When one looks back upon the fifteen hundred years that are the life span of the English l
As we consider our changing language, we should note here two developments that are of special and immediate importance to us. One is that since the time of the Anglo-Saxons there has been an almost complete reversal of the different devices for showing the relationship of words in a sentence. Anglo-Saxon (old English ) was a language of many inflections. Modem English has few inflections. (78) We must now depend largely on word order and function words to convey the meanings that the older language did by means of changes in the forms of words. Function words, you should understand, are words such as prepositions, conjunctions, and a few others that are used primarily to show relationships among other words. A few inflections, however, have survived.
And when some word inflections come into conflict with word order, there may be trouble for the users of the language, as we shall see later when we turn our attention to such matters as WHO or WHOM and ME or I. The second fact we must consider is that as language itself changes, our attitudes toward language forms change also. The eighteenth century, for example, produced from various sources a tendency to fix the language into patterns not always set in, which grew until at the present time there is a strong tendency to restudy and re-evaluate language practices in terms of the ways in which people speak and write.
In contrast to the earlier linguists, modem linguists tend to ______ .
A.attempt to continue the standardization of the language
B.evaluate language practices in terms of current speech rather than standards or proper patterns
C.be more concerned about the improvement of the language than its analysis or history
D.be more aware of the roles of the language usage