This article investigates the diachrony of the adnominal genitive in written German by analyzing its usage in a diachronic corpus of sermons from the Upper German dialect area spanning the time from the 9th to the 19th century. The wide temporal scope allows for a better assessment of the events relating to the genitive’s disappearance from spoken German in Early New High German and the successive rise of its adnominal form in written German. Sermons make it possible to study the phenomenon over a long time because they provide a relatively consistent data basis in terms of genre and region. At the same time, as a genre that has characteristics of both spoken and written language, sermons show signs of changing stylistic trends, which makes them valuable for gaining insights in the divergent development of genitive use in spoken and written German. In order to characterize this divergence better, I use the concept of polarization, which describes the differentiation of linguistic usage between disparate contexts such as speech and writing. It becomes clear that the changes in genitive use found in the corpus cannot be viewed independently of sociopragmatic factors and their impact on the stylistic shape of the texts.

The main characteristic of any occidental language is the change brought into it with the passage of time. Language dies when it ceases to change. In this article, the main changes brought into English language since the time of its emergence are highlighted with reference to morphology, phonology, syntax and semantics

Modern languages go through change in different components of language. Language change has been observed over different periods in history. The changes involve spelling, pronunciation, grammar, semantics and lexis. English, a global lingua franca is constantly evolving. The paper discusses lexical change, in many facets, in much detail.