Hu Zhuanglin

1On May 6th, 998, Marie-Lucie Tarpent of the University of Saint Vincent in Canada reported on the No.668 of the 9th issue of the Linguistic List Electronic Forum (hereinafter referred to as Linguistic List) that some English words she observed had changed greatly in usage and pronunciation, which attracted the attention of American, Canadian and British scholars and participated in the discussion. The editor of Linguistics List started a discussion on "Recent Changes in English" here, which lasted for nearly three months. The discussion extends from phonetics and lexical grammar to the understanding of the scale, causes and attitudes of English changes, but does not include the creation of new words. That's understandable. On the one hand, with the development of social production and the progress of science and technology, new words change with each passing day, so it is impossible to discuss them one by one. On the other hand, the so-called change necessarily refers to "the change of existing pronunciation and vocabulary grammar", because English has developed into a major language with many varieties (such as British English, American English, Canadian English, Australian English, etc.). ), and most of the discussants are American scholars, and the so-called changes in English are mostly changes in American English.

1 voice change

Phonetic change is the main aspect of language change, because phonetics is the most basic means of communication among various speech communities formed according to men and women, old and young, region, occupation, culture and education level, so the change often begins with the pronunciation of a certain speech community and then extends to written language. This is generally manifested in the following aspects.

The forward movement of (1)/u/ Tarpent first reported that the phenomenon of vowel forward movement in words like "food" has been increasing. In my previous French class, I explained that the French word "vous" is equivalent to the English word "you", but it is difficult to pronounce when reading "tu" in French. Due to the forward movement of /u/,' food' is pronounced as' fu', which is not easy to distinguish from' vous'. When it was suggested that this pronunciation may have originated from teenagers and country girls in California, Rachad Ulla (9.686) of Rock College in Massachusetts said that southern states had already pronounced it this way, and he also quoted Labauve's quotation about the sound changes in northern cities. Western michigan university's paul johnson (9.675) also thinks that this change is universal. MarcHarmann (9 676) added that the forward movement of round vowels can be seen in many phonetic environments, such as before the stop and nasal sounds, or after the sound, there is no other speech, or there is a round lip sound:

Food' →? fjud？ Smooth →? smjuθ？ Road' →? rjud？ Duke →? Zucker? Soon' →? Sjun is too' →? tju？

Rashad Ullah also pointed out that /o/ in' stop' is pronounced'?' In cats. The opening of vowels in' caution' is increased to vowels in' cot'; The round lip of u in hut is close to the vowel in buy. Interestingly, Rick mcallister (9.680) observed that in Tennessee and Kentucky, the situation is just the opposite, such as'' news' nju:? →? nu:z？ ; ' e'→？ Eh. Second, at the end? l？ Often, especially in u:? After the sound, such as "school"? sku:l？ →? sku:w .

(2) the downward movement of the front vowel

Mark Harman (9 676) thought that "egg" and "beg" had been pronounced as "agg" and "bag" for some time. First seen in' beck' →' back', vowels are elongated. Some people say that it first appeared in California (Peter Barrett, 9.676), while others say that it is widely circulated in the Great Lakes States (Paul Johnston, 9.675). It's all over the country anyway. The reason may be excessive correction of double lip sounds, including from /i/ to/? /transition. The biggest changes are /e/ and/? /diphthongs, such as' egg' and' vague' and/in Northern California? Ig/ and /v? Ig/ Rhyme (David Costa, 98.5.10); "'bag' and' old horse' and? /b？ Ig/ and /n? Ig/ rhymes separately, (Johanna Rubba, 9690); The pronunciation of' wreck' in black English is /reik/ . In addition, this pronunciation is very common in American TV and movies, especially among young people (Gerald B. Matthias, 9.689).

Others have reservations, such as Larry trask (9.683) and Kdcaldw (9.720). They think that this change is limited to words such as' egg' and' leg', excluding words such as beg, peg, Keg and' Meg', and certainly not including' Megan'. This pronunciation is a bit artificial.

Paul Johnston pointed out that upward movement changes also exist, such as some American dialects put/? G/ pronounced/eg/; The adjective' pink' became /pi:nk/.

(3) Middle vowelization According to the two-way change, Peggy Speas (9.690) put forward the view of "middle vowelization", that is, the last vowel moved forward, the first vowel moved backward, the high vowel moved down and the low vowel moved up. For example, when' peace' is pronounced, /i/? The voice is slightly lower, backward. Pet' is a bit like' pat', but later' people'/? /The voice is slightly higher. The' boat' leaned forward slightly, maybe it was lifted. "But" is a bit like a non-central vowel, slightly ahead. The sound "cool"/u/u/goes down and may go forward, just like the pronunciation of the word "Cull". Father rhymes with later.

(4) The change of palatal sound begins with the hardening of soft palatal sound. For example, Rick mcallister (9.720) observed that young people on the west coast would be "calm"? /ku:w(l)/ Niancheng /kju:w/(l)。 The second is to remove palatal sounds, such as' crash' and' cash' provided by Jakob Dempsey (9.695438+0), but not' cache'.

(5) English declarative sentences with rising tone at the end of the sentence generally use falling tone. D.C.Nelson(9.702) reported the use of rising tone in declarative sentences, which is spreading in the United States and Britain. In this regard, I think this phenomenon first originated in Australia. In an article about 1979, I pointed out that many Australians, especially women, use a rising tone instead of a falling tone at the end of a sentence. At that time, some people were in favor and some were against it. There are not too many teenagers, and many experts have affirmed this phenomenon and called it the' rising terminal'. (Savas) (See Hu Zhuanglin, "All Aspects of Stress--Australia English", Hu Wenzhong Edition. 1992. essays on Australian studies in China. Xiamen university press. Pages 249-263).

(6) Stress of compound words

Dennis Holt (9.720) observed that the news announcer of National Radio of the United States had different stress positions and pronunciations for some compound words when spelling, so it was called "reading-pronunciation" to distinguish it from "spelling-pronunciation".

Specific examples are: "dairy farmers" → "dairy farmers"

Milk'-price' →' milk price'

Lung'-'lung'-cancer' →' lung can' cer' As for compound adjectives, they are more complicated and often confuse broadcasters, such as' free'-market prin' ciples →' free market' principles'.

Holt believes that restoring conjunctions in compound words can reduce the problems in reading aloud. Ronald coase Poole (9.860) of the Department of Sociology, St Mary's University pointed out that this problem can be solved by lexicalization theory, that is, if a noun phrase becomes a vocabulary, it should be pronounced according to the stress of the first syllable of an English noun. For example,' stone wall' contains two morphemes, from which the meaning of a word can be deduced. Beware) has been lexicalized and become a morpheme with unclear original meaning, which should be studied as a complete word. Similarly,' apple pie' is just a kind of fruit pie, which has the same structure as' cherry pie' and' peach pie', so it is a noun phrase with two morphemes. But' applesauce' is not only a kind of fruit juice, but also a kind of food eaten with pancakes or ribs, so it has been lexicalized and accepted as an independent morpheme, which means neither' apple' nor' sauce'.

(7) Pronunciation of geographical nouns

The pronunciation of geographical nouns is mainly reflected in the englishization of foreign sounds. Some Spanish place names are pronounced according to English habits (Warune Mahdi, 9.680), such as 2.

Illinois? /il'enois/？ →? /il'inois/？ Albuquerque? /al'bekuk/？ → 'lbukrki:/

The original silent suffix' e' has been pronounced as /e/, which is not limited by geographical nouns, such as:

Yosemite? /iosamait/？ →? /iosεmaiti/

Irene' /alri:n/？ →? /Arlini/

The prefix' anti-'seems to be pronounced from? /? nti/？ Move to? / ? Ntai/. Similarly, "semi" is pronounced/wheat color/. When exchanging views with Mahdi, Antony Dubach Green told Mahdi that the standard pronunciation of' Illinois' is still /il'enois/? And point out the loss of' r' in' Albuquerque' and /alrini/? The pronunciation of ""embodies the three-syllable pronunciation rules of Greek etymology. Irene A. Gates believes that /alri:n/ is pronounced /alrini/ in the United States and Canada.

2 changes in vocabulary and grammar

(1) Compound Verb with Object Premise

In terms of lexical grammar, Tapente also observed a large number of compound words in English, especially compound verbs composed of object premises, such as: [1]' to fund raise',' to problem solve',' to guest conduct' and so on. Johanna Rudda of California Institute of Technology (9 675) explains this process as "object merging". Scholars who participated in the discussion provided a large number of examples. Some of them are considered to be very innovative and acceptable.

For example, [2] a aircraft nose comes into approach.

Doreen and Patty are worried about the NT server. (Excerpted from a meeting report on April 22nd, 1998)

Others are afraid to learn, such as:

We visited the scenic spots, so we are going back to the meeting today.

I printed my paper on old Olivetti.

Suzette Haden Elgin (9 675) thinks that this change started from Old English. Both she and Lu da believe that this' pseudo-compound word' is produced by' back shape'. But generative grammarians claim that these words are "basic generations", just like "problem solvers" and other synthetic nouns.

(2) Passive usage of disabled Lynn Santelmann (9.686) first reported that' disabled e' was used in the passive structure, but it was not found to be a transitive verb.

For example: [4] The problem was disabled again in 1983.

Shari Berkowitz (9.686) said that it was formed by the antonym of "disappearance". This usage is influenced by literal translation of Spanish. In 1980s, dissidents in Argentina often "disappeared" in large numbers. This means that "disappearance" is no longer an automatic process, but a dynamic process. It is the government that makes these people "disappear". However, Karl Wells (9.689) pointed out that this form has appeared for some time, and it appeared in joseph heller's Catch-22 novel.

Who, who, who

It was originally thought that the popularity of' Who' was the result of' Who' and' Who' overcorrecting. But Bwald (9.675) thinks that' whoevere' has long been eliminated in spoken English, let alone' whoever'.

Lynn Santelmann (9 686) thinks that the first sentence is not grammatical when comparing the following two sentences.

[5] A "Can I help you next?"

"Can I help the next one?"

Carl Mills (9.689) thinks that this usage of "who" can be found in many dialects, including southern Ohio and Oregon. Walmart (9.702) pointed out that words like "I said it …" appeared many times in the New American Bible.

(4) ing of the progressive aspect of static verbs.

Lynn Santelmann (9.686) observed that people are increasingly using progressive forms in static verbs, such as "know" and "like".

[6] "That's what I am." Contrast: "I like that."

At the same time, Marcia Hagg (9.686) provides more examples.

[7] "I want to go." "Do you want to leave?" "I don't understand." "Do you know what you want?" "Does your food taste good?" (in a restaurant)

(5) between

I have made a special report on the change of the usage of' Between' (Let's talk about the usage of between, Foreign Language and Foreign Language Teaching No.7, 1998). In this discussion, it also involves a point worth adding:

Gerald B. Mathias(9.689) thinks that the change from' between A and B' to' between A and B' begins at 1975. Using' between' when using' inter' is not a recent thing. He gave the following examples:

[8] "... there was a small group of miners on board, who carried about1500,000 US dollars of gold ..." (Scientific American, 1897 August report on the Klondike gold rush).

(6) Fun linguists have discussed' fun' a lot and found that' fun' can appear in front of nouns (Earl Reinhardt, 9.752; Bwald, 9.795), such as [9] "This is an interesting restaurant." "This is a really interesting game." Bwald commented that this is a children's language developed from "it's (really) interesting". He often hears the speaker use' fun' as an adjective to varying degrees, but he can't accept this usage himself:

[10] "This game is more fun than that one." "This is the most interesting game I have ever played." "It's so fun, I forgot to go to school. /I don't think it's that fun. " (Boward himself will say that this is so interesting ...)

"It's not that fun." (such as "not so red." Bourwald himself would say, "It's not that fun." )

"So, tell me, how much fun is this?" (such as "how red/how high/how dangerous" and so on. Is it? (Bwald himself will say, "how much fun?" , but "How red/high/dangerous ..." It doesn't seem to go well. )

According to the above situation, Bwald thinks that "fun" is a material noun or uncountable noun, not an adjective. But Boward doesn't think this is an NN structure, because it is different from the nouns' stone wall' or' wooden wall'. There are also many people who argue that' fun' is an adjective. Mr Alexis (9.775) explained that' fun game' seems to be the same as' super game', and no one will take' super' as a noun. He also suggested that the following two methods can be used for measurement. One is the least stressed pair. The former refers to' super game', which means' great game' with different accents, and its pronunciation is different from that of' a person previewing himself as a janitor in new york in the game' (pretending to be a house manager in new york, with the accent in the front). The latter refers to whether two words can be collocated with conjunctions. For example, we can say' a card or checkers game' (card game or checkers game) and put cards and checkers side by side, but we won't say' a card or an interesting game'. The evolution from nouns to adjectives may be influenced by semantics and pragmatics.

(7) "mad/crazy" as a determiner

"There were some crazy people at that party. 』

Lance Nathan (9.70 1) thinks that "'mad'" in the example [1 1] does not mean "people there are angry/crazy" (where are people angry? Crazy), but "there were many people at that party." There were many people at that meeting. Although this is slang, people can expect language changes from slang. It is worth noting that the change of' mad' will add a new member to the closed class.

(8) Replace "Say" with "Like/Go".

Lance Nathan also gave an example that someone used "‘like'" or "‘go'" instead of the verb "‘say'". She thinks this may be a change in the last twenty or thirty years.

[12 〓 So I will ask:' How was your grammar exam?' My friend said, "Not bad." "

Thank goodness.

It was found that Scientific American, a scientific magazine with standard terminology, should use "I hope" instead of "Thank God", such as:

[13] Life is unpredictable. Thankfully, the Accord didn't. ”( 199 1/ 1 1p 9 1)

(10) just

Suzette Elgin (9.675) said that in the past, people said: [14] "You can't just rely on your intuition ..." This means that "besides intuition, you have to rely on other things." You have to rely on something else. ) But now people say:

[15] You just can't rely on intuition.

This expression was once close to "socks, you can't rely on your intuition." (Bah! You can't rely on your intuition.

(1 1) Other Marc Picard (9.720) found that someone used' good' instead of' fine', such as:

[16] A: Hey, how are you today?

I'm fine. How are you?

Rick mcallister (9.720) explained that this was originally a nonstandard usage, but people who were educated from 10 to 15 years ago also said so, thus becoming a symbol to distinguish the "generation gap". David Robertson (9.729) listed the following statements:

[17] a "You can only give customers their due date and the amount of fines."

Ok, let me give you my social security number.

C "Do it [give time]?

"May I write down your date of birth?"

When' date',' number' and' the time' are used together with verbs such as' give' and' take', its appearance and rapid spread are determined by the information culture that dominates the United States. 3 Syntactic changes

(1) The two components in the coordinate structure don't match. Karen Coutenay (9.702) collected a large number of examples to show that the two components in the coordinate structure are not consistent in structure. Here are a few examples:

[18] a "Do you live in Japan? Do you want to find a summer job teaching Japanese in Japan? " (One is the present question and the other is the progressive question)

B "Does anyone have experience in analyzing web pages? Can you give me some advice?" (one uses the auxiliary verb does and the other uses the auxiliary verb can)

Are you looking for someone, but you can't find any clues? (One uses the adult auxiliary verb have and the other uses the modal auxiliary verb negative cannot)

Michael Newman (9 7 16) thinks that all the cited examples are ill sentences and cannot be regarded as syntactic innovation. (2) Using the pronoun form Kevin Caldwell (9 720) in the object position, we found that two pronouns are common in the following forms:

The secret between you and me

For you and me

Pray for me (from pop songs)

Karl Mills (9 686) admitted that this is a new usage in American mainstream English. However, in order to curb this natural trend, people can also play a more noticeable role by replacing marked forms with unmarked forms, such as:

[20] Answer "This is mine."

"I'm Toto. He's a lone ranger."

"How are you?"

According to Mills' explanation, Shakespeare sometimes said the same thing. (3) The question is ...

Peggy Speas of the University of Massachusetts (9.690) said that in the following example, he would say (a) or (a'), but he heard someone say (b).

[21] A (What's the problem?) No one can meet after 6 pm.

The problem is that no one can meet after 6 pm.

The problem is that no one can meet after 6 pm.

Ellen F. Prince (9.70 1) explained that Charlotte Linde had done this research in the 1970s, and answered it with George Lakehoff's' syntactic amalgam' theory.

Other examples are: [22] The problem is …

The problem is, that's ...

(4) Adverbs are replaced by adjectives.

The question raised by Peter R Burton (9.702) is that almost all Americans tend to use adjectives instead of adverbs, and some usages seem to have started very early, such as:

[23] You did well (not that you did well). Another example is:

[24]1think differently.

2. Think from another angle.

3. Think of something different.

4. Think of something different.

5. Think of something different.

People seem to hate adverbs ending in' -ly' more and more, so that people prefer 1 to 2. 3 is short for 4, but Burton prefers to use 5 under special circumstances.

(5) number of people ($ NUMBER)

One case is to take them as singular (Michael Newman, 9.7 16) to answer the accusation of contemporary gender discrimination. In fact, this usage also appeared in the Middle Ages. Another case is to use "amounts" to represent the quantity, such as:

[25] A. [Woman's card], the numbers on it indicate how many men they have slept with. (Brian Gay, Japan Times)

B. "I'm surprised that so many people don't realize that bicycles with better quality have different sizes," Shin Kawasaid … (Hono Lu star-bulletin.1991/0811).

[26] How many people took part in the game? (Problems during the game)

Gerald B. Mathias (9.689) pointed out that it has become very common to suddenly change from plural to singular, especially in advertisements, such as:

Sears sells shoes, doesn't he?

B. "Sharp ATB fenders, they protect cyclists … not suitable for bicycles with …."

C. "Acro 2 can be easily installed on all dropped handlebars ... and mountains in inverted position ..." (quoted from Nashbar bicycle manual)

(6) Articles

In the American intellectual class, the use of indefinite articles has been decreasing (Lexes, 9.683; Megan Elizabeth Mei Lankang, 9.690), such as

[28] Is the calculation primary or secondary?

On the other hand, some people even say: [29] "A historical event."

Linda Merlo (9.726) is even more absolute, that is,' a',' an' and' the' all disappear in English. The disappearance of articles is first seen in geographical nouns and abbreviations, such as:

[30] A. Ukraine → Ukraine (actually, the latter originally refers to the border area)

B. Japanese agree → Japanese agree

C. The United Nations is waiting → The United Nations is waiting.

Jack Aubert (98.5.20) also pointed out that' Lebanese' and' Sultan' used to be standard expressions, but they are rarely heard now. Gambia, which expresses national pride with definite articles, is now generally called Gambia. The problem is that this usage is not limited to newspaper headlines, but can also be heard from national radio reports. It should be said that it was spread in English. Try to compare:

I'm going to the 99 cents store.

B.i'm going to the 99-cent store.

The reason for this change is that many people who speak English as a second language have no articles in their mother tongue, so that they mistakenly think that English articles are redundant. In this case, it seems to be "saved!" Slogan.

In the above discussion about "The Ukraine" → "Ukraine", caryn davies (9.729) thinks that this is due to political reasons. "Ukraine" is an independent country. Calling it "Ukraine" only regards it as the border area of Russia.

Peter Daniels (9.735) thought' Gambia' was the name of this river, but' Argentina' was not the name of a country, because Argentina was independent from 18 16. English speakers do not regard' Lebanon' as a national problem, although in Arabic, it has an article that refers to the name of a region and a mountain.

Different from the above, Normal Smith (9.752) thinks "Gambia" is the official name of the country, including both sides of gambia river. Although' the Argentina' has a different "official" name, many people still regard it as a country name, and the official name is different from the interests (even rules) of language users. Another example is that people say "Mount Lebanon", but they are very familiar with the country "Lebanon".

Valuno Mahdi (98 5 2 1) pointed out that the lyrics of "Argentines, don't cry for me" have long been in the song. (7) Possibility/possibility

Mr. and Mrs. Elgin (9 675) suggested replacing "may" with "may" in English, and replacing sentence A with sentence B in the following example.

[32] A. If he were taller, he might have joined the circus. If he were taller, he might have joined the circus.

Gerald mathis (9.689) felt the same way. He asked whether the usage of' as you can see = [as you might imagine]' began with 1980? And does' May (have) [(possible) (did)] =' may (have) [would/could (have)]' begin with 1985? In the discussion, Karen Courtenay (9.702) said that this was a change ten years ago, such as:

A: He is recovering from a heart attack last month-that heart attack could have been prevented. "Well, isn't it? 」？ 〕

B there is no doubt that Ma Kai is a super successful person, but he might never have reached such a height if he hadn't been discovered by Heidi Ness in the billiards hall in rosebery many years ago, far away from his school class.

C perhaps, if colonel Liang had read more carefully, he might not have listed it by mistake. Time magazine is her "main resource"

D. If a third pump is available, the house may not be burned down.

4 discussion

There are some explanations and opinions about the recent changes in English:

(1) The reason for the change Pat Barrett (9.608) thinks that the change of English pronunciation first originates from young people, especially women. Followed by mass media such as television. Changes mainly start with vowels, such as pronouncing' yeah' as' yah', such as' a' in' back'. Ralph wolman (9 7 16) emphasized that sociolinguistic variation can be a feature of language change. For example, members of a community express their identity through language features, and people outside the community must change their language attitudes if they want to become members of the community. If a feature is not defined for a long time, it will lose its social marker status and become an unmarked feature.

(2) Has this change happened recently or has it already started?

During the discussion, it was found that many changes actually started very early. Because changes are limited to a certain region or a certain language community, it is also right and wrong to say that "some newly noticed phenomena are recent changes". Yes, because this change has only recently been noticed by more people; Wrong, because this change is by no means recent.

(3) How to accept the change?

Change is a natural process and does not require too much correction. In most cases, changes begin with spoken English, especially after educated people accept this change, new expressions are often formally accepted. Formal written language takes a long time to be accepted. Personal impression cannot be used as a criterion for change. Manaster (9.676) said that because he didn't say so, he thought some changes in the past were recent, and later found that someone had said so more than 30 years ago.

Why are some changes not recognized? Ralph wolman (9 7 16) thinks that prescriptivism restricts the process of change, and the patterns and rules adhered to by prescriptivism are quite different from the actual language use. Even if a change is sometimes accepted, it is used as a new rule to limit subsequent changes. As for accepting or not accepting a change, it depends on social forces. In particular, he cited an example to illustrate that even if a "girl" wants to be a "girlie", accepts the speaking style of a certain community and really becomes a member of the community, it will not cause the language change of English, because she does not have the ability to define the whole culture. Although Warman's view is more open, he doesn't agree with the rapid change of "online" style.