ANSWERS JAMES MILROY´S ARTICLE
. Why does Milroy say that sound change appers to have no “obvious function or rational motivation” (146)?
Milroy says that sound change and it appears to have no obvious fuction or rational motivation. With the example of change from [e:] to [i:] he says it is imposibleto see any progress to the language or its speakers -the use of one vowel- sound is arbitrary. There is no profit and no loss.
. What is/are the main difference/s between Milroy’s approach and that of the
Neogrammarians (147-148)?
Neogrammarians axiom is that change is “regular”: sounds “ laws” have no exceptions. One important claim is that regular sound change is phonetically gradual but lexically abrupt. While Milroy says sociolinguistics has amply demonstratedm there is no evidence to support the Neogrammarians assumption that in regular sound change all items in the affected set change at the same time.
. According to Milroy, what is language change dependent on?(149?)
. Why does Milroy say that sound change actually doesn’t exist (150)?
Milroys says sound change doesn´t exist because there isn´t languages that change. He says that there is a socially graduality : sounds passes from speaker to speaker and from group to group, and it is this social gradualness that sociolinguistics attempt to trace by their quantitative methods.
. Why does Milroy disagree with the Neogrammarians when they say that sound change is “blind” (150)?
Linguistic change is language-internal, and for the Neogrammarians it proceeds 'with blind necessity', but Milroys in the other hand knows that sociolinguistic approaches are not very likely to give support to the idea of 'blind necessity'.
. What is meant by “lexical diffusion” (151)?
The lexical diffusion is a process taht is a socially gradual, abrupt replacement patterns, and can be shown to be regular in some sense. What we have called gradual phonetic change differs from lexical diffusion in that the new form differs only slightly from the older one, whereas in lexical diffusion it differs markedly.
. What does dialect displacement mean? Give an example. (152)
The dialect displacement means the discplacement of one dialect by another which is socially dominant at some particular time.
Milroy gives like an example : “The gradual displacement of heavily inflected West Midland dialects of Middle English by weakly inflected East Midland dialects is another.
. What are “community” or “vernacular” norms? What term that we have used in class is similar (152)?
Exist some normas about the dialects of the language, as community norms or venacular norms. These are observed by speakers and mantained by communities often in opposition to standardizing norms. These norms manifiest themselves at ifferent levels of generality. These norms can be variable norms.
. What does Milroy mean when he says that h-dropping may not ever reach
“completion” (153)?
Milroy says that h-dropping may not ever reach “completation”, because always would be a change. A change can persist as a variable state for seven or eight centuries without ever going to “completation” in the traditional sense.
. Explain what Milroy means by “speaker innovation” and change in the system. How are they connected (153)?
An innovation is an act of the speaker, whereas a change is manifested within the language system. It spekaers, and not languages, that innovate.
The conection between speaker innovation and change is an associated distinction. This distinction partly as a result of this conceptual confusion, questions about how linguistic change is implemented have often appealed to phenomena that have to do with synchronic variability rather than change itself.
. 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)?
. What is necessary for a sound to spread (157)?
. Why does believing in the ideology of standardization lead to believing in “blindnecessity” (158)?
. What does Milroy mean by “clean” and “dirty” data (158)?