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Edexcel A Level English Language - Variation Over Time
Typology: Exams
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When was Middle English?
1200 - 1400
When was Early Modern English?
1400 - 1700
When did Modern English begin?
1700
Who introduced the printing press to England?
William Caxton
When did William Caxton introduce the printing press to England?
1476
When was the Renaissance?
What happened during the Renaissance?
Increase in art, science, medicine and culture.
Huge influx of new words.
Rise of literacy and desire to standardise.
What else did Caxton observe?
Language varied with location.
What location of speech did Caxton choose for printing books and why?
The speech of London because it is the Capital.
How long after Caxton's printing press did English take to roughly standardise?
100 years
How long did spelling and punctuation take to settle after Caxton's printing press?
Until the 17th century.
Due to the American economic domination.
When was the internet invented?
1970s
"eth"
Was used as an inflectional ending to past tense verbs.
I and Y
Used interchangeably to represent the same phonetic sound.
Silent 'e'
Sometimes to mark long vowel in preceding syllable.
Sometimes from line justification in printing when blank blocks ran out.
U and V
Variations of same letter.
V used in initial position.
U used in all other positions.
J and I
J was extended form of I.
Capital J was used at start of words when sound was consonant.
T and C
Often "cyon" used instead of "tion".
e.g. 'creacyon' instead of 'creation'
Complex, convulted syntax.
Multiple clauses in a single sentence represented digressions of thought.
Use declined after Renaissance when science brought a need to be concise.
What are Jean Atchison's language change myths?
The Damp Spoon Syndrome.
The Crumbling Caste View.
The Infectious Disease Assumption.
The Damp Spoon Syndrome.
Language deteriorates as we are lazy with it.
Meaning of a word narrows so that it includes fewer objects/ideas.
e.g. 'weed' used to mean any plant
Widening
Meaning of a word broadens to include more objects/ideas.
e.g. 'butcher' used to mean slaughterer of goats
Amelioration
Meaning of a word becomes more positive than the original.
e.g. 'pretty' used to mean cunning
Pejoration
Meaning of a word becomes more negative than the original.
e.g. 'wench' used to mean girl
What classifications are shortenings?
Clippings
Initialisms
Acronyms
Clipping
Word clipped down to shortened form.
e.g. 'refrigerator' → fridge
Initialisms
First letter of each word in a phrase, sounded as each letter in a sequence.
e.g. 'BBC'
Acronym
First letter of each word in a phrases sounded as a word.
e.g. 'scuba' (self-contained underwater breathing apparatus)
Affixation
Use of prefixes and suffixes
e.g. 'unsympathetic'
Compounding
Combining words together
e.g. 'post man'
Back-formation
New word coined by extracting actual or supposed affixes from another word.
e.g. 'burgle' from 'burglar'
Prescriptivist
Believe language should have set rules to be adhered to and not deviated from. Subjective view.
Descriptivist
Looks at how and why language changes and believes this is the natural course of a language. Objective view.
What are the 3 parts of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis?
Determinism - Strong version
Determinism - Weak version
Reflectionism
Determinism - Weak version
Human thought is only possible through language.
We can only think things that we have the language to articulate.
(Doesn't explain how new words and changes occur)
Determinism - Weak version
Language influences thought but does not have complete control over it.
Reflectionism
Language is shaped by our thoughts.
It is a reflection of who we are and how we think.
Lexical Gap theory
There are like paths that language may take.
There are gaps of words and usages not currently used but for a certain pattern
e.g. pap, _______, pip, pop, pup
Also gaps in verbing, and in morphological forms e.g. affixation
Scribal abbreviations
Monks shortening words
