Here's a link to a comment on an article (is that four levels of intentionality? three?) in a blog called Cognitive Daily discussing change over time in language:
The argument is basically that the more frequently a word is used, the less likely it is to change over time. So your basic words like "yes" or "no" tend to sound the same in different languages. An example is "the word for the number after one," which has "evolved at all: two, deux (French) and dos (Spanish) are very similar, derived from the same ancestral sound," not to mention due (Italian) or even zwei (German) which maintains the "w" after the initial sound.
And after a quick internet search, this seems to hold up across different language families, especially the Indo-European Language group (that is, the sound of the number "two").
So I guess the general argument would be, the more we use something, the more it stays the same? There seems to be a lot of sense in this, especially as I remember by desk job days. Everyday was a blurred reprint of the day before. It get so you can get through the day without opening your eyes to orient yourself.
But back to language, I would imagine this to hold true especially for "swear" words. Shit. Ass. Damn. That other one I'm not brave enough to put in my blog, the king of the swear words, pronounced "fudge" by Ralphie in A Christmas Story. Where did these words come from? What were their historical contexts? And how much have they changed over time? I think I remember being surprised to read the word "fart" in one of the Canterbury Tales and have it mean the same thing in 14-whatever that it does today. Is it because we use these words so frequently that they haven't changed? I need only walk around the city for five minutes where I overhear every naughty word ever devised by man for a nice little sample of the frequency of usage of these words. Or is it because there's something intrinsically, I don't know, meaningful about these sounds that prevents them from changing over time?
Comments (2)
Believe it or not, there is a book-length study of the psycho-linguistics of profanity! It's Jay Lifton's Cursing in America: A Psycho-Linguistic Study of Dirty Language in the Courts, in the Movies, in the Schoolyards, and on the Streets, by Timothy Jay.
If anybody's interested, I can put a PDF of a chapter from it on Blackboard. Just say the word.
Posted by Jason Tougaw | October 25, 2007 1:20 PM
Posted on October 25, 2007 13:20
That's a really interesting bit of info. When I started reading your post, my mind directly went to how a word loses it's meaning when you repeat it over and over again. Like just try saying the word chair fifteen times. By the end, or even at number 8 or 9, it just turns into more of a noise than a word with a meaning behind it. But then your blog turns out to be exactly the opposite of that! Which made me think about all those weird phrases we use everyday that don't quite make a lot of sense anymore but are so common we don't think twice about using them. Like killing two birds with one stone - really? Whose killing birds with stones these days? And how exactly does one kill two birds with only one stone? You've gotta have a really good eye. I've never killed a bird, with a stone or shoe or anything else, and I've definitely never tried to kill two birds, but still I find myself using that phrase all the time.
Posted by Arielle | October 28, 2007 4:58 PM
Posted on October 28, 2007 16:58