Language Change

Assignment no. 2
Topic: Language changes from old to present day Urdu

Submitted by : Fizza Batool

Submitted to: Sir Akhtar Aziz

Introduction:

Language is always changing. Generation by generation, pronunciations evolve, new words are borrowed or invented, the meaning of old words drifts, and morphology develops or decays. The rate of change varies, but whether the changes are faster or slower, they build up until the "mother tongue" becomes arbitrarily distant and different. In isolated subpopulations speaking the same language, most changes will not be shared. As a result, such subgroups will drift apart linguistically, and eventually will not be able to understand one another.

In the modern world, language change is often socially problematic. Long before divergent dialects lose mutual intelligibility completely, they begin to show difficulties and inefficiencies in communication, especially under noisy or stressful conditions. Also, as people observe language change, they usually react negatively, feeling that the language has "gone down hill". You never seem to hear older people commenting that the language of their children or grandchildren's generation has improved compared to the language of their own youth. There are many different routes to language change. Changes can take originate in language learning, or through language contact, social differentiation, and natural processes in usage.

Coin brassy words at will, debase the coinage;

We're in an if-you-cannot-lick-them-join age,

A slovenliness provides its own excuse age,

Where usage overnight condones misusage,

Farewell, farewell to my beloved language,

Once English, now a vile orangutanguage.

(Ogden Nash,

Laments for a Dying Language, 1962)

The Research Sample:

Chhaap Tilak Sab Chheeni (Hindi: छाप तिलक सब छीनी) (Urdu: چھاپ تلک سب چھینی ) is a Qawwali song composed by Amir Khusro, a 14th-century Indian mystic. It is written in popular country tongue, Braj Bhasha. This single is very popular in Qawwali concerts. The song's poetry as well as music are highly appreciated by the Qawwali listeners of the Indian subcontinent. Due to the immense popularity of this song it forms an integral part of any Sufi concert in the Indian Subcontinent. This Qawwali has been sung by many notable Qawwals such as Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Naheed Akhtar, Mehnaz Begum, Abida Parveen and Rahat Fateh Ali Khan.

Text:

                       

Chhāp tilak sab chīnī re mose nainā milāike Prem bhakṭī kā madvā pilāike Matvālī kar līnhī re mose nainā milāike Gorī gorī baīyān, harī harī chuṛiyān baīyān pakaṛ har līnhī re mose nainā milāike Bal bal jāūn main tore rang rajvā Apnī sī kar līnhī re mose nainā milāike Khusro nijaam ke bal bal jaiye Mohe suhāgan kīnhī re mose nainā milāike Chhāp tilak sab chīnī re mose nainā milāike

You've taken away my looks, my identity, by just a glance. By making me drink the wine of love-potion, You've intoxicated me by just a glance; My fair, delicate wrists with green bangles in them, Have been held tightly by you with just a glance. I give my life to you, Oh my cloth-dyer, You've dyed me in yourself, by just a glance. I give my whole life to you Oh, Nijam, You've made me your bride, by just a glance.

Semantic & Lexical Changes:

They that dally [= converse idly] nicely [= foolishly] with words may quickly make them wanton [= unmanageable].

                                                                             (Shakespeare, Twelfth Night III, 1)

Changes in meaning and vocabulary excite people. Semantic change is mostly concerned with the meaning of individual lexical items. Different aspects of semantic and lexical changes in the sample include:

• Synecdoche

Synecdoche (from Greek sunekdokhe 'inclusion'), often considered a kind of metonymy, that is, a part (or quality) is used to refer to the whole, or the whole is used to refer to part. In the sample, the word ‘nainaan’ refers to the beloved of the speaker of the poem.

• Metaphor

Metaphor involves understanding or experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another kind of thing thought somehow to be similar in some way. Metaphor in semantic change involves extensions in the meaning of a word that suggest a semantic similarity or connection between the new sense and the original one. In the text, the taste of love is metaphorically exemplified by the words ‘prem bhatti ka madhwa pilai key’ which refer to the wine of love. ‘Bhatti’ stands for the potion of love which is a magical potion believed to arouse love or sexual passion towards a specific person and ‘madhwa’(wine) illustrates the intoxication of love.

• Metonymy

Metonymy (from Greek metonomia 'transformation of the name') is a change in the meaning of a word so that it comes to include additional senses which were not originally present but which are closely associated with the word's original meaning. For example, the word ‘chaap’ meant ‘identity’ in the sample but now, it includes the additional meanings of impact, reflection, copy and imitation.

• Degeneration

In degeneration (often called pejoration), the sense of a word takes on a less positive, more negative evaluation in the minds of the users of the language - an increasingly negative value judgement. The repetitive phrase ‘mosey nainaan milaikey’ has got a negative connotation nowadays and it is always perceived as a gesture between the lover and the beloved.

• Elevation (amelioration)

Semantic changes of elevation involve shifts in the sense of a word in the direction towards a more positive value in the minds of the users of the language - an increasingly positive value judgement. The words ‘prem’ and ‘gori gori bayyan’ are now casually used, although they had negative value initially.

• Hyperbole

Hyperbole (exaggeration, from Greek hyperbole 'excess') involves shifts in meaning due to exaggeration by overstatement. ‘Chaap tilak sab cheeni’, ‘Prem bhatti ka madhwa pilaikey’, ‘khusroo nijaam k bal bal jayyey’ are clear examples of hyperbolic expressions to enhance the impact of poetry.

• Amalgamation

Amalgamations are forms which formerly were composed of more than one free-standing word (which occurred together in some phrase), which as a result of the change get bound together in a single word. For example, ‘moosey’, ‘milaikey’ and ‘pilaikey’ are a combination of two words here. ‘Moosey’ means mujh sey, ‘milaikey’ means mila key and ‘pilaikey’ means pilaa key. In the text, they are written as single words.

• Clipping (compression, shortening, ellipsis)

Often, new words or new forms of old words come from 'clipping', that is, from shortening longer words. For example, ‘maiy’ is a short form of ‘madhwa’ and both of these words have the same meaning of wine.

• Obsolescence and loss of vocabulary

Those who work on lexical change are interested not only in the adoption of new vocabulary, but also in the question of why vocabulary items become archaic and sometimes disappear altogether from a language. The use of particular words has faded for a number of social and stylistic reasons. For example, the words ‘bal bal’ and ‘rang rajwa’ are not used nowadays in Urdu language.

Syntactic Changes:

Our speech hath its infinnities and defects, as all things else have. Most of the occasions of the world's troubles are grammatical.

                                                                                                               (Montaigne, Essays II, xii)

Syntactic change is the evolution of the syntactic structure of a natural language. Over time, syntactic change is the greatest modifier of a particular language. Massive changes - attributable either to creolization or to relexification - may occur both in syntax and in vocabulary. Syntactic change is seen as part of what happens in the transition of grammars from one generation to the next. The sentence structure of Urdu language follows S + O + V pattern but the poets, writers and artists have the poetic license to bring innovation and creativity in language. In the text written by Ameer Khusro, no particular syntactic format is followed. There is a frequent switch between O + S + V and O + V + S pattern throughout the work.

An archaism (also often called relic) is something characteristic of the language of the past, a vestige, which survives chiefly in specialised uses. Archaisms are in some way exceptional or marginal to the language in which they are found. They are most commonly preserved in certain kinds of language such as in proverbs, folk poetry, folk ballads, legal documents, prayers and religious texts, very formal genres or stylistic variants, and so on. The language of the text has also become archaic nowadays.