What is more common in language uniformity or variability?

Variability is more common because the language is changing all the time.


What kinds of variability exist?

There are different kinds of variability:

- Social variability

- Geographical variability

- Historical variability

- Stylistic variability



How do we decide if a particular group of speakers belong to a particular dialect or language?

It depends on the common linguistic features they have. We can decide it according the pronunciation, word choice, syntactic structure used by the speaker, etc.


Saussure emphasized the importance of synchronic descriptions of languages rather than diachronic. He and is disciples (structuralists) focused on language at different periods as finite entities. Is this reasonable?

No it isn't. We have said that language is changing all the time so diachronic descriptions are more important.


The unattested states of language were seen as transitional stages in which the structure of a language was, as it were, disturbed. This made linguistic change look abnormal. Is it abnormal?

Linguistic change is not abnormal. Language is in progress, it's changing and needs to adapt itself to different situations, etc.


Milroy (1992: 3) says “the equation of uniformity with structuredness or regularity is most evident in popular (non-professional) attitudes to language: one variety –usually a standard language – is considered to be correct and regular, and others –usually ‘non-standard’ dialects – are thought to be incorrect, irregular, ungrammatical and deviant. Furthermore, linguistic changes in progress are commonly perceived as ‘errors’. Thus although everyone knows that language is variable, many people believe that invariance is nonetheless to be desired, and professional scholars of language have not been immune to the consequences of these same beliefs.”

Can you think of any example of non-professional attitudes to your own language?

There is a lot of non-professional attitudes in Spanish. An example would be “hemos quedao” instead of “hemos quedado”, on the other hand there's people too concerned about speak “rightly” who say “bacalado” instead of “bacalao” what is also a non-professional attitude.


Why does Milroy use “scare quotes” around non-standard and errors?

Because it is not his real opinion, he is using the irony to express his disagreement.


Are non-standard dialects “incorrect, irregular, ungrammatical and deviant.”?

No they aren't. Non-standard dialects are as important as standard ones. They are different but both are dialects which have speakers.


Which of these systems is more irregular? Why?

The first one is more irregular than the second one because use “himself” and “themselves”. To be more regular it would should be “hisself” and “theirselves” like in the second one. We must emphasize that the irregular system is standard while the regular system is non-standard.


Myself

Yourself

Himself

Herself

Ourselves

Themselves

Myself

Yourself

Hisself

Herself

Ourselves

Theirselves


“… much of the change generally accepted body of knowledge on which theories of change are based depends on quite narrow interpretations of written data and decontexutalized citation forms (whether written or spoken), rather than on observation of spoken language in context (situated speech). (Milroy 1992: 5) Why do you think this is so?

I think because of variability of language. People tend to use colloquialisms and sometimes grammatical rules are not follow so it's easy to find troubles in interpreting the change that occur in speech and this is the reason theories are generally based on decontextualized language.


Any description of a language involves norms? Think of the descriptions of your own language. Why is this so? For example: He ate the pie already is considered to be non-standard in which variety of English and perfectly acceptable in which other?

Yes, it is. The sentence “He ate the pie already” is considered non-standard but it is acceptable in speech (like in Wales or England).


What is the difference between descriptive and prescriptive grammars?

Descriptive Grammar:
A descriptive grammar looks at the way a language is actually used by its speakers and then attempts to analyse it and formulate rules about the structure. Descriptive grammar does not deal with what is good or bad language use; forms and structures that might not be used by speakers of Standard English would be regarded as valid and included. It is a grammar based on the way a language actually is and not how some think it should be.

Prescriptive Grammar:
A prescriptive grammar lays out rules about the structure of a language. Unlike a descriptive grammar it deals with what the grammarian believes to be right and wrong, good or bad language use; not following the rules will generate incorrect language. Both types of grammar have their supporters and their detractors, which in all probability suggests that both have their strengths and weaknesses.


(©http://www.english-for-students.com/Descriptive-and-Prescriptive.html )


Weinreich, Labov and Herzog’s (1968) empirical foundations of language change:

Constraints: what changes are possible and what are not

Embedding: how change spreads from a central point through a speech community

Evaluation: social responses to language change (prestige overt and covert attitudes to language, linguistic stereotyping and notions on correctness).

Transition: “the intervening stages which can be observed, or which must be posited, between any two forms of a language defined for a language community at different times” Weinreich, Labov and Herzog 1968: 101)

Actuation: Why particular changes take place at a particular time.



What do you think the “prestige motivation for change” and the “solidarity constraint” mean? How are they opposed?

The “prestige motivation for change” implies the adoption of foreign forms that are seen as prestigious. On the other hand, the “solidarity constraint” occurs when speakers decide to maintain their local community norms rather than to incorporate forms that are viewed as “external”.


Sound change: post-vocalic /r/ in New York/ The change from long āto ōin some dialects of English.

American speakers who most commonly drop the r (in what follows we’ll occasionally call this the ‘r-less’ pronunciation) are those from Eastern New England and parts of the South, particularly the coastal area where the old ‘plantation’ culture once existed. It is also part of Black English Vernacular speech. Until recently, dropping the r was part of New York speech as well, though more and more New Yorkers seem to be perceiving it as ‘vulgar’ and avoiding this pronunciation. (The case of New York is especially interesting because of a classic study in sociolinguistics by William Labov showing that the non-rhotic accent is associated with older and middle- to lower-class speakers, and is being replaced by the rhotic accent.)

Even though there is no officially recognized ’standard’ English in the U.S., ‘r-speakers’ are clearly an overwhelming majority, something you hear reflected in the mass media.

British speakers today whose speech is closest to standard British English (called ‘Received Pronunciation’) do not pronounce r after vowel. Postvocalic r was still regularly pronounced in English speech back in Elizabethan times, and it was around that time (l6th century) that the ‘r-less’ pronunciation started spreading across much of England. It did not spread as far as Ireland and Scotland, which is why we hear the ‘r’ pronunciation from the Irish and the Scots today. Many of the original immigrants to the colonies were from Scotland and Ireland, although at the time of settlement most English speakers were still pronouncing r after vowel too.

( © http://www.pbs.org/speak/seatosea/americanvarieties/southern/dahling/)

The change from long ā to ō in some dialects of English.

The father-bother merger is a merger of the Early Modern English vowels /ɑː/ and /ɒ/ that occurs in almost all varieties of North American English (exceptions are accents in northeastern New England, such as the Boston accent, and in New York City).[1][2][3] In those accents with the merger father and bother rhyme, and Kahn and con are homophonous as [kɑn]. Unrounding of EME /ɒ/ is found also in Norwich, the West Country, the West Midlands and in Hiberno-English, but apparently with no phonemic merger.[2]

( © http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_English_low_back_vowels#Father.E2.80.93bother_merger)


Actuation: Why did /k/ palatalize before certain front vowels? PrsE: cheese, German käse English/Norse doublets shirt/skirt?

Sometimes this occurs for reasons like the proximity of the velar consonant to a front vowel or by favourable social conditions, because in text’s words we must take into account the activities of speakers in social contexts.


What is the biological metaphor in language change?

We have seen in class some methaphors about language where it is compared with bilogical terms like a tree because language is changing, growing and making bigger all the time.


What is the difference between internal and external histories of a language?

“All kinds of language change can basically be assigned to one of two types: either the change is caused by a structural requirement of the language — this is internally motivated change — or it does not in which case one speaks of externally motivated change.

Internally motivated change usually leads to balance in the system, the removal of marked elements, the analogical spread of regular forms or the like. As language consists of various modules on various levels, a change in one quarter may lead to an imbalance in another and provoke a further change.”

(http://www.uni-due.de/SHE/HE_InternalExternal.htm)


Look up Neogrammarians and lexical diffusion. Why are they often found in the same paragraph or chapter?

The Neogrammarians (also Young Grammarians, German Junggrammatiker) were a German school of linguists, originally at the University of Leipzig, in the late 19th century who proposed the Neogrammarian hypothesis of the regularity of sound change. According to this hypothesis, a diachronic sound change affects simultaneously all words in which its environment is met, without exception. Verner's law is a famous example of the Neogrammarian hypothesis, as it resolved an apparent exception to Grimm's law. The Neogrammarian hypothesis was the first hypothesis of sound change to attempt to follow the principle of falsifiability according to scientific method. Today this hypothesis is considered more of a guiding principle than an exceptionless fact, as numerous examples of lexical diffusion (where a sound change affects only a few words at first and then gradually spreads to other words) have been attested.

Other contributions of the Neogrammarians to general linguistics were:

(http://www.answers.com/neogrammarian)

In historical linguistics, lexical diffusion is both a phenomenon and a theory. The phenomenon is that by which a phoneme is modified in a subset of the lexicon, and spreads gradually to other lexical items. For example, in English, /uː/ has changed to /ʊ/ in good and hood but not in food; some dialects have it in hoof and roof but others do not; in flood and blood it happened early enough that the words were affected by the change of /ʊ/ to /ʌ/, which is now no longer productive.

The related theory, proposed by William Wang in 1969 is that all sound changes originate in a single word or a small group of words and then spread to other words with a similar phonological make-up, but may not spread to all words in which they potentially could apply. The theory of lexical diffusion stands in contrast to the Neogrammarian hypothesis that a given sound change applies simultaneously to all words in which its context is found.

William Labov, in Principles of Linguistic Change, takes the position that there are two types of sound changes: regular sound change (respecting the Neogrammarian hypothesis) and lexical diffusion. Labov lists a typology, according to which certain phenomena are typically or exclusively regular (example, vowel quality changes), while others (example, metathesis, or vowel shortening) tend to follow a lexical diffusion pattern.

Paul Kiparsky, in the Handbook of Phonology (Goldsmith editor), argues that under a proper definition of analogy as optimization, lexical diffusion is not a type of sound change. Instead, Kiparsky claims it is similar to leveling, in that it is a non-proportional type of analogy.

(http://www.answers.com/topic/lexical-diffusion)

Because both deal with the aspect of phonological change in a language. In one hand Neogrammarians defends that sound-change operates in all items without making any type of exceptions at the same time and on the other hand lexical diffusion theory supports that sound-change can occur in a gradual manner.

Look up social norm-enforcement, childish errors and slips of the tongue. What have they to do with language change?

A social norm is the sociological term for the behavioural expectations and cues within a society or group. They have been defined as “the rules that a group uses for appropriate and inappropriate values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviours. These rules may be explicit or implicit. The social norms indicate the established and approved ways of doing things, of dress, of speech and of appearance. These vary and evolve not only through time but also vary from one age group to another and between social classes and social groups. What is deemed to be acceptable dress, speech or behaviour in one social group may not be accepted in another. Deference to the social norms maintains one’s acceptance and popularity within a particular group; ignoring the social norms risks one becoming unacceptable, unpopular or even an outcast from a group. What is deemed acceptable to young people is often unacceptable to elderly people; this difference is caused by the different social norms that operate and are tacitly agreed-upon in such different groups of people. Social norms tend to be tacitly established and maintained through body language and non-verbal communication between people in their normal social discourse. We soon come to know when and where it is appropriate to say certain things, to use certain words, to discuss certain topics or wear certain clothes and when not to. We also come to know through experience what types of people we can and cannot discuss certain topics with or wear certain types of dress around. Mostly this knowledge is derived experientially.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norm_(sociology)

With regards to ‘childish’ errors in language, we can say that children often make mistakes due to their lack of knowledge of possible linguistic irregularities (I “drinked” my water etc.).

A slip of the tongue is an error in speaking in which a word is pronounced incorrectly, or in which the speaker says something unintentionally.

(http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/slip+of+the+tongue)