Wednesday, 24 May 2017

Language change and issues



  1. ‘Perjoration’ is a process by which words increasingly acquire negative meanings
  2. ‘Ethnic cleansing’, ‘collateral damage’ and ‘nuclear deterrent’ are examples of euphemism
  3. ‘Dialect levelling’ is a decrease in dialect differences
  4. ‘Prescriptivism’ is the study of language with the intention of controlling it- by dictating rules of usage
  5. 1755 is significant for the development of the English language because Samuel Johnson published his dictionary
  6. ‘Jargon’ is technical language or highly field-specific vocabulary
  7. ‘Amelioration’ is a process by which words become more socially acceptable or prestigious
  8. Which one of the following processes could the word ‘cupboard’ not be used as an example of:     borrowing
  9. The ‘etymological fallacy’ is the mistaken belief that the earliest historical meaning of a word is its only true meaning
  10. Time was once pronounced more like team, see like say, now like noo, and so like saw; and are all examples of the phonological differences brought about by the Great Vowel Shift
  11. ‘Fax’, ‘flu’, ‘celeb’, ‘bike’, ‘gym’ and ‘memo’ are all examples of abbreviations or shortening
  12. The use, in the USA of phrases such as ‘I guess’ ( for ‘I think’) and ‘gotten’ are examples of Americans retaining an earlier English form after its use has largely died out in Britain
  13. ‘Bidialectialism’ is a  term used, by Crystal and others to describe the ability to use two dialects of the same language
  14. ‘Government’, ‘peasant’, ‘crime’, ‘justice’, ‘fashion’, ‘biscuit’ and ‘leisure’ are words loaned from French
  15. The prescriptive ‘Short Introduction to English Grammar’ (1762) was written by   Bishop Robert Lowth
  16. The printing press was introduced into England by William Caxton in 1476
  17. ‘Accommodation theory’ was developed by Howards Giles to suggest we adjust our accent/speech in response to the person we are addressing
  18. The words ‘Children’, ‘oxen’ and ‘men’ are among a handful of now irregular plurals that are a hangover from a time when English had a greater number of inflections
  19. What is Jonathan Green describing as ‘the counter language… the language of the rebel, the outlaw, the despised, the marginal, the young’?   Slang
  20. ‘The Sapir- Whorf hypothesis’ put forward the theory that language controls or determines the way we think