The Conference Closes

The closing keynote was by Kate Burridge, who studies historical English at Monash University in Australia, speaking about "Copious Without Order, and Energetick Without Rules," about language change.

When you study Olde English, she said, you're studying a foreign language, she said just after reciting The Lord's Prayer in that language of "just" about 1000 years ago, reciting it in a language that bore nearly no resemblance to present-day English.

Think of it, the change in the language that seems to us so static overall, in just 40 generations, is change so great as to make it almost entirely different.

Because there's no connection between how a word sounds and what it means, she said, meanings are free to move. And meanings often deteriorate, rather than elevate. Sounds change as well.