Words  
Middle English  
Modem English  
Five 
fi:v  
faiv
Mouse
Mu:s
maus
Feet
fe:t
fi:t 
Mood 
Md  
mu:d 
Break
Brε:ken
breik
    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 "knight" and "knee." 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 "bridd" ("bird") and "hros" ("horse") was moved to the right of the vowel sounds in their Modem English counterparts "bird" and "horse."
71. What are the 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 "-baere" and "-bora" . In Old English an adjective would derive if "-baere" was added to a noun, such as:
   lust ("pleasure") + baere     lustbaere ("agreeable")
But this rule has been lost in modern English.
    The most dramatic morphological loss concerns the loss of gender and case marking. In Old English,for example, "st?n" ("stone") was marked masculine, while "gief" ("gift") and "d…or" ("wild animal") were marked 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 "-able" for example, it has been added to English since the Old English period. At first, words ending in "-able," such as "favourable" and "conceivable," were borrowed altogether from French. Then this suffix be-came a 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 " payable," and “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 "Engla-land" ("the land of the Angles") came to be pronounced “England” through the assimilation of "la-la sounds.
2)    Rule simplification and regularization: Some changes are the result of simplification and regularization. The plural forms of borrowed words are usually irregular, thus complex. For example, the plural forms of  "agendum", "datum", "curriculum" and "memorandum" are "agenda" , "data" , "curricula" and "mem-oranda" . The irregular plurals of these nouns have been replaced by regular plurals of "agendas", "curriculums", and "memorandums" among many speakers, 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 "foe-s" and "dog-s", speakers started saying "cows" as the plural of "cow" instead of the earlier plural kine.
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 "icebox," the younger generation is more often heard speaking of a "fridge." This tenuous transmission process adds up to the inevitable and ongoing 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.

Chapter 8：Sociolinguistics
I.  Decide whether each of the following statements is True or False:
1. Sociolinguistics is the sub-discipline of linguistics that studies social contexts.
2. Language as a means of social communication is a homogeneous system with a homogeneous group of speakers.
3. Language use varies from one speech community to another, from one regional group to another, from one social group to another, and even from one individual to another.
4. The goal of sociolinguistics is to explore the nature of language variation and language use among a variety of speech communities and in different social situations.
5. The linguistic markers that characterize individual social groups may serve as social markers of group membership.
6. From the sociolinguistic perspective, the term “speech variety ” can not be used to refer to standard language, vernacular language, dialect or pidgin.
7.Functional speech varieties are known as regional dialects.
8. The most distinguishable linguistic feature of a regional dialect is its grammar and uses of vocabulary.
9.Geographical barriers are the only source of regional variation of language.
10. A person’s social backgrounds do not exert a shaping influence on his choice of linguistic features.
11.Two speakers of the same language or dialect use their language or dialect in the same way.
12. Every speaker of a language is, in a stricter sense, a speaker of a distinct idiolect.
13. The standard language is a better language than nonstandard languages.
14. A lingua franca can only be used within a particular country for communication among groups of people with different linguistic backgrounds.
15.Pidgins are linguistically inferior to standard languages.
16. A pidgin usually reflects the influence of the higher, or dominant, language in its lexicon and that of the lower language in their phonology and occasionally syntax.
17.The major difference between a pidgin and a creole is that the former usually has its native speakers while the latter doesn’t.
18.Bilingualism and diglossia mean the same thing.
19.The kind of name or term speakers use to call or refer to someone may indicate something of their social relationship to or personal feelings about that individual.
20.The use of euphemisms has the effect of removing derogatory overtones and the disassociative effect as such is usually long-lasting.
II. Fill in each of the blanks below with one word which begins with the letter given:
21.  The social group isolated for any given study is called the speech c________.
22.  Speech v_________ refers to any distinguishable form of speech used by a speaker or group of speakers.
23.  From the sociolinguistic perspective, a speech variety is no more than a d__________ variety of a language.
24.  Language standardization is also called language p_______.
25.  Social variation gives rise to s_________ which are subdivisible into smaller speech categories that reflect their socioeconomic, educational, occupational background, etc.
26.  S_______ variation in a person’s speech or writing usually ranges on a continuum from casual or colloquial to formal or polite according to the type of communicative situation.
27.  A regional dialect may gain status and become standardized as the national or o________ language of a country.
28.  The standard language is a s_________, socially prestigious dialect of language.
29.  Language varieties other than the standard are called nonstandard, or v_______ languages.
30. A pidgin typically lacks in i_______ morphemes.
31. Linguistic taboo reflects s_________ taboo.
32.  The avoidance of using taboo language mirrors social attitudes, emotions and value judgments and has no l_________ basis.
III. There are four choices following each statement. Mark the choice that can best complete the statement:
33. _______ is concerned with the social significance of language variation and language use in different speech communities.
    A. Psycholinguistics                  B. Sociolinguistics
    C. Historical linguistics               D. General linguistics
34. The most distinguishable linguistic feature of a regional dialect is its _____.
   A. use of words                      B. use of structures
   C. accent                           D. morphemes
35. ____ is speech variation according to the particular area where a speaker comes from.
   A. Regional variation                 B. Language variation
   C. Social variation                   D. Register variation
36. _______ are the major source of regional variation of language.
            A. Geographical barriers
   B. Loyalty to and confidence in one’s native speech
            C. Physical discomfort and psychological resistance to change
            D. Social barriers
37. _________ means that certain authorities, such as the gov-ernment choose, a particular speech variety, standardize it and spread the use of it across regional boundaries.
   A. Language interference                 B. Language changes
   C. Language planning                    D. Language transfer
38. _________ in a person’s speech or writing usually ranges on a continuum from casual or colloquial to formal or polite according to the type of communicative situation.
   A. Regional variation                   B. Changes in emotions
   C. Variation in connotations              D. Stylistic variation
39. A ____ is a variety of language that serves as a medium of com-munication among groups of people for diverse linguistic back-grounds .
   A. lingua franca                      B. register
   C. Creole                           D. national language
40. Although _______ are simplified languages with reduced grammatical features, they are rule-governed, like any human language.
   A. vernacular languages               B. creoles
   C. pidgins                          D. sociolects
41. In normal situations, ____ speakers tend to use more prestigious forms than their ____ counterparts with the same social back-ground.
  A. female; male                       B. male; female
  C. old; young                         D. young; old
42.   A linguistic ____ refers to a word or expression that is prohibit-ed by the "polite" society from general use.
  A. slang                        B. euphemism
  C. jargon                       D. taboo
IV. Define the following terms:
43. sociolinguistics           44. speech community    
45. speech variety            46. language planning      
47. idiolect                  48. standard language
49. nonstandard language      50. lingua franca   
51. pidgin                  52. Creole
53. diglossia                54. Bilingualism       
55. ethnic dialect            56. Sociolect               
57. register                 58. slang
59. taboo                  60. euphemism
V. Answer the following questions as comprehensively as possible. Give examples for illustration if necessary:
61. Discuss with examples that the speech of women may differ from the speech of men.
62. Discuss with examples some of the linguistic differences between Standard English and Black English.
63. What is a linguistic taboo? What effect does it have on our use of language?

I. Decide whether each of the following statements is True or False:
  l.F    2.F     3.T    4.T    5.T    6.F    7.F    8.F    9.F   10.F
11. F   12. T   13. F   14. F   15.F   16. T  17. F   18. F   19. T  20. F
II. Fill in each of the blanks below with one word which begins with the letter given:
21. community 22. variety  23. dialectal  24.planning  25. sociolects
26. Stylistic  27. official  28. superposed  29. vernacular
30. inflectional  31. social   32. linguistic
III. There are four choices following each statement. Mark the choice that can best complete the statement:
33. B  34. C   35. A.   36. A.  37. C  38.D  39.A  40. C  41. A  42. D
IV. Define the following terms:
43.  sociolinguistics: Sociolinguistics is the study of language in social contexts.
44.  speech community: The social group isolated for any given study is called the speech community or a speech community is a group of people who form a community and share the same language or a particular variety of language. The important characteristic of a speech community is that the members of the group must, in some reasonable way, interact lin-guistically with other members of the community. They may share closely re-lated language varieties, as well as attitudes toward linguistic norms.
45.  speech variety: Speech variety, also known as language variety, refers to any distin-guishable form of speech used by a speaker or group of speakers. The dis-tinctive characteristics of a speech variety may be lexical, phonological, morphological, syntactic, or a combination of linguistic features.
46.  language planning: language standardization is known as lan-guage planning. This means that certain authorities, such as the government or government agency of a country, choose a particular speech variety and spread the use of it, including its pronunciation and spelling systems, across regional boundaries.