Have we observed classes changing from open to closed, or vice versa?

Question

Classes of words in languages tend to be either "open" (accepting new members readily) or "closed" (rejecting new members). This distinction is fairly easy to see: compare how readily English accepted the verb "to google", versus the hundreds of years of resistance to singular "they". So descriptively, verbs in English are an open class, while pronouns are closed.

But have we ever observed a class of words changing from open to closed, or from closed to open? Or an intermediate "half-open" stage, where new words are accepted but not commonly used or always seen as foreign?

Answer 1

Maybe we can see a (semi-)opening of the personal pronoun class in English just now: There are not only a lot of suggestions of an epicene pronoun floating around (this would extend the closed class by one member, but is in itself not an opening), but there are also a bunch of new pronouns on the verge for a "Third gender", going as far as allowing every individual to chose Eir own pronoun.

EDIT: Right now here on stack overflow pronouns are an open class, see I5 in this official staff post here

Answer 2

Well, this is no defenitive answer, but I think it ia possible, for instance: many brazilian dialects have changed the first person plural pronoun "nós" ['nɔ(j)s] for the article + noun "a gente" [ɐˈʒẽj̃.t͡ʃɪ], which literally means "the people".

The current status of "a gente" is the one of a full pronoun, always followed by a verb conjugated like the third person singular, but without adjectives treating it as a singular feminine noun as it is "in nature".

Answer 3

But have we ever observed a class of words changing from open to closed, or from closed to open? Or an intermediate "half-open" stage, where new words are accepted but not commonly used or always seen as foreign?

In this example a full verb acts like a modal:

brauchen = need (full verb)

du brauchst nicht (zu) kommen
you need not (to) come
you need not come

cf. sollen (clearly a modal)

du sollst nicht (*zu) kommen

This is (Austrian) German.

Answer 4

Yes we have, in English. Our prepositions used to be an open class (its why we have so many). New prepositions were derived using the suffixes a- be- de- and a fourth one I can't seem to recall nor find right now.

So yes, it can happen. I admit though, I have no idea why it happened in English. All I know is that it did.

Though come to think of it, the same thing may be happening to Chinese's pronouns. Thanks to communism, they've done away with their old system of pronouns, which relied heavily on their honorific system. Now there's only one word for I, one for we, etc... The older system is only still remembered because its used to stories taking place in the past, just for the sake or historical accuracy.

Answer 5

Yes, but my answer point in two directions:

• Czech language may have lost (not so fat for the oldest generation) short predicative adjectives, only few remain as part of idioms, hence the whole class disappears.

• answering functionally I have to point, as in the case of English prepositions to numerous and growing number (i.e. in open class) of multi-word prepositions as against the single word ones.

Answer 6

First of all, we have to clarify, that word classes do not tend but are closed or open.

The closed classes are determiners, pronouns, prepositions and conjunctions. All these classes have in common that they are either function or structural words. They can be seen as concepts that structure the language which surrounds these words, but on their own they are meaningless.

If we just look at prepositions this becomes pretty obvious. In for example carries no real meaning. It is a word that shows the position of something else but without any further context it makes no sense. We can now add for example the derivational unbound suffix -side in order to create Inside. Now we might understand what the other person wants to say. Inside is not not anymore a normal preposition. It can be also used as a adverb or noun because it has a meaning now. When talking about the closed class of preposition we are talking about the core, the so called prototype, prepositions and those are clearly closed and not open. Some now might argue that despite and all these other forms may be "new" prepositions but if you break them down to the core they refer to one of the prototype prepositions. In the case of despite it would be "in spite of". In order to create a new preposition you have to create a word that shows a new connection between things and unless someone can do this they should be seen as a closed class.

Thus I don´t think that any of us ever recognized a change of open to closed or closed to open classes. When you look at the dimension of language (Halliday) it would also make no sense that they change.