1.What is more common in language uniformity or variability?

Variability.

2.What kinds of variability exist?

There are a lot of variations according to regions, time, social status…

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

Sometimes the limits between dialects aren’t very clear, so linguistics, in order to study them, set some phonological or orthographic rules to distinguish them. We also fix on their geographic, historical, and political aspects in their language.

4.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?

From my point of view, I think that it isn’t reasonable. Because we have said that language is variable, so, if it’s variable, we have to study the diachronic descriptions, which studies the changes to one period to another one, not study the synchronic ones.

5. 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?

No, in my opinion, it isn’t abnormal.

6.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?

Spanish people uses non-professional attitudes as “dao” instead of saying “dado” or “mercao” instead of saying “mercado”

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

Milroy uses scare quotes because he can indicate that he doesn’t accept the term, expressing skepticism that its use is appropriate, suggesting that its use is potentially ironic. This meaning may serve to distance the writer from the quoted words and indicate that they are someone else’s terminology.

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

From my point of view, non-standard dialects, aren’t incorrect or irregular. They aren’t grammatically correct but they are used in different places of a country depending on the dialects.

9.Which of these systems is more irregular? Why?

Myself Yourself Himself Herself Ourselves Themselves

Myself Yourself Hisself Herself Ourselves Theirselves

The first column is more irregular, because the second one, uses the possessive form of the pronouns and -self or –selves depending on the personal pronoun.

10.“… 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 econtexutalized 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 this happens because spoken language in context is so free. nobody writes as it speaks, because if they did it, the text will be plenty of non-senses and vocabulary errors.

11.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?

Prescription norms have rules that can cover such topics as standards for spelling and grammar or syntax, or rules for what is deemed socially or pollitically correct.

Refering to the example: “He ate the pie already” it could be considered adequate in colloquial speech.

12.What is the difference between descriptive and prescriptive grammars?

A prescriptive grammar in one that lays down the rules for English language usage, while a descriptive grammar synthesises rules for English usage from the language that people actually use.

13.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.

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

I think that the “prestige motivation for change” could differs between groups separated by certain social variable and how creation and adherence to these rules is used to categorize individuals in social class.

In the other hand, I think that the “solidarity constraint” could mean that society has an effect on the way language changes.

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

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

Palatalization has played a major role in the history of the Uralic, Romance, Slavic, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Twi and Indic languages, among many others throughout the world. Such phonemic splits due to historic palatalization are common in many other languages. Some English examples of cognate words distinguished by historical palatalization are church vs. kirk, witch vs. wicca, dicth vs. dike and shirt vs. skirt. In witch/wicca the latter form is a spelling pronunciation based on unfamiliarity with Old English spelling conventions; in the other cases the words come from related dialects or languages (skirt from Danish) which differed in the place and degree of palatalization.

 Found in: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palatalization

17.What is the biological metaphor in language change?

Since the early 1990s theories of language change have demonstrated a broad increase of interest in evolutionary theory (e.g. Lass 1990, 1997; McMahon 1994; Ritt 1995; Croft 2000; Wilkins 2002). The application of evolutionary thinking in linguistics is of course nothing new. Even before Darwin wrote his Origin of Species, linguists such as A. Schleicher were already using evolutionary ideas to account for language change. Yet as critics have pointed out, borrowed ideas from other sciences often turn out to be nothing more than “sloppy metaphors” (Lass 1990: 33). Others have argued that biological metaphors do not add value to linguistic theory (Van Pottelberge 2001: 73). In their opinion linguistics should therefore abandon such metaphors altogether. The application of evolutionary theory poses other problems as well. Ever since Darwin proposed his theory of evolution in The origins of species by means of natural selection (1859), his ideas have been questioned and refined, and while the overall idea of evolution by means of natural selection is now generally accepted, some recent elaborations are still controversial, which makes the application of biological metaphors in linguistics even more problematic.

Found in:  http://www.reference-global.com/doi/abs/10.1515/flin.26.1-2.13

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

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

 They are usually found in the same chapter because the Neogrammarian theory is opposed to the lexical diffusion theory.
The lexical diffusion states that sound changes evolve from a word and later is applied to other similar words, but it doesn’t apply to all of them.
On the other hand, the Neogrammarians think that sound change is applied simultaneously in all similar words, without any exception.

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

They have an important role in language change because they produce new words, phrases, pronunciations . .. which use could be spread little by little among speakers and finally be introduced in the normal use of the language.

Academic year 2008/2009
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Barry Pennock Speck
© Amparo Izquierdo Solís
amizso@alumni.uv.es
Universitat de Valéncia Press