This document discusses various topics related to language, including: 1. Language change over time through processes like sound, lexical, semantic and syntactic changes. 2. Causes of language change such as economy, foreign influence, and fashion. 3. Language death which occurs when a language loses its last native speaker due to factors like natural disasters, wars, and lack of transmission to new generations. 4. Varieties of language that exist due to social factors including differences between regions, social classes, individuals, and situations.

1. Language
Change &
Death
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2. Language Change
• Variation over time in the features of a language
• Permanent alternations made in the features and use of lg
• All natural lg change and such change affects all areas of lg use
• Sound, lexical, semantic, or syntactic change
• The branch of linguistics that is expressly concerned with
changes in a lg over time is historical/diachronic linguistics

3. Causes of Language change
• Economy – least effort/reduction in phonetic, vowel, cluster, etc.
• New words/constructions for reviving rhetorical intensity
• Fashion or trend of applying new rules, words, sounds etc.
• Foreign influence: geographical and cultural effects
• Broadening: technically called generalization
• Narrowing: words begin to develop more specific/particular
The Processes of Semantic Changes in Language
(thegreatcoursesdaily.com)

4. Language death
• Extinction of a lg when the lg loses its last native speaker
• The process of lg transmission is ended to next generation
• Linguicide occurs due to natural disasters, wars, etc.
• Gradually the level of lg proficiency decreases
• Bottom-to-top lg death because of not using lg in casual context
• Top-to-bottom lg death because of lg shift in high-level authority
• Radical lg death due to threats, pressure, persecution, etc.

5. Causes of language death
• Natural calamities sweep away people speaking a language
• Political domination or even the ban over spread of a language
• Social pride encourages people to kill their own language
• Insufficiency to expand leads to death of a language
• Migration ends the old language and makes way for a new one.
• Conversion into easy and mass language
• Lack of transmission from one generation to another
• (5) What factors cause languages to die out? - Quora

6. Broadening of a language
• A type of semantic change by which the meaning of a word
becomes broader or more inclusive than its earlier meaning
• Also called generalization, expansion, or extension
• An example of generalization is the word- business, which
originally meant 'the state of being busy, careworn, or anxious,'
and was broadened to encompass all kinds of work or
occupations.
• Likewise 'holy day' as religious feast to general break 'holiday'

7. Narrowing of a language
• A type of semantic change by which the meaning of a word
becomes less general or inclusive than its earlier meaning.
• Also known as specialization or restriction
• For example, the word 'fowl' is now usually restricted to the
farmyard hen, but it retains its old meaning of 'bird' in
expressions like 'the fowls of the air'.
• Words may come to be associated with particular contexts
• In Old English, 'mete' referred to food in general, today 'meat'
refers to only one kind of food. 'Art' was connected to any 'skill'.

8. Language shift
• The change from the habitual use of one lg to that of another
• When a community does not maintain its lg, but gradually
adopts another one
• The gradual replacement of one language by another as the
primary language of communication and socialization within a
speech community
• The process by which one language displaces another in the
linguistic repertoire (stock) of a community

9. Endangered Language
• A language that is likely to become extinct in the near future
• Languages become extinct when a community finds itself under
pressure to integrate with a larger or more powerful group.
• Often the community is pressured to give up its language and
even its ethnic and cultural identity
• The fate of a language can be changed in a single generation if
it is no longer being learned by children.
• By some estimates, 80% of the world's languages may
vanish within the next century.

10. Minority language
• A language that is spoken by the minority population in a
geographical area or location
• Since the US is made up of many minority immigrant
populations, it does not have just one minority language
• Most of the minority languages are not officially recognized, &
they cannot be used to communicate with the larger population
• People who speak minority languages often have to learn the
majority language in order to function in their society.

11. Dominant language
• Linguistic imperialism is occasionally defined as 'the transfer of a
dominant language to other people'
• Dominant lg is regarded as having higher status and
offering greater chances of economic advancement.
• Such languages are used on a daily basis, as well as education
• English is the dominant world language because at one point the
British Empire ruled about ¼ of the world's land area. England
was the heart of the industrial revolution.
• Global/universal lg, lingua franca for international communication

12. Varieties of Language
• Various forms of language triggered by social factors
• Lg may change from region to region, from one social class to
another, from individual to individual, and from situation to
situation. This actual change results in the varieties of lg.
• A generic term for a particular coherent form of lg in which specific
extralinguistic criteria can be used to define it as a variety
• A system of linguistic expression whose use is governed by
situational variables, such as regional, occupational, or social
class

13. pidgin
• A pidgin is a simplified version of a lingua franca, where people
trying to communicate across different languages develop their
own form of communication. Though this technically makes it a
lingua franca, it often some from merging two or more languages
together rather than as something true to one common language.
Pidgins can therefore develop their own vocabulary and rules that
can be very independent of the original source languages.

14. Creole
• A creole is an established form of pidgin, where a language
developed from communicating over two or more languages is
taken up by a culture as a native language. Aspects that make a
creole different to pidgin or dialects is that it has it will have unique
rules with a full range of functions, and may be taught as a mother
tongue. Examples of English-developed creoles include Gullah in
South Carolina and Georgia and Nigerian Creole. Another
interesting example is Louisiana Creole, which derives from
French but is used by Americans so may be interspersed with
English.

15. British and American English
• Common differences in BrE and AmE
1. Punctuation
2. Spelling
3. Grammar
4. Pronunciation
British vs. American English | University Writing & Speaking Center
| University of Nevada, Reno (unr.edu)
Differences between British and American English | British Council
Foundation Indonesia

16. Registers
• Speech variety used by a particular group, usually sharing the
same occupation or the same interest
• Concerned with the specific use or the manner of using the lg
Some examples of registers in
1. education
2. humanities and social sciences
3. science and technology
4. law and justice

17. Black English Vernacular and
Standard American English
• African-American Vernacular English - Wikipedia
• Definition and Examples of Standard American English
(thoughtco.com)
• SAE may refer to either written English or spoken English or both
• A very real institutional construct that has attracted the loyalty of a
committed group of speakers who claim that they speak it