Conclusion

 My investigation has illustrated that there have been significant changes in the English language over time, especially in stories aimed at younger readers. I had initially predicted that I would find examples of change within the frameworks lexis, semantics and grammar which I was able to analysis in my investigation. I assumed that neologisms found in the Disney version would have been created through scientific process, borrowing or compounding. As well as finding examples of these methods, I also found others I hadn’t considered before including alteration, contraction and even creating new words after a person. This suggests lexical change is far more complex and therefore often hard to avoid. The amount of neologisms I had recorded was also quite surprising – only after two centuries, many words had either been created or disappeared which is a huge change in this length of time.  In terms of semantics, I assumed I would find examples of words that had become more negative or positive. Instead, I found broader meanings for the same words.  This may be because of the rise in slang. It would appear that people now use normal words as slang terms to effectively describe and mean something else. Grammar has also changed within the two versions of the story, coming to the conclusion that the English language is much more basic and informal today because of the fewer uses of subordinate clauses and the rise of contractions. In my investigation, this is perhaps because the written texts I were focusing on were aimed at a younger audience therefore they would have to be basic and easy to understand in some way.