In this research, the English language changes itself as the needs of the students as a community. The most noticeable changes happen on students’ pronunciation and
vocabulary. In this study, the researcher focuses on the pronunciation change, particularly English sound change.
Fassold and Linton 2006 mentions four types of language change as described in the following part.
a. Morphological change
“Morphological refers to any change in the morphophonemic system the morphemes and their phonemic representation of a language Fasold and Linton,
2006:283”. For example, the changes in English language involved how nouns were morphologically marked to indicate certain kinds of information as in the
word ground [grud] was inflected as follows. Singular Plural
Nominative and accusative [grud] [grudas] groundgrounds Genitive
[grud əs] [gruda] of groundof grounds
Dative and instrumental [grud
ə] [grudum] to, with groundto, with
grounds
b. Syntactic change
“Syntactic change refers to change in the grammatical system of a language Fassold and Linton, 2006:284”. For example, came vnto[unto
] him
they to the Modern English equivalent, they came to him, there has been a
syntactic change. This example was taken form Campbell’s theory of language change 2004:7.
c. Semantic change
According to Fasold and Linton 2006:284, “semantic change is mainly concerned with changes in the meanings of words”. For example, in the Modern
English words nice and silly are the results of odysseys of semantic change. In Middle English nice means ‘foolish, simple, fastidious, delicious’, while in
Modern English its meaning are solely positive as enjoyable, polite. The word silly
in Old English means timely, while in Middle English it changed to seli [seli] or sili
[sili] with the meaning of happy, blessed, innocent. In Modern English, silly
means stupid, frivolous, dazed. Those examples are taken from Fasold and Linton’s theory of the language change 2006:284.
d. Phonological change
According to Fasold and Linton 2006:281, “phonological change refers to any change in the sound system’. Sound change becomes the focus in the
phonological change.
2. Sound change
Sound change is one of the language changes which belong to phonological change. Fasold and Linton 2006:281 state that “sound change is a
change in the way members of a speech community pronounce particular sounds”. In this study, sound change refers to the change of the sound which is produced by
the first grade students as the speech community. Sound change is classified according to whether they are unconditioned or conditioned Campbell, 2004:18.
