Why does Milroy say that sound change appears to have no “obvious function or

rational motivation” (146)?

He says this because he has observed that the use of one vowel-sound rather that another is purely arbitrary, he says that there is apparently no profit and no loss.

What is/are the main difference/s between Milroy’s approach and that of the

Neogrammarians (147-148)?

Neogrammarians have the tendency to separate languages from their speakers and to focus on language as an object. For them it proceeds “with blind necessity”. But if they leave out the speakers, it is difficult to support the idea of the “blind necessity”.

They depended on documentary records of languages and could not adequately observe language in the community as it is possible for Milroy today, as scholars have access to bilingual and multilingual speech communities, in which cross-language patterns of variation can be studied. These approaches strongly question the principle that linguistic change is best studied by reference to monolingual states, as the Neogrammarians and others’ have assumed.

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

The degree to which change is admitted will depend on the degree of internal cohesion of the community. If a change persists in the system, it has again to be maintained by social acceptance and social pressure.

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

He says this because speech “sounds” don’t physically change, but with the course of time one sound is substituted by another, more or less rapidly.

Why does Milroy disagree with the Neogrammarians when they say that sound

change is “blind” (150)?

He disagrees because he believes that it isn’t languages that change, but speakers who change languages. He also refers to this change being socially gradual: it passes from speaker to speaker and from group to group.

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

The 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.

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

Displacement of one dialect by another which is, for some reason, socially dominant at some particular time. For example, there is evidence from recordings of persons born around 1860 which can be interpreted as indicating that much New Zealand English in the nineteenth century was southern British in type (favoured by males), and that it was displaced by an Australasian type (favoured by females with some effects of mixing and residue.

What are “community” or “vernacular” norms? What term that we have used in class

is similar (152)?

These norms, apart of the standard ones, which also codify and legislate the institutions of society, are observed by speakers and maintained by communities often in opposition to standardizing norms.

What does Milroy mean when he says that h-dropping may not ever reach

“completion” (153)?

He means that it is possible that a lot of time passes and a change on a letter won’t end on a real change, but still be confusing and not completely established.

Explain what Milroy means by “speaker innovation” and change in the system. How

are they connected (153)?

With this term Milroy refers to the changes that speakers introduce to the language. 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.

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)?

Because one can’t be certain that this replacement hasn’t previously been imported from somewhere else where it was “more original”.

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

It needs favourable social conditions. Milroy says that a linguistic change is a change in linguistic structure which necessarily has a social distribution. If it doesn’t manifest such a distribution, it should not be counted as a linguistic change.

Why does believing in the ideology of standardization lead to believing in “blind

necessity” (158)?

Because standard languages are constructed in order to appear as if they discrete linguistic entities – and the ideology of standardization causes people to believe that they are indeed discrete physical entities, whereas dialects and languages that have not been standardized have fuzzy boundaries and are indeterminate. The idea that the sound changes differentiating these well-defined socially-constructed entities must always come about blindly and independently of socially-based human intervention is, on the face of it, absurd: it is another consequence of believing in the ideology of standardization.

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

“Clean” data is the one that has already been largely normalized, while “dirty” data is presented as chaotic and irregular.