SOME NEW PERSPECTIVES ON SOUND CHANGE: SOCIOLINGUISTICS AND THE NEOGRAMMARIANS ( James Milroy )
Main ideas (extracted from the text):
This is about the theory of sound change. Sound change is an aspect of change in language, and it appears to have no obvious function or rational motivation.The traditional apparatus for dealing with sound change is largely derived from the Neogrammarian movement. Their main anxion is that sound change is“regular”: sound“laws” have no exceptions, and if there is an apparent exception, this will be accounted for by another regular change.
The Neogrammarians were also interested in how“sound change” is implemented: regular sond change is ohnetically gradal bt lexically abrupt. For them, speakers are excluded, and they believe linguistic change is language-internal, independent of speakers and imperceptible. It proceeds“with blind necessity”. Sociolinguistics, which necessarily deal with speakers, don’t support this idea.
The Neogrammarians Axioms:
1. They tend to be dichotomous (Divided or dividing into two; characterized by dichotomy, from OED)
2. They are non-social in character
3. Their main sources are written ; the Neogrammarians depended on documentary records of languages and cold not adequately observe language in the community as we do today; they cold not identify change in progress at early stages and in localized varieties. Social explanations could not be used in the most generalized ways. Later, the American structuralists were still asuming that social explanations were not usually feasible, and the osthodox non-social view of language change is still much alive.