options. Look at the to 20()~t but is becoming mnch more common :1..'> dovvnloading t singer/songwriter James only Stunt, who left the Household Cavalry to gaills popul arity~ storm up the music charts. Several recent studies in the US have shown that these lists are not Saturday Times, April 2006. only 'the soundtracKs of our Bves', but also reasonably reliable p~rsonality barometers used to suss out dating partMrs, job applicants and political candidates. A study released last month citizen Journalist: n bystander witnessing a notable event who zooms in on the effects of 'playllstism', a form of musical voyeurism records '\."hRt they see on their mobile phone camera or speech where people can scan one another's musical libraries online. recorder. Straits Times. May :ZOOS .

iii, 4 'i"tl 4'h,it'le ~r' ~~ @ ~ a - ~1Jt5~ ~ 1¥; n:~ur~ m podnography; erotic audio and video materi American Civil War (Manassas) was sold the next day as a visitor podsaCc, while a podcast with video content is a vodca.,<;t. attraction site. The GUQrdian. 2005.

26 27 : ,.,' ,' the language report Bobbling Under: The Words of the Moment

"~. :!.. viruses. The word came into prominence amid fears of an epidemic pod hotel: a new style of hotel oOering smallersocial distancing' II necessary at aft'ordahle pricC'.5, and set~king to cnmlitte the compact simplidty response. ofJaphandshake, the formal bow and the air kiss. get ready to add a new ~ fashion god: the World Health Organization, chief advocate of the 'elbow bump'. waparanl: members of the public who take photos ofcdebritics New York Times, February 2006. with their mobile phone camel'as, The term is a blend of'WAP' (wirdess application protocol, the new standard for today's generation of mobile phones) lind 'paparazzi'. It is ,tlso being shortened to wap, Wannabe 'waps' should also try reading Hollywood Reporter every once in a while. Yelling [at the Bafta film awards] 'Mr Angl Mr Angl' at Brokebad< Mountain director Ang Lee was never going to get his In early 2006 the American Dialect Society chose their Word of attention. the Year for :wo5. On their shortlist were i3 number of words (among them pOdcast and su doku) familiar to many. The The O'gangrinder. fhe Guardian Unlimited weblog. February :2006. winner, however, was probably not. Truthiness, defined as the quality of stating concepts or facts one wishes or believes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true, was a term mandais: s:utdals for men. The tenn is reminiscent of'manbag' and coined on the late-night satirical 1V programme The Colbert 'murse', hoth terms for a male handbag. Report, 'Manda!s' are those top~sti tched. dod·soled, brass-buckled strappy affairs that forge an unholy aesthetic blend of gladiator, salary man As a Word of the Year, 'truthlness' had several disadvantages, and hippie ... Resist, Rethink. the most obvious being its lack of currency. Unlike winners of l'Iil"leekcam. April 2006. previous years, usually highly topical (red state/blue state was the word of 2004. heard almost daily in the course of the *11N~ Presidential election), the one chosen for 2005 seemed not f13shpatker: a more affluent type of backpacker. usually in their only a rather fanciful creation but also one unlikely to endure. late 208 or :30s, who tai,es time out from their career to seek The trajectory of new words, however, is almost impossible to adventure. predict and 'truthiness' began to prove its doubters wrong, Subsequent events suggested that the word might indeed h,?«.>'i ~rn gr~ ., ~irS'.. ]S capture the current zeitgeist as the American Dialect Society elbow bump: the new alternative to hand-shaking; bumping contended. .... another's elbow as a form of greeting avoids the spreading of

28 29 :';.:. :~ ._ sa .•..

tilf! language report

Shortly after the Word of the Year was announced, James frey, the author of a best-selling memoir which had heM enthusiastically endorsed by the talk-show host Oprah Winfrey, was facing accusations that parts of his book were fabricated. His publisher, in a statement defending him. stated that 'He represented to us that his version of events was true to his recollections: The use of 'true' in this way prompted many to turn to 'truthI ness' as the word which most accurately described Frey's attempt at defence. As Grant Barrett, a member of the American Dialect Society, put it, 'truthiness is the new truthfulness: it's the habit. or practice, or failing, of people who imagine that "saying it's so makes it so":

~ I

30 31 :.'.1 0 ".' \ L-: ';";'.

,.}." The evoLution, oj words z,/~ We rightly complain when we encounter people using cliches in contexts where we expect better. A politician who answers a direct question with 20 Wordchanges cliches can expect to be condemned. Cliched responses by a student will not gain marks; cliched comments by a radio journalist will not gain listeners. But a blanket condemnation of all cliches on all occasions is as futile as an unthinking acceptance. Cliches have been called 'Musak of the Words have no life of their own. It is people who have life, and it is mind' and 'social lubrication'. Both views have truth in them. they who give life to words. Or death. And as people, and their societies, never stand still, neither do words. Change is the norm. The only words that do not change any more are dead ones.

We looked at the history of one word, nice, in detail in chapter 6. Every word in the language has a comparable story to tell. Each story is unique. No two words have identical histories, and as a result no two words have identical meanings and ranges of usage. There are actually no true synonyms.

You can check this claim out easily enough by referring to the pages of a thesaurus, such as Roget's. That work was described in one edition as 'a collection of synonyms on a grand scale'. It isn't. Roget himself is much more circumspect, describing it in his Preface as a collection of words arranged 'not in alphabetical order as they are in a Dictionary, but according to the ideas which they express'. Indeed, he goes out of his way to say that he is not going to explain the 'signification' of words. Far less, he says, 'do I venture to thrid [= thread] the mazes of the vast labyrinth into which I should be led by any attempt at a general discrimination of synonyms'. It's been hard enough compiling the thesaurus as it is, he goes on to complain.

The difference between a dictionary and a thesaurus is clear. In a dictionary, we know the word and want to look up its meaning. In a thesaurus, we know the meaning, and want to look up the word. The panel overleaf shows a selection of words taken from one of Rogel's categories. It is a fascinating and useful collection of words of closely related meaning-ideal for the budding author searching for 'the right word'. But it contains no true synonyms.

148 149 " . .

;" ':;

The e.Vc1lu.tialt al wards WardclwrJl!!ff.S

such as youth sports, youth groups, youth hostel, and youth culture. Youngster doesn't typically have these collocations. And if one were to be used, it would mean something different. A hostel for youngsters would not be the same as a youth hostel.

Change in meaning-semantic chang~is a fact of life. Love it or hate it, we can't stop it. We may regret the passing of a word, or a sense of a word, but we can only react to what has happened; we cannot stop it happening. Nor can we ever predict the way a word is going to change its meaning. Try now. Take any word on this page and say how it will change its meaning in five years' time. It is an impossible task. We can only ever be wise after the event, with words.

Wordsmiths spend as much of their lives as possible increasing their wisdom after the multifarious events of semantic change. They look for interesting word histories like bees look for nectar, settling on one source of information, extracting what they can, then moving on to another. Lord comes from hlaford in Old English, literally meaning 'loaf-keeper'. Bzzz. Lady comes from hlafdig, literally 'loaf-kneader'. Bzzzzzzzz. Some You might say: what about youngster and youth? Indeed, these are very wordsmiths even work in hives, under the leadership of a queen, or close, but they are not identical. There are nuances associated with the sometimes a king. Then they are called lexicographers (see chapter 5). ;. , one which we do not find with the other. Compare these two sentences, and you will sense them straight away: The study of bees is part of entomology. The study of the history of words is etymology. Being an etymologist is the most faSCinating of ":':' There are some youngsters standing outside the house. " " professions-though without a day-job, as Eric Partridge used to say, it There are some youths standing outside the house. won't pay the mortgage. It is interesting, not just because of the individual Which group would worry you? Youths plainly has negative associations word-histories, but because of the trends that can be discovered in the which are lacking in the case of youngsters. Youngsters are nice to know. way words change their meaning. Youths may not be. . ,~. Some words widen their meaning over the course of time. Words like But this is by no means the whole story. These are plural uses of the office and novice were originally restricted to the field of religion. A priest nouns. In the singular, youth is usually used in a positive way. The website would read his daily office. A new monastery or nunnery recruit would be youth-org describes itself as 'Resources and links for gay and lesbian youth a novice. Today, these senses form only a tiny part of the cluster of to learn about their sexuality as well as provide a safe place to express meanings that are conveyed by these words. When words expand their themselves.' Nothing negative about that. And youth shows many other meaning in this way, etymologists call the process extension or distinctive connections between words-linguists call them collocations- generalization.

150 151 TJ.te. e-volt4ion. oj Wortls Wortld1.P/I13U

The opposite process also occurs, one of narrowing or specialization. 'mechanical source of power'. It has narrowed its meaning. So has meat, Engine, for instance, was formerly used in the very general sense of once used to mean 'food in general'. 'mechanical contrivance'. Devices of war and of torture could be called engines. But since the Industrial Revolution, the word has come to mean Another trend is when a word takes on a positive sense of approval. If we say that a man is lean, we are likely to mean that he has a fit, athletic physique, and probably good looks. I typed Brad Pitt into Google, and there it was, first hit: 'Brad Pitt is lean, all legs and lips and liquid movement.' Etymologists call this kind of semantic development amelioration. Revolutionary is another word that has ameliorated over time-it is a good thing, if a product is advertised as 'revolutionary'. Not so in 1789.

And we find the opposite process: deterioration. A word develops a negative sense of disapproval. Middle English villein referred to a serf, honest, and hard-working. Modern vil/ain, although often used jocularly, is quite the opposite. Lewd originally meant 'of the laity, not clerical'. In Modern English it has been entirely taken up with sexual impropriety.

This is where we have to be especially careful. when studying the language of earlier periods of English. When Wycliffe, for example, talks about lewd freres (freres = 'brothers'), he means only that they were lay­ brothers, not ordained. It is of course the easiest thing in the world to read in the modern meaning of this phrase and think that the men were engaged in sexual antics.

Lewd in the Middle Ages and lewd today are 'false friends'. Believe it or not, that is a technical term in linguistics. It refers to words which seem to be the same, but are not. There are false friends between modern languages too. All English learners are temporarily fooled, when learning French, by demander. They think it means 'demand', and then find out that it means 'ask'. Demander and demand are false friends.

Students of Shakespeare have to learn to live with the false friends that separate Early Modern English from the language of today. Bootless, for ':', instance, today means 'without boots'. This sense of the word is actually known from the fourteenth century; but it is not Shakespeare's normal usage, where it means 'uselessly, in vain'. The word is from Old English,

1'12 153 ", . .

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The, evaluJ:i.an, oj wards Wa rdeJu{I'!!}u where it meant 'good' or 'use' (better comes from the same root). So The memories of childhood have no order and no end', reflected Dylan when Caesar addresses the company with 'Doth not Brutus bootless Thomas in his nostalgic story 'Quite Early One Morning'. It is the same kneel?' (Julius Caesar, 3.1 .75) or a fairy enquires of Puck 'Are not you he / with etymology. The examples in this chapter have taken me in all kinds of That . . . bootless make the breathless housewife churn' (A Midsummer unpredictable directions, and only the thought of a length-limit and a Night's Dream, 2.1.37), the issue is nothing to do with footwear. publisher's deadline has stopped me exploring further. You will find the same, if you allow your etymological inclinations to rule (see 'Becoming a word detective', 1). 'The judicious author's mind is enthralled by etymology', said Wordsworth, in the 1815 preface to the Lyrical Ballads. In that case, we are all judicious authors.

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This chapter considers how' and why language changes. It j also lists the main methods used to reconstruct past I stages of languages for which written records are sparse or unavailable. " i All languages are continually changing - their sounds, their 160 wide open than the standard American pronunciation. Labov 161 syntax and their meaning. This gradual alteration is mostly "1 did a survey of these vowel sounds, interviewing the' islanders, Bl" iii ::I unnoticed by the speakers of a language, since the sounds and and askip.g them to read passages contahiing the crucial words. :;:I (Q (Q C syntax in particular give a superficial impression of being static. C !II \ He found that the change seemed to be radiating out from a !II (Q Yet one glance at the works of 'Chaucer or Shakespeare shows (0 tD group of fishermen who were regarded as typifying the old true CD g. how much English has changed in a relatively short time. g. !II values of the island, in contrast to the despised summer visitors. !II :;:I :;:I (Q A closer look at the English of today reveals several sounds and The fishermen's speech had always been somewhat different from (0 CD constructions in the process of changing. [j], the y-like sound, the standard American pronunciation, though in recent years it CD which occurs before [Ul] in words such as tune, muse, duty, appeared to have become more extreme. The non-standard ~: (1: seems to be dropping out. It has already disappeared ,in words vowels were being picked up and imitated in particular 'by people ~'I such as rule, lute. Soon; it may have dropped out entirely, as it , aged 30-45 who had made a firm decision to stay permanently on -a. has in t1?e East Anglian region of England. the island. -a. Ii (,.)' (,.) ~l e: Meanwhile, a change in ,syni:a:ic is occurring in the use of the The fishermen's strange vowels, then, were not a totally new ~; pronoUns I and me. It used to be considered correct to say It's 1. ' invention, they were simply an exaggeration of existing vowels. Nowadays, the majority, of people say It's me. Me tends to be Other inhabitants who came into contact with these respected used after the verb, and I before it. And there are signs that this old fishermen perhaps subconsciously imitated aspects of their =:i l .~ " rule is being extended so that I occurs only in a position directly speech in an effort to sound like 'true' island~rs. At first, the :l~:'r" preceding the verb. The line in the popular song, 'Me and the adopted fisherman-type vowels fluctuated with their existing w~ elephant, we still remember you', is only partially a joke. Such more standard vowels, then gradually the new ones took over. 1• sentences possibly encapsulate this changing rule of grammar. At this point, the change started to spread to others who came ij! People working on this branch of lingnistics are interested above into contact with this second group, and so on. all in how and why language changes. They are' also interested There is some truth, therefore, in the notion that changes are iIi reconstructing an earlier state of affairs in cases where we . infectious. Parents sometimes complain that their children 'pick t have no written records of the previous stages of the language. up' dreadful accents at school. But children are not infected ~: against their will. Subconsciously at least, humans imitate those ~ I i1r they admire, or desire to be associated with. It is as impossible RI How language changes to stop children acquiring the accents of their friends ,as it is to stop them wanting to wear the same clothes, admiring the ~.~~I. 1 or Gi Until relatively recently, language change was considered to be same pop stars. a mysterious, unobservable phenomenon which crept up on one unawares. Like the movement of the planets, it was regarded as Some changes occur 'from above', meaning 'fro~ above the '~ 1 undetectable by the unaided human senses. However, advances level of consciousness', when people consciously imitate the ~' accent of others. For example, in British English, someone who 1 in sociolinguistics have led to a growing understanding of the ~' comes from an area where [h] is omitted at the beginning of ~: mechanisms behind both the spread of change from person to person, and its dissemination through a language. words such as hoi, high, might ~ake a decision to gradually II~R·! incorporate it, to fit in with the mOre usual pronunciation. q The American sociolinguist William Labov was one of the first Other changes are 'from below' ,meaning 'from below the level ~: people to examine in detail how a change spreads through a of consciousness', as with the Martha's Vineyard changes, I: population. He ,found, a new pronunciation creeping in among, where those involved might have: been unaware of which parts - the permanent inhabitants on the island of Martha's Vineyard, of their speech were changing, a popular holiday resort off the coast of Massachusetts. Judging I: by previous accounts of the islanders' speech, the vowel sounds But whether the changes a~e 'froril. above' or 'frQm below', the mechanism of spread from person to person' appears to be the ,; in words such as I" my and out, about were altering their same: alternatives creep in, usually copied from those around, .~ \ character,. being produced with the mouth considerably less ki8! ~~.1 ~ :):~ I ~: :N,. £. then gradually replace the eXIstIng pronunClanon. Change 162 163, inevitably involves variant forms while it is in progress, so 100% iii iii :::s speech variation is often a sign that a change is taking place. I :::s "0 --- CD 'g ~ c caIII ~ · CD 1;'" CD .o n n . ::r "0 ::r III· Spread of cha;nge within a language I '" Dl <:; :::s ~ ;; CD CD The spread of a ,change' through the language isa topic which at CD oile time seemed even more'mysterious thanits spread through a '0 population. One ' puzzling phenomenon was the' so-called I .Q'" E 'regularity' of sound change. If one sound changes, the alteration z~ does not only occur in, an .isolated word. It affects all similar ...Ai I -a. CN words in which the same sound occurs. So, in English wyf CN became wife, just as lyf became life, and bryd became' bride, all showing a change from [il] to [ar]. In the 19th' century, linguists figure ·13.1 claimed that sound changes were 'laws' · which worked with 'blind necessity', sweepirig all before them like snow ploughs. But beginnirig with vowels tended to be the most affected in one problem remained. How did odd words get left behind? For Martha's Virieyard. So I and out were changed early partly example, British English [reJ normally changed into [aI] before because they are common words, partly because of their [s], as iri pass, fast, disaster. SQ why do we still get , gas~ 1Jtass, linguistic shape. aster, tassel? It seems very puzzling that these sweepirig 'laws' The early stage of a change, with just a few words intermittently should tush through a language, yet somehow accidentally miss affected may last a long time. But, at some point, the change is some words. likely to 'catch on'. It will iri all probability then spread fairly One answer was to deny that there really were' any exceptions fast to a considerable amount of vocabulary, as shown by the and suggest that such words were borrowed from neighbouring steep part of the S in Figure 13.1. Towards the end, a change dialects. For example, British [re] in words such as gas might be . tends to lose its impetus and peter out, so there may be a few due to American, influence. But this feeble attempt to evade the, words it never reaches. This scenario, then, of a change creeping problem was not really satisfactory and, re~ently, detailed 'I from word to word accounts for why changes are for the inost questionnaires and surveys have revealed a better answer. part regular, but why some words can get left out. The process Linguists have now shown that sound changes do not occur is known as lexical diffusion. The words affected by a change simultaneously in all ' words at onCe. They move across the fluctuate at first, with the new and old pronunciation language going from one word to another, like apples on a tree, coexisting. But eventually, the newer pronunciation wins out. , which ripen round about the same time, but not simultaneously. When charted on a diagram, the progress of the change shows a characteristic S-curve: ,tl;tetime scale goes along the bottom, the Causes of language change nUmber of words affected up the side (Figure 13.1). First, the 'There is no more reason for language to change than for jackets change touches relatively'few words, and affects them variahly to have three buttons one year and two the 'next', asserted one in that the neW pronunchltion is likely to eXist alongside the old. well-known linguist, arguing thatall change is due to accidental, In the Martha's Vmeyard vowels, for example; the word I was social factors. This viewpoint cannot be correct, for two reasons. 'affected early, but the 'n:ew'pronunciation of [did not happen First, similar changes recur the world over. There are certain , each time, only sometimes. At this point, the change is merely a tendencies inherent in language, which possibly get triggered by mild tendency which could be reversed, ,or even fadeout social factors, but which are there waiting in the wings as it were, altogether. ' The words affected early are so.lnetimes the for something to set them off, as with an avalanche: a lone skier . coinmonest, but phonetic factors are also important: words who disturbed the snow was perhaps the immediate trigger, but Not all tendencies are major, noticeable ones. Others can be 164 165 deeper underlying causes already existed, before that skier minor, affecting only one sound in a particular position: the iii iii ::I arrived. ' ;:1 CQ sound [e] tends to become [I] before [1]], so England is now r: 10 III pronounced as if it were spelled 'Ingland'. A [b] tends to be C CQ Furthermore, language patterning never breaks down. This is Dl (1) the second reason why changes cannot be simply accidental. inserted between em] and [1], so the word bramble is from an 'al n n :r The patterns within language enable the mind to handle large earlier bremel. And so on. .:r III III ::I ::I CQ amounts of linguistic information without strain. If change was Some tendencies can have repercussions throughout the language, CQ CI random, the organization would collapse. The mind would be as with the loss of the ends of words, which means that in French, CI ~I overloaded with a junk-heap of disorganized information, and for example, an alternative means of expressing 'plural' has had to. f ~ ,; communication would be impossible. be developed: it is essential to put les [Ie] at the beginning of plural 11~ ...... These factors proVide two m'ajoreauses of change: on the one words, as in les chats [Ie fa] 'the cats', since by itself the word chat il j ~ hand, there are underlying tendencies in language, tendencies [fa] 'cat' is pronounced the same in boththe singular and plural: ...... CJ,) (,.) ~ ' which can get triggered by social factors. On the other hand, this distinction 'is now marked by the determiner placed in front of words. ~l!! there is a therapeutic tendency, a tendency to make ~ I j: readjustments in order to restore broken patterns. Let us briefly consider these. H11' }!I; Therapeutic changes Therapeutic changes restore patterns which have been damaged 111 Natural tendencies '1:1 by previous changes. A number of examples of this are provided Li'I' There are numerous natural tendencies, and some of them are . by the use of analogy, the ability to reason from parallel cases, ii, stronger than others. They can be triggered by social factors, or which is a fundamental feature of human language. It is most ,ii' may be held at bay for centuries, perhaps held in check by other obvious in the case of child language, when children create past ij; tenses such as taked, drink ed, after hearing forms such as baked, 'I: opposing tendencies. . ,. ; blinked. II, A widespread tendency is for the end~ of words to disappear. In , " cases where this has largely occurred already, as in the In hinguage change, analogy tends to restore similar forms to ~ Polynesian languages, Italian, and French, many English items which have become separated by sound changes. For ~ example, changes in the vowel system resulted in the separation I speakers claim the language 'sounds. beautiful',: 'has flowing , ' !: sounds'.: But when it begins to happen to our own language, and of the adjective old from its comparative form elder, So a new i~ : comparative form older has been formed by analogy ~ with forms '. people leave [t] off the end of words such as hot, what, and :i' replace it with a 'glottal stop' - a closure at thebatk of the vocal such as young, younger, where the first part of both words is ~he tract with . no actual sound emitted - then many people get same. The form elder has now been relegated to a few specialized upset, and talk about 'sloppiness', and 'disgraceful swallowing uses and phrases, such as elders of the church, his elder brother. of sounds'. However, such an incident is certainly not However, it is a mistake to regard analogy purely as a restorer 'sloppiness', ·since producing a glottal stop requires as much of broken patterns. This is an oversimplification, because muscular tension as the sound it replaces. Furthermore, the analogy is not only found in a therapeutic role: it can itself change is creeping . ill inexorably: even those who .criticize it disrupt sound changes. For example, we would expect [d] in the usually fail to notice that they themselves are likely to replace [t] middle of the word father (as in Gothic fadar). But father was with a glottal stop in football, hot milk, a bit more. In· some . influenced by the word brother, and the expected [d] appears as areas, the change has affected [k] as well, and also, to a lesser [5]. In addition, there are a number of different types of analogy. extent~ [p] ..At the rate at which it seems to be spreading, [p], [t] In some ways, iris a 'rag-bag' category used to explain a variety and [k]may have disappeared from the end of British English of changes. So it is misleading to make vague general claims words by the middle of the 21st century. . about analogy, unless the statement can be narrowed down. Recently, linguists have suggested that chain shifts occur not 166 Changes which trigger one another off 1671 i only in the sounds of a language, but in the syntax also, For iii" Chain shifts - that is, which .seem to occur in linked ch~ges example, some languages have ' relative clauses (clauses ~ ~ sequences - are a particularly iriteresting therapeutic (IJ Ii introduced by which, that) placed before the nouns attached to c: .(IJ phenom,enon. For example, in Chaucer's time the word lYf'life: . ~ (II them. They say, as it were: CP () was pronounced [iiI£] (like today's leaf). The vowel [iI] changed -:r g. ·111 to [eI] (and later to far]). But this was not an isolated change. At 'Which is sour wine :s (IJ ' (11 around this'time, all the other Jong vowels shifted: [eI] became ! where English says 'Wine which is sour'. Such languages also tend CP 1 [iI], [eI] became [eI], and far] became fer]. It looks as if each to have objects which precede their verbs. A 'literal translation of ; ~ '.' vowel rushed to fill. the; empty space left by the one ahead 'of it I::; Eriglish 'Harry dislikes wine which is sour' might be: ' 1·l t (Figure 13.2). . "W; Harry [which is sour wine] dislikes. I';' -A. " l If, however, a change occurs so that relative clauses move to a ..... W ~ ,i!i ~l] position after their nouns, then the verb and object are likely to ii;" change places also. Once again, most people would agree that [eI] leI] the changes are linked in some way, though the precise /' mechanism is disputed. ii "-lSI]. I: ,I ii Interacting changes I' "'-[aI] i' ,I So far, the changes examined have been fairly straightforWard. figure 13.2 But some types of change are far more complex. In order to give some idea of the numerous factors normally involved in a j. language change, let us finally look at some interacting changes. In the following example; loss of word endings has combiiled

.l" 'with changes in word order, to bring about both the disappearance of a construction and a change of meaning .. The forerunner of the English word like was lician, a verb which meant to 'give pleasure to'. ,This verb was in common use in English at a time when objects normally preceded the verb, and the subject of the sentence did not necessarily come at the beginning of a sentence. A typical sentence might be: tham cynge licodon peran to the king gave pleasure ,pears 'Pears pleased the king'. '. . Then, over the course of several centuries, two things happened. First, the noun and verb endings were dropped. The' king became the standard' form for the noun, and the plural ending dropped from the verb. This eventually led to the form: - The king liked pears. Meanwhile, it gradually became normal to put the subject before the verb, and the object after it. So the sentence 'The king figure 13.3 i

liked pears', which originally meant 'To the king were a pleasure 168 to be able to divide languages into different types, and to 169 pears', was reinterpreted as 'The king took pleasure in pears'. recognize the basic characteristics attached to each type; this iii Therefore, loss of word endings and a word order change have iii cS branch of linguistics is known as language typology. For c5 c triggered off two further changes: the loss of the construction­ C example, those languages (such as Hindi) which have verbs after DI ci!l type 'to someone, something is a pleasure', and a change of (Q (I) their objects, also tetid to have auxiliary verbs after the main (I) g. meaning in the word like from 'to give pleasure to' to 'to take verb. On the other hand, languages such as English which have n DI pleasure in'. This example illustrates the fact that, in most types .\ verbs before their objects tend to have auxiliary verbs before the ~ c5 ! 1 ~ (Q (I) of language change, a multiplicity of factors are involved. main verb. If, therefore, We were to find the remnants of a (I) language which had its auxiliaries attached after the main verb, we would be able to predict that it might also have its object Reconstruction before the verb, ,even if we had no direct evidence for this. Typology will be discussed further in Chapter 14...... Recently, an enormous amount has been found out about e,), ,language change by examining , changes in progress. However, Let us now see how' we might use these three types . of ~I language change is a relatively slow. process, so we need in reconstruction. Suppose we have three related languages, addition to consider how languages have altered over the Twiddle, Twuddle and Twoddle. Let us also assume that we centuries. Yet our written records are inevitably incomplete. In have no past records, merely a record of their present-day order to supplement these, historical linguists extend their speech. First, we would use internal reconstruction (IR) to knowledge by reconstructing stages of language for which there reconstruct an earlier state of each of these languages - Early are no written documents. ,,1 Twiddle, Early Twuddle and Early Twoddle. Then we would use X ,external reconstruction (ER) to reconstruct Proto-T, the There are. a number of different types of reconstruction. The 'i common ancestor of these three. Then, once again, we would best known of these is external reconstruction, also known as '1: employ internal reconstructionl this time combined , with comparative historical linguistics. In this, a linguist compares typological reconstruction (TR) to reconstruct an earlier form of · 1 the forms , of words in genetically related languages, that is, ; f~ , ~ .. , Proto-T: Pre-Proto-T (Figure 13.4). languages'which have developed from some common source, and then draws conclusions about their common ancestor. This Method Pre-Proto-T type. of ·reconstruction will be discussed further in Chapter 14. '1, IR An 'older name for it is 'comparative philology', which sometimes' causes confusion, since in the USA, France and + TR I G!!rmany, "philology' normally refers to the study of literary Proto-T texts. . A second .type of reconstruction is known as internal reconstruction. In this, linguists look at. the state of one language at a single point in time. By comparing elements which are likely to have had a common origin, they are often able to draw conclusions about their earlier form. To take a simple example, consider the words long and longer. /luI]! and llufjg/ (with Ig/ on the end) are both allomorphs of the morpheme long. This suggests that, originally, they were identical, and that the word long was once pronounced with [g] at the end (as it still is . in some parts of England, such as Liverpool). A third type of reconstruction is typological reconstruction. This is somewhat ,newer than the other two. Linguists are begionmg iili 'JelJH'ii,' 170 , hi this way, we might be able to reconstruct a probable history '- ;U::~.'"", ;: jl f;, i,, ,.i '! ·of these languages stretching over.hundreds, and perhaps even i" ::J . thousands of years. ';1 jjl~: IQ ·c :)f:';'1'1"'lli;: DI . In this chapter, we have conside~ed how al!d why language ~ IQ C1I changes.' We have also briefly looked. at how linguists. ·t;lllr: o ::T . '1 '1'" m "' reconstrcict past stages for which theyh~vei:iowritten evidence. ::J III This process will be discussed further in the next chapter. ~ti:! • C1I i'll" ; I :ll!jl!; Questions t 'IIII\, 1 HoW!do changes spread from person to person? iill"11'1,1, ..... 2 Howdo changes spread within a language? il'i'!I' CJ.) ii'IrI,' \' 3 Suggest two types of causes of language change. ii!l: 4 Wha~ is analogy? . Ili" 5 What is a chain shift? JI'liI:,' . Ill;! 6 Nam~ three types of reconstruction, and explain ' in outline · 1;'I';"1\\ what each involves. I,ll., · III, · i I ,. iil'· ' 11l;1' Ill,L ''I'.II'' iiS Iii:' il : ::s ill' :\: (Q3 "" -li ii: C-C 'I I tutu (Q :!. This chapter outlines different CD::s ways of comparing languages. tn(Q It discusses the sources of shared features, then sketches the assumptions and methods of comparative historical linguistics, and the reconstruction of the proto­ \. language from which daughter r' languages developed. It also looks at further ways of extending knowledge of past language stages.