Some new perspectives on sound change: sociolinguistics and the Neogrammarians

1. Why does Milroy say that sound change appears to have no “obvious function or rational motivation” (146)?

Milroy says that sound change appears to have no “obvious function or

rational motivation” because in a change from [e:] to [i:], for example (as in such items as meet, need, kenn in the history of English), it is impossible to see any progress or benefit to the language or its speakers - the use of one vowel -sound rather than another is purely arbitrary: there is apparently no profit and no loss.

2. What is/are the main difference/s between Milroy’s approach and that of the Neogrammarians (147-148)?

Maybe, the most important difference is that Milroy thinks that language must be analyzed in a social context; in the other hand, the Negrommanians focus on language as an object (forgetting the speakers).

3. According to Milroy, what is language change dependent on? (149?)

Milroy thinks that a linguistic change is embedded in a context of language (or dialect) maintenance. The degree to which change is admitted will depend on the degree of internal cohesion of the community and change from outside will be admitted to the extent that there are large number of weak ties with outsiders.

4. Why does Milroy say that sound change actually doesn’t exist (150)?

Milroy explains in the text that speech “sounds” do not physically change. In the course of time, one sound is substituted for another.

5. Why does Milroy disagree with the Neogrammarians when they say that sound change is “blind” (150)?

The Neogrammarians think that sound change is “blind”. Milroy says that languages don´t change, although he believes that speakers are the ones who change languages.

6. What is meant by “lexical diffusion” (151)?

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. (From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexical_diffusion)

7. What does dialect displacement mean? Give an example. (152)

Dialect displacement is the displacement of one dialect by another which is, for some reason, socially dominant at some particular time. The gradual displacement of heavily inflected West Midland dialects of Middle English by weakly inflected East Midland dialects, which led to morphological simplification of the grammar of English more generally, is one example.

8. What are “community” or “vernacular” norms? What term that we have used in class is similar (152)?

The fact that we can recognize different dialects of a language demonstrates that other norms exist apart from the standard ones, and that these norms are observed by speakers and maintained by communities often in opposition to standardizing norms. It is convenient to call these community norms or vernacular norms.

9. What does Milroy mean when he says that h-dropping may not ever reach “completion” (153)?

H-dropping is a linguistic term used to describe the omission of initial /h/ in words like house, heat, and hangover in many dialects of English, such as Cockney and Estuary English. The same phenomenon occurs in many other languages, such as Serbian, and Late Latin, the ancestor of the modern Romance languages. Interestingly, both French and Spanish acquired new initial [h] in mediæval times, but these were later lost in both languages in a "second round" of h-dropping (however it should be noted that some dialects of Spanish re-acquired /h/ from Spanish /x/). Many dialects of Dutch also feature h-dropping, particularly the south western variants. It is also known from several Scandinavian dialects, for instance Älvdalsmål.

H-dropping in English is found in all dialects in the weak forms of function words like he, him, her, his, had, and have; and, in most dialects, in all forms of the pronoun it — the older form hit survives as the strong form in a few dialects such as Southern American English and also occurs in the Scots language. Because the /h/ of unstressed have is usually dropped, the word is usually pronounced /əv/ in phrases like should have, would have, and could have. These are usually spelled out as "should've", "would've", and "could've". (Information from Wikipedia).

Milroy explains that a change can persist as a variable state for seven or eight centuries without ever going to ‘completion’ in the traditional sense. Milroy is saying that it is possible that we will never reach a point in which all of the speakers of the English language consider this usage as normative although, the practise of ‘h-dropping’ is commonly used.

10. Explain what Milroy means by “speaker innovation” and change in the system. How are they connected (153)?

The terms innovation and change should reflect a conceptual distinction: an innovation is an act of the speaker, whereas a change is manifested within the language system. It is speakers, and not languages, that innovate.

For a speaker-innovation to become a change, it must be adopted by some community. It must pass from one speaker to others. Thus, the adoption of a linguistic change depends at the speaker-level on a process of borrowing.

11. Why isn’t borrowing from one language to another and the replacement of one sound by another through speaker innovation with a language as radically different as the Neogrammarians posited (154-6)?

It is difficult to draw the distinction between sound change and borrowing as it relates to gradual and abrupt change. First, the origin of this abrupt change is equated with the change itself and second it is assumed that the spread of change is by borrowing and implied that the spread therefore does not involve sudden replacement- this is said to be aside from its spread by borrowing.

(I didn´t really understand this question…).

12. What is necessary for a sound to spread (157)?

The spread of sounds can result from borrowing or a sudden replacement of one trill by another. We must point out that the spreading of sounds is a social process.

13. Why does believing in the ideology of standardization lead to believing in “blind necessity” (158)?

(I don´t know…).

14. What does Milroy mean by “clean” and “dirty” data (158)?

“Clean” data is information which has been largely normalized and which has been provided by standard languages while “dirty” data is information which is relatively intractable, irregular and chaotic and is provided by vernacular languages.