The Causes of Linguistic Change

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All living languages undergo changes of various kinds, for which there are various reasons. The changes that have caused most dispute are those in pronunciation. We have various sources of evidence for the pronunciations of earlier times, like the evidence of spellings, the treatment of words borrowed from other languages or borrowed by them, the descriptions of contemporary grammarians, and the modern pronunciations in all the languages and dialects concerned. These, combined with a knowledge of the mechanism of speech production, can often give us a very good idea of the pronunciation of an earlier age, though absolute certainty is never possible. When we study the pronunciation of a language over any period of a few generations or more, we find that it is subject to change. Moreover, there are always large-scale regularities in the changes: for example, over a period of time, all the long a sounds in a language may change into long o sounds, or all the b sounds in a certain position (for example, at the end of a word) may change into p sounds. Such regular changes are often called sound laws. There are no universal sound laws, but simply particular sound laws for one given language at one given period.

Answers

1. 27. sound laws
2. 28. fashion
3. 29. children
4. 30. principle of ease
5. 31. FALSE
6. 32. NOT GIVEN
7. 33. TRUE
8. 34. NOT GIVEN
9. 35. TRUE
10. 36. NOT GIVEN
11. 37. TRUE
12. 38. A
13. 39. B
14. 40. C

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