AQA A-level English Language – Language Change Practice Test

Diffusion in language change looks at how features spread through a speech community. Lexical diffusion specifically means a new word or a new sense of a word gradually spreading among speakers, shaping how people use and understand vocabulary. Phonological diffusion, on the other hand, tracks a sound change that spreads through pronunciation across words and speakers, altering how speech sounds rather than what words mean. So the statement that lexical diffusion involves spreading a new word or sense, while phonological diffusion involves a sound change, is the precise distinction. Spelling changes are orthographic, not lexical diffusion, semantics isn’t the domain of phonological diffusion, and they are not the same phenomenon.