Blog - Paper 3 Question 1

 Text A, an excerpt from multiple letters of advice by an uncle, Edward Berens was written in 1832, which means it is from the Late Modern English period. Over time, our language has undergone a substantial amount of change that has led up to the way we use it recently. According to Hartl and Clark, the Cultural Transmission theory states that language change takes place according to cultural transmission so when individuals and groups perceive a benefit in a language change. This applies specifically to Text A because there are semantic changes present which are accounted for by this theory. 

The formality of the letter in Text A is rather on the professional level. This is different from the formality in a letter recently since letters tend to be more informal and personal especially if they come from family. So the English that is displayed by Berens (the uncle) is the early beginnings of Late Modern English. So the language is changing but it has only begun to change according to the formality of the letter. 

There is a syntax change present in Text A. For example, the order of the phrase “...never are guilty” is different more recently than it was in Old English times. The archaic versions would have put the negative lexis after the verb which is in contrast to the syntax of late modern english. This syntax change is representative of the Substratum theory by Labov about language change which links language change to the spread of language and to the globalization of the language as one English is influenced by another. This connects directly with the syntax change since the similar but differing adjectives that come before taste seem to have mixed types of English from ‘bitter’ to ‘first’ to ‘personal’ to ‘good’ and ‘bad’.

In Text A, pragmatics occurs, pragmatics focuses on how context affects the meaning of words/phrases. Berens uses the lexis ‘party’ which can be interpreted in different ways depending on the context of the sentence. For example, it could mean a group of people or a festive occasion. So there is an indication of language change due to the fact that party has another meaning that could be used depending on the pragmatics of the text. This could be due to Random fluctuation theory.

There are several semantic changes that are present in Text A. For instance, Berens utilizes the word ‘judgment‘ which has undergone a process known as broadening. The term used to have a narrow meaning that only referred to judgment as in a decision made in court. But now it can be applied to the medical field due to advancements of technology which fits with Halliday’s functional theory. According to the theory, language changes based on the needs of its users and so social/economic changes bring about inventions like in the medical field and bring about new relevant lexis. 

Text B, a collocate chart which shows examples of adjectives used for ‘taste’ and ‘judgment’ demonstrates a lexis change over time. The words ‘taste’ and ‘judgment’ both experience a broadening process over time. The chart shows this broadening of adjectives since the lexis ‘taste’ could have started off in Early Modern English as having no adjectives or only a few adjectives at the beginning then as time progressed more adjectives were created to be put with taste in order to fit with the  theory. 

Text C, an n-gram graph for the phrases, ‘are apt to be’, ‘are likely to be’ and ‘tend to be’ from 1800-2008. The n-gram graph shows a similar trend between the phrases at the beginning between 1800-1920. The usage of all phrases starts off small with the ‘tend to be’ phrase being the lowest, but starting at 1920 the phrases start to branch off more. This shows a change in lexis since the words ‘tend’, ‘likely’ and ‘apt’ are the only differences between the phrases. The phrase ‘are apt to be’ decreases in usage while the other two increase in usage with ‘tend to be’ at top. The trends of the n-gram graph reflect one theory. According to Chen’s S-curve model, the theory suggests that any change starts in a limited way, then accelerates as more speakers adopt the change, before leveling off over time. This theory assumes that language change spreads out amongst a population according to the people’s willingness to adopt new forms of language like lexical changes. This is seen in Text C, since all three phrases start off limited due to the population and their willingness to add another lexical change to the language but after a while they either grow used to the phrases and use the phrases more or they abandon them. The phrase ‘are apt to be’ is shown to practically always be low in usage except for around 1900-1980 where the phrase is shown to be a little higher in usage. Text A also supports my conclusion since the only phrases that Berens uses are ‘are apt to be’ and he only uses this phrase once and in the year 1832 which is in the time when all three phases were likely to be used since they all had about the same usage percentage approximately 0.00010%. Which is not a lot compared to recent years but both Texts A and C support the conclusion that the phrases were somewhat used (very small frequency however).