Unit 2: Language Change - History, Contact and Technology
Core concepts
Unit 2 examines how and why English changes. You need the processes of change: semantic change (broadening, narrowing, amelioration, pejoration, metaphor), lexical change (borrowing, compounding, blending, clipping, acronyms, initialisms, affixation, conversion), and phonological and syntactic change. You must also understand language contact - invasion, trade, migration, colonisation - and the resulting borrowings from Norse, French, Latin, Greek, and Aboriginal languages of Australia. Technological and social change drive neologism and obsolescence.
What examiners test
They want causal reasoning: not just that a word changed, but why the change occurred and what it reveals about society. They also test attitudes to change - the purist complaint that language is "declining" versus the descriptive view that change is normal and systematic.
Common traps
- Mislabelling broadening (meaning widens, e.g. 'bird' once meaning a small chick) as narrowing.
- Confusing acronyms (pronounced as words, e.g. 'radar') with initialisms (letter-by-letter, e.g. 'FBI').
- Assuming all borrowing is recent; English has borrowed for over a millennium.
- Treating Australian English as a single uniform variety; it varies by region, ethnicity and social group.
- Describing change as "wrong" rather than explaining the social forces behind it.
Worked example
"The word 'mouse' now commonly refers to a computer device." Strong analysis: "This is semantic broadening achieved through metaphor, based on perceived shape similarity. It demonstrates how technology generates new senses for existing lexemes rather than coining new ones, showing that language change often recycles existing resources."
Rule of thumb
For any change, answer three questions: What changed? Which process? What social or technological force drove it?