Causes of Language Change
- Economy: Speakers tend to make their utterances as efficient and effective as possible to reach communicative goals. Purposeful speaking therefore involves a trade-off of costs and benefits.
- the principle of least effort: Speakers especially use economy in their articulation, which tends to result in phonetic reduction of speech forms. See vowel reduction, cluster reduction, lenition, and elision. After some time a change may become widely accepted (it becomes a regular sound change) and may end up treated as a standard. For instance: going to → gonna or, with examples of both vowel reduction → and elision →, → .
- Analogy: reducing word forms by likening different forms of the word to the root.
- Language contact: borrowing of words and constructions from foreign languages.
- The medium of communication.
- Cultural environment: Groups of speakers will reflect new places, situations, and objects in their language, whether they encounter different people there or not.
Read more about this topic: Language Change
Famous quotes containing the words language and/or change:
““What may this mean? Language of Man pronounced
By tongue of brute, and human sense expressed!
The first at least of these I thought denied
To beasts, whom God on their creation-day
Created mute to all articulate sound;
The latter I demur, for in their looks
Much reason, and in their actions, oft appears.”
—John Milton (1608–1674)
“What does not change is the will to change”
—Charles Olson (1910–1970)