James Milroy: Some new perspectives on sound
change: sociolongüistics and the Neogrammarians.
Answer the following
questions using the book and other sources.
1.Why does
Milroy say that sound change appers to have no “obvious
function or rational motivation” (146)?
For example, in
the change from [e:] to
[i:], its impossible to see
any progress or benefit to the language or its speakers, the use if one vowel,
sound rather than another is purely arbitrary: there is apparently no profit
and no loss.
In other words,
there isn’t any important function in these changes.
2.What
is/are the main difference/s between Milroy’s approach and that of the Neogrammarians (147-148)?
One of the differences
between Milroy and the Neogrammarians is that Neogrammarians thinks that sound change is regular. When a
sound is observed to have a change in a particular lexical item, the regularity
principle predicts that it should also have change in the same way in all other
relevant items
The Neogrammarians were
also interested in how “sound change”, in the narrower sense outlined above, is
implemented. One important Neogrammarian claim is
that regular sound change is phonetically gradual but lexically abrupt. Milroy
is against these ideas “I do not think that this is a plausible scenario for
sound change. The difference between the Neogrammarians
and Milroy is that the first group focus on language
as an object, and do not take into consideration the speakers of the said
language. In contrast, Milroy focus on the importance of analysing speech and
language in social contexts.
3.According to
Milroy, what is language change dependent on? (149?)
It is assumed that language
change is embedded in a context of language maintenance. The degree to which
the change is admitted will depend on the degree of internal cohesion in the
community, and change from outside will be admitted to the extent that there
are large numbers of “weak ties” with outsiders.
4.Why does
Milroy say that sound change actually doesn’t exist (150)?
Because Milroy says that
speech “sounds” do not physically change: what happens is that in the course of
time one sound is substituted for another; speakers of a given dialect
gradually and variably begin to use sound X in environments where speakers
formerly used sound Y.
5.Why does
Milroy disagree with the Neogrammarians when they say
that sound change is “blind” (150)?
Because Milroy says that sound
change is a social phenomenon in that it comes about because speakers in conversation
bring about, speakers often have very strong feelings about it, and it is
manifested in speaker usage. Such a view is obviously a very long distance away
from the Neogrammarian notion that sound change is
“blind”.
6.What is
meant by “lexical diffusion” (151)?
Lexical diffusion is a
process that is socially gradual,it is abrupt
replacement patterns ,it can be shown to be regular in some sense and in
lexical diffusion the new form of a language (state B,after
the change)differs from the older one (state A,before
the change) markedly.
7.What does
dialect displacement mean? Give an example. (152)
It is when a whole “dialect”
can die out as another “dialect” replaces it, leaving only a few traces behind
it. This is a result of changes in speaker-agreement on the norms of usage in
speech communities. For example, Milroy refers to West Midland dialects of
Middle English by weakly inflected
8.What are
“community” or “vernacular” norms? What term that we have used in class is
similar (152)?
According to the social
view, language is a normative phenomenon. The norms of language are maintained
and enforced by social pressures. We can recognize different
dialects of a language demonstrates that other norms exist apart from the
standards 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. These norms manifest
themselves at different levels of generality. Some of them, for example,
characterize the dialect as a whole and are recognize by outsiders as markers
of that dialect. Others, however, are hardly accessible except by quantitative
methods and may function within the community as markers of internal social
differences, for example, gender-difference.
9.What does
Milroy mean when he says that h-dropping may not ever reach“completion”
(153)?
In h-dropping , a change can persist as a
variable state for seven or eight centuries without ever going to ‘completion’
in the traditional sense.
10.Explain what
Milroy means by “speaker innovation” and change in the system. How are they
connected (153)?
The distinction
between innovation and change leads to an associated distinction – the
distinction between speaker innovation, on the one hand, and linguistic change,
on the other. 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. It should also be noted that an innovation, when it occurs, must be
unstructured and “irregular” and not describable by quantitative or statistical
methods. It may be observable, but when observed, it is not known that it will
lead to a change and is probably thought to be an error or defective usage of
some kind. It is also quite clear that this distinction between innovation and
change has not been sufficiently carefully or consistently observed in
historical linguistics, and that many discussions about linguistic change have
been in reality about linguistic innovation. It is,
however, clear that for a speaker-innovation to become a change, it must be
adopted by some community. It must pass from one speaker to others.
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)?
Because it is possible to
argue that each single event of borrowing into a new speech community is just
as much an innovation as the presumed original event in the “original speech
community”.
12.What is
necessary for a sound to spread (157)?
It is assumed that
the spread of the 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”. In other words, it is possible to argue that each
single event of “borrowing” into a new speech community is just as much an
innovation as the presumed original event in the “original speech community”.
13.Why does
believing in the ideology of standardization lead to believing in “blind
necessity” (158)?
From a sociolinguistic
perspective, standard languages are not “normal” languages. They are created by
the imposition of political and military power, hence, the sound-patterns in
them and the changes that come about in these sound patterns do not come about
through blind necessity. Standard languages are carefully constructed in order
to appear as if they are 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.
14.What does Milroy mean by “clean” and “dirty” data
(158)?
‘Clean’ data have already been largely normalized and the vernaculars that we
actually encounter in the speech community are relatively intractable: the data
we encounter is to a greater extent ‘dirty’
data that presents itself as irregular and chaotic
progress in understanding linguistic change will largely depend on our ability
to cope with these ‘dirty’ data expose the systematic behind them.