Introducing English Linguistics

Internal and external influences on language change
Traditionally, it has been claimed that languages change in response to
internal and external influences. Internally influenced changes result from
natural processes that all languages undergo: if it were possible to protect a
language from any external influences (e.g. contact with other languages)
by putting it in a hermetically sealed bottle, the language would still
change, since there are systematic mechanisms of change that are purely
internal to language. Externally influenced changes, as suggested above,
result more from the social and cultural contexts in which languages are
used. Although internal and external influences are often regarded as dis-
tinct motivations for language change, they are not necessarily mutually
exclusive. For instance, the loss of whom in English is, on the one hand, a
consequence of a more general process that all languages can potentially
undergo: the gradual movement from a fusional to an isolating language.
On the other hand, the loss could also be attributed to contact with other
languages, such as French, that lack an elaborate morphology for case.
There are many examples of internal processes that languages undergo
as they change. To explain why English has lost so many inflections over
time and changed from a fusional language to an isolating language,
Whaley (1997: 138) describes a cyclic process that all languages undergo.
English is in one stage of the cycle, experiencing “morphological loss” as
it very gradually transitions from a fusional to an isolating language.
Other languages are at other stages, moving from isolating to agglutina-
tive or agglutinative to fusional. Labov (1994) classifies the Great Vowel
Shift in English as a type of chain shift, a sound change that involves vow-
els in a language changing places, with some vowels replacing others. As
noted earlier, vowels were either raised or became diphthongs. This shift
is not isolated to the Great Vowel Shift, but part of a more general pattern
of sound change found in many languages.
External changes result from some kind of language contact: speakers of
different languages coming into contact, resulting in changes to the lan-
guages that they speak. The effects of contact can vary. For this reason,
Thomason and Kaufman (1988: 74–6) propose a “borrowing scale,” a five-
point scale ranging from the relatively minor effects on a language that
result from “casual” contact to the more extensive effects that can result
from “very strong cultural pressure.” Throughout its history, English has
had contact with many languages, resulting in varying degrees of change
in the language. Latin, for instance, has heavily influenced English. During
the Old English period, as a result of the introduction of Christianity into
England, English borrowed from Latin words such as mass, abbot, and can-
dle. These borrowings are fairly low on Thomason and Kaufman’s (1988: 74)
borrowing scale, since they entered English for “cultural and functional”
reasons: to provide words not currently in English necessary for describing
new concepts. Higher up on the borrowing scale (level 3 of 5) are Latin
prepositions borrowed into English and converted into suffixes, and Greek
The development of English
41

---

and Latin words borrowed into English that have maintained their native
inflections. For instance, the Latin preposition sub (meaning ‘under’) is
now an English prefix found in words such as subzero or  subhuman. Over
time these prefixes can be found on words not derived from Latin. The
word postgame (as in The athlete gave a postgame interview) is derived from the
Latin preposition post (meaning ‘after’) and the Germanic word game. Latin
words such as medium/media and datum/data contain Latin inflections (-um
and -a) marking these nouns as neuter and, respectively, singular and plu-
ral. Of course, over time these words have become reanalyzed so that now
one hears sentences such as The media has too much power, where media is not
analyzed as a plural but instead as a singular collective noun, a noun des-
ignating a single entity composed of individuals. Because these borrowings
involve changes in structure (rather than mere additions to English vocab-
ulary), they represent a fairly significant influence on the structure of the
English language.
Because English has experienced mainly “casual to intense contact”
(Thomason and Kaufman 1988: 76) from other languages, it has under-
gone changes that have not fundamentally altered the language. However,
other languages have been affected more dramatically by language con-
tact to the point that some of them have undergone language death.