Introducing English Linguistics

The nature of language change
The development of English
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the words, and over time they have become interchangeable – perhaps
flout will even become archaic and replaced by flaunt. And this confusion
is not isolated. Because both disinterested and uninterested contain negative
prefixes (dis- and un-, respectively), many people now view these words as
synonyms, even though many insist that the two words have distinct
meanings: disinterested can mean only ‘impartial or unbiased’ and uninter-
ested only ‘lacking interest.’ Thus, in a court of law, a defendant would
want a judge who is “disinterested,” not “uninterested.”
Some object to the use of their in a sentence like Everybody is trying their
hardest on the grounds that the verb agreeing with Everybody is singular,
while the pronoun referring to everybody, their, is plural. However, the alter-
natives to their (generic his or his or her) either exhibit gender bias or result
in a stylistically awkward construction. The pronoun their does neither
and, additionally, fills a gap in the language: it gives speakers of English a
singular third person gender-neutral pronoun without having to resort to
the creation of an entirely new pronoun. Some have proposed the word ter
as a singular third person generic possessive pronoun. But adding a new
pronoun to a language is difficult because pronouns are a closed class, a
class that unlike nouns or verbs does not easily admit new members.
Therefore, singular they, which is already in the language, provides a sim-
ple solution to what has proven a difficult problem.
All of the so-called mistakes in this section illustrate the capability of
human languages to adapt and change in response to the needs of their
users in a manner that is consistent with the mechanisms of change
inherent in all languages. English may need, as described above, a new
gender-neutral pronoun, but because this need cannot be easily accom-
modated, speakers have been forced to use an existent form – they/their –
in a new way. And while this change is disruptive too, over time it is like-
ly to succeed, since language change and subsequent acceptance of new
forms is a slow, gradual process, proceeding in fits and starts and, more
often than not, ultimately succeeding. But if a change does not succeed,
the entire process simply starts all over again.
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INTRODUCING ENGLISH LINGUISTICS
Summary
In studying languages such as English and Mandarin, linguists have
developed two different ways of classifying languages and studying
their linguistic development over time. The traditional method, the
genetic system of classification, involves grouping languages into lan-
guage families and constructing family trees. English, for instance, is a
member of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family.
As a Germanic language, English originated around AD 400 and went
through five successive stages, beginning with Old English and culmi-
nating in Contemporary English, the language of the moment. 
Linguists are also interested in studying not just how languages
change but why they change. While linguists disagree about whether
language change has an evolutionary basis, there is wider agreement
on other motivations for language change. 

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The development of English
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