Language change

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Language change as Historical Linguistics phenomenon refers to variation over time in a language's phonetic, morphological, semantic and syntactic, features. It is the phenomenon by which permanent alterations are made in the features and affects all areas of language use over time. One of the best and successful investigations in linguistics is on the issue of language and understanding that it as a dynamic (not static) phenomenon since it passes through changes. All natural languages with native speakers tend to change over and such changes are neither the results of neither moral corruption nor intellectual deterioration of the communities except dead ones like Latin, Sanskrit and Attic Greek. The change in language is due to a number of reasons as follows;
Geographical division of the speakers plays a great role for language change. As the groups of speakers who had once spoken the same natural language spread out, they tend to lose communication with each other especially when are bounded by other geographical or social barriers. As the result of such a communication lost, the homogeneity in terms of language use also perished since they tend to use language differently. For example, the English speakers spread out through Europe lead to the change of English language as each group went its own way, underwent its own changes and thus differ each other.
Language contact also influences the so called language change. Language contact refers to the state whereby the speakers of one language frequently interact with those of another language. The language change in this factor is due to linguistic borrowing since the contact languages affect each other by taking language components like grammar, sound and lexicon. As the result of such borrowing the language changes from its origin way to another way in phonetic, morphological, semantic as well as syntactic features. For example due to English speakers’ interaction with other languages speakers worldwide, borrowed many words like safari and ugali from Swahili, moccasin and tomahawk from Amerindian and so forth.
Another factor of language change is articulatory simplification. This happens when the speakers try to find out on the simple ways of articulating the words in their language something that lead to diverge from the origin ones. This is concerned with deletion and insertion processes. Deletion is the process of omitting a consonant sound in a complex cluster to make it simple to articulate. On other hand insertion is the process of adding vowel sound in a word to break up a complex cluster. Consider these examples bellow;
     i) Deletion of a consonant
                     [fifӨs]               [fifs]              ‘fifths’       
     ii)  Insertion of a vowel
                    [ӕӨlijt]             [ӕӨlӘjt]          ‘athlete’
In that two processes lead to the change of the words articulation ways (phonetically) in the given language hence language change.
Moreover language change is caused by the pronunciation of spelling in language. Since in some languages, the written form of a word differ significantly the way it is pronounced, new pronunciation can arise which seems to reflect more closely to the spelling of the word. A good example is in English language in a word ‘often’. Though in Early English this word was pronounced with a [t] as [oftӘn] but in the Modern English is not. A voiceless stop has been subsequently lost resulting in pronunciation [ofӘn] hence language change. Another case in this point is the pronunciation of [s] in words like ‘assume’ and ‘consume’. Although in Early English such words were pronounced with  an [s], sound change resulted in pronunciation with [ʃ] hence to be pronounced as [ɑʃʊə] and [conʃʊm] in Modern English.
The last but not list is cognitive factor that lead to the change of language grammar. In this point the issues are in Analogy and Reanalysis. Analogy refers to the speakers’ preference of regular patterns over the irregular ones. It typically involves the extension or generalization of regularity on the basis of inference that if elements are alike in some respects, they should be alike in others as well. In this, both phonological and semantic characteristics can serve as basis of analogy. For instance children can create forms like ‘*goed’ as compared to ‘played’. On the other hand Reanalysis as morphologically based changes involves the attribution of an internal structure to a word which was not formerly broken into component morphemes (words). Good example is the word ‘hamburger’ that originally was referred to a type of meat patty as derived from the name of Germany city ‘Hamburg’. This word later reanalyzed as consisting of two component morphemes ‘ham’ and ‘burger’. The latter morpheme has since appeared in many new forms like ‘fishburger’ and ‘chickenburger’ as well as in free morpheme ‘burger’.   

Generally language change inescapable since language is a dynamic phenomenon as it allows continuous modification so as to meet the communication needs of its users. In such a case as linguists there is a need to carry out several studies so as to come with more reasons behind that influence language change. Not only that but also linguists should engage much in more issues related to language development and growth as well as interferen

REFERENCES
Archson, J. (1976). The Articulate Mammal: An Introduction to Psycholinguistics. London:
                 Hutchinson and Co.
Dawnson, H.C & Phelam, M. (2016). Language files: Materials for An Introduction to Language
                 and Linguistics (12th Edition). Columbus: The Ohio State University Press.
Nancy, B.(2013). Language, Culture and Communication: The Meaning Message (7th Ed).
                Boston: Pearson.
O’Grady, W. et al. (1997). An Introduction to Contemporary Linguistics (3RD Edition). Boston:
                  Bedford.


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