语言学教程复习题与答案（胡壮麟版）2(5)

English Modem English Five fi:v faiv MouseMu:s maus Feet fe:t

fi:t Mood Md mu:d Break Brε:kenbreik Sounds do not just change, they can be lost. vowel sounds change, but some sounds simply disappeared from the general pronunciation of English. One example of sound loss is the /kn - / clusters in the word - initial position. In Old and Middle English, both /k/ and /n/ were pro-nounced, as is shown in the spelling of such words as \Although Modern English spelling of these words still keeps the initial letter k, its sound is no longer pronounced. Sound changes can also take the form of sound addition. Sound addition includes the gain or insertion of a sound, for

example: spinle spindle emty empty Sound change can take the form of sound movement. It involves a reversal in position of two neighbouring sound seg-ments. For example, the /r/ sound in the Old English words \sounds in their Modem English counterparts \most widely-spread morphological changes in the historical development of English? The most widely-spread morphological changes in the historical development of English are the loss and addition of affixes. A number of

morphological rules in Old English are now lost in Modern English. Some of these rules are about derivational affixes, such as suffixes \English an adjective would derive if \ lust (\lustbaere (\modern English. The most dramatic morphological loss concerns the loss of gender and case marking. In Old English,for example, \masculine, while \?or\

respectively feminine and neuter. In modern English, the gender markers of these words have been lost. Some affixes have been added to the English

morphological system.Take \the Old English period. At first, words ending in \\productive rule in English. It was used with other verbs to form ad-jectives.

Contemporary English speakers apply this suffix rule to more stems, thus producing new adjectives such as \“washable.” 72.What are the causes of language change? Discuss them in detail. Language changes are due to the following causes: 1) Sound assimilation: Sound assimilation refers to the physiological effect of one sound on an-other. In an assimilative process, successive sounds are made identical, or more similar, to one another in terms of place or manner of articulation, or of haplology, the loss of one of two phonetically similar syllables in sequence. For example, the Old English word \land of the Angles\“England” through the assimilation of \result of simplification and regularization. The plural forms of borrowed words are usually irregular, thus complex. For example, the plural forms of \\\plurals of \thus making them simplified and regularized. 3) Internal borrowing: In order to reduce the number of ex-ceptional or irregular morphemes, speakers of a particular language may bor-row a rule from one part of the grammar and apply it generally. For exam-ple, by analogy to the plural formation of \started saying \4) Elaboration: Rule elaboration occurs when there is a need to reduce ambiguity and increase communicative clarity or expressiveness. If a particular grammatical feature is lost as a re-sult of a change in the phonological system, some other feature may be added in another component of the grammar. 5) Social triggers: Socio-political changes such as wars, invasions, oc-cupation, colonization, and language planning and standardiza-tion policies lead to language changes. For example, in the history of English, the Norman Conquest marked the beginning of the Middle English period. And British colonial settlement, and the country' s political, cultural and economic advances in distant lands such as North America, Oceania, South Africa, and India lead to the change of English into British,

American, Australian, South African and Indian varieties. 6) Cultural transmission: Although a new generation has to find a way of using the language of the previous generation, it has to find expressions that can best communicate the views and concepts of the time and the changed and ever-changing social life, and re-create the language of the community. For example, while old people tend to call a refrigerator \\language change and variation. 7) Children's approximation toward the adult grammar:The way children acquire the language is another basic cause for lan-guage change. Children usually construct their personal grammars by

themselves and generalize rules from the linguistic information they hear. Children' s grammar never models exactly after that of the adult speech community, because children are exposed to diverse linguistic infor-mation. All the above factors contribute to language changes.

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