LANGUAGE CHANGE AND DEVELOPMENT:

Translating a text from 1600 - William Pulteney, Earl of Bath 1684 - 1764:

[STANZA 2]

Let us be cheerful whilst we can,

Let's be cheerful while we can,

And lengthen out the short-liv'd span,

And lengthen our short life span,

Enjoying every hour,

Enjoying every hour,

The moon itself we see decay,

We see the moon decay,

Beauty's the worse for-every day,

Everyday beauty suffers

And so's the sweetest flower.

But it's still the sweetest flower.

[STANZA 11]

Then here's the King, God bless his grace,

Here's the King, God bless him,

Tho' neither you nor I have place,

Although neither of us are worthy,

He hath many a sage adviser;

He has many wise mentors,

And yet no treason's sure in this,

But betrayal is still uncertain,

Let who will take the pray'r amiss,

So just let them misunderstand the prayer,

God send 'em all much wiser.

And God will make them wiser.

When translating this poem I noticed a few common themes and linguistic traits that no longer stand today or are used slightly differently. The first common trait is the use of apostrophe to cover for a missing letter. 'Short-liv'd span' and 'pray'r amiss' are examples of this. Today, we use apostrophes to substitute for a missing letter but mainly for contractions (the fusion of 2 words like 'can' and 'not' turns to 'can't') or to cover a missing letter at the end of a word in a story to indicate a character's accent. As this is a poem, the use could be to keep the pace of the text rhythmic and avoid extra syllables, or for certain words it could have been the norm. 

A lot of texts from the 17th century follow themes of religion and the monarchy. Since God and the King are powerful topics, the language used must be respectful, hence the formal register. Whether the register at the time was considered formal or standard I'm unsure as most texts from this time period use similar phrases. Today this writing would be considered archaic and very formal as syntactically, Old English follows similar rules to German as phrases tend to be inverted for interrogatives.

Language change in the recent years:

Yeah

Like 

Sick

Whatever

These are all words that have slang as well as a standard meaning/use. The change started in America around the 80s and 90s due to surf and skate culture (eg: 'sick dude, that wave was gnarly'), however in the last 5 years they've gained a place in the everyday vocabulary of young English-speaking people. 

Yeah/like - The word 'yeah', derived from the formal 'yes' is used typically in response to a closed question but features a lot in casual speech as a filler. It's well known that the word 'like' has shifted in meaning and has become a substitute for vocal fillers like 'um' and 'uh'; but 'yeah' as also taken this turn. A common use for 'yeah' is when someone is speaking and they end their utterance with 'and yeah'. This connotes free-flowing, stream of consciousness style speech which is common in conversation as we don't pre-plan what we are about to say. 

Sick - This is an example of amelioration as traditionally it's a verb and adjective meaning 'to be sick/to feel sick' as a synonym for 'ill' or 'unwell'. However, as a colloquialism it means good. However, it has also broadened in meaning as it has retained it's original meaning as well as the new one in equal measure.

Whatever - Originally acting as a pronoun and determiner 'you can do whatever you fancy here', it was used for its literal definition surrounding options and variation. Eg: you can do whatever you fancy suggests a variety of things to do. However, it has also changed informally to work as an exclamation. Typically portrayed in the media as a phrase used by teenagers with attitude, 'whatever' is seen as a single utterance which makes sense when standing alone as well as featuring at the end of a sentence for emphasis. Eg: 'you really think I'd do that? Whatever.'

Another non-standard language change in recent years is a lack of capitalisation of letters for pronouns or the beginning of sentences. This is very common on Twitter, Tumblr and in text messages. The reason for this shift is due to graphology and aesthetics, not just laziness. 

https://www.reddit.com/r/iamverysmart/comments/3rmryy/i_prefer_the_aesthetic_of_lowercase_text/

This Reddit discussion shows people debating whether the argument of 'aesthetics' is a good enough reason for going against grammar rules. It has also been argued that this change could be viewed as unprofessional, as some music artists choose to use it, but in the music world all artists want is to stand out so it serves a more purposeful job.

The moon itself we see decay,

Beauty's the worse for-every day,

And so's the sweetest flower.

IMITATION AND REINFORCEMENT ARE THE MOST CRUCIAL TOOLS FOR CLA [30 MARKS]

BF Skinner's theory of operant conditioning is built on the idea of reinforcement and strengthening certain linguistic behaviours through positive and negative rewards and punishments. Positive reinforcement could be anything from praise, attention, smiling, echoing  and approval  - these would bring the child pleasure. An example from the Tom transcript is when Tom says 'it makes noises' and his Mother directly repeats this back to him as a sign that it was the correct phrasing. Echoing strengthens the language choice as it's a sign to the child that they're correct. On the other hand, negative reinforcement is anything from a bold face threatening act, like being shouted at and told you're wrong, to hedging and mitigating the negative participle no by either saying 'try again' or 'maybe it's not that'. I think that without imitation and reinforcement from the primary caregiver or parents, a child would struggle to differentiate between what's right and what's wrong. A clear example from the text of a negatively reinforced correction demonstrates this: 

Tom:        the bike (.) the dad bike
Mother:   dad's bike
Tom:       yeah (.) the dad (.) dad's bike (.) dad's bike mum (.) dad's bike

If the Mother hadn't corrected Tom then he wouldn't have been able to establish the missing suffix ''s'. 

This quote is also evidence for another imitation based theory, Lev Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development. Vygotsky's theory focuses on social interaction and scaffolding (when the caregiver interacts to help when they sense it's necessary). Tom's mother understands that knowing when to use certain suffix' is out of Tom's ZPD, therefore she gives him the answer. Tom then goes on to logically work out why the possessive suffix following the noun is required and then uses it correctly and doesn't make the virtuous error again later on. The reason for Tom's faux pas is likely a case of overgeneralisation as he would describe his bike using the possessive pronoun 'my' followed by the concrete noun 'bike'; so when describing Dad's bike he sees no need for pluralisation. 

Bruner's theory of CDS (Child Directed Speech) also supports the argument for imitation. He says that parents simplify their language, slow it down and only speak in short utterances so their child can pick up on certain linguistic features. This is evident when Tom is learning to say 'Dad's bike' as that's all his mother says to help him. If she were to not use CDS she'd have said a much longer sentence which 'Dad's bike' features in; however this makes the job of working out what the correct phrasing is very hard for Tom as he has to sift through a lot of information to get the key aspect. By getting straight to the point and simply outright correcting him, it's obvious what the main subject of the sentence is and he can then take this and use it. MIT researcher Deb Roy found this to be the most effective strategy for CLA and didn't realise he was doing it until much later on. He said that he and his wife were 'subconsciously changing their language structure to meet his needs'. 

However, a theorist whose ideas refute the hypothesis that imitation and reinforcement are the most crucial tools would be Noam Chomsky. He believes that children have a built-in Language Acquisition Device (LAD) and that this acts as an innate set of rules and structures that a child knows to follow. This could be used to explain Tom's error as I mentioned earlier he overgeneralised and this is likely to have come from on of the innate rules. If imitation were the most crucial and effective tool for CLA then these miscues wouldn't occur as parent's and adults around the child do not make these mistakes so they can't have picked them up from them.