WORD DEFINITIONS

• Synchronic language: language used at a given point in time.

• Diachronic language: concerned with the past linguistic forms.

• Constraints: what changes are possible and what are not. There are linguistic constraints. For example, in English there are no consonant clusters (groups) made up of the following sequence /rbl/ so is difficult to foresee such a cluster existing in English. The solidarity constraint is completely different. It means that if you live in a very close community, you tend to follow the norms of your community in solidarity with its members.

• Embedding: how change spreads from a central point through a speech community

• Evaluation: social responses to language change (prestige overt and covert attitudes to language, linguistic stereotyping and notions on correctness). Many people wish to adopt prestige forms of the language –perhaps an RP pronunciation instead of their own pronunciation of English. That is overt prestige. Covert prestige refers to people who adopt non-standard forms to belong to belong to a group.

• Transition: “the intervening stages which can be observed, or which must be posited, between any two forms of  a language defined for a language community at different times” Weinreich, Labov and Herzog 1968: 101)

• Actuation: Why particular changes take place at a particular time.