Chapter4TheChangingEnglishVocabulary概述.doc

4.1.1 The constant change in language and the continuous appearance of neologisms All living languages in the world, including the English language are constantly changing. Why? Languages that don’t change over time are considered dead languages. Language is a living thing. Travel, foreign food, trading and war Technology changes. Progress and inventions have brought in new vocabulary TV soaps and movies, have a huge influence on the younger generation Foreign expressions and vocabulary will often be adopted, because It sounds really cool. It also depends on the local dialect Sometimes it changes for the better and makes things easier to say Peoples beliefs change. Colonization … Summarize the above listed items, we can get four factors: Economy: Speakers tend to make their utterances as efficient and effective as possible to reach communicative goals. 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. Migration/Movement: Speakers will change and create languages, such as pidgins and creoles. Languages change constantly. And as the fundamental core of the language, the words change too. The result of the change is neologisms/ new words. In the English vocabulary there are three types of words according to their appearance and disappearance: old words die out, new words are born, and existing words add new senses. Completely new coinages are few, existing words adding new meanings are many. Why? Economy, cost the least effort. Changes in pronunciation and grammar are much slower than changes in vocabulary. Why? The pronunciation system is stable under the constraint of speech organ, and the grammatical structures are less compared with the indefinite number of word