James Milroy: 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 thinks that any sound change is purely arbitrary. He puts the example of a vowel change (from [e:] to [i:]) that not presents any benefits or progress in using one vowel or another. In some cases (as the example) the change does not benefit the speakers or the languages in any way but either produces a loss and for that reason Milroy says that sound change appears to have no ‘obvious function or rational motivation’.

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

Neogrammarians think in sound- change as a ‘regular’ term to deal with (his rules has no exceptions). They also were interested in the narrower sense of sound change. A claim in the Neogrammarians approach is that regular sound change is phonetically gradual but lexically abrupt. The change affects all relevant items in the same way at the same time.

Milroy disagrees with these ideas and thinks that there isn’t a ‘plausible scenario’ for sound change. Milroy bases his theories dealing with speakers as an important reason or cause of sound change, in opposition with the Neogrammarians, who excluded the speakers.

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

It depends on the speech community and their desire to adopt new forms of language or on the contrary, the denial to this new forms and the maintenance of local norms.

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

According to Milroy sound change doesn’t exists. What it happens is that in the course of time one sound is substituted by another. In Milroy’s own words, ‘speakers of a given dialect gradually and variably begin to use sound X in environments where speakers formerly use sound Y’

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

Because the Neogrammarians don’t deal with the sound change as a socially gradual fact. Milroy says that sound change is produced by the speakers, who change languages and not on the contrary (languages that change itself).

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

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.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexical_diffusion

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

Dialect displacement refers to the displacement of one dialect by another for some reason (for example the dialect which displaces is socially dominant at a particular time). An example of that phenomenon is the gradual displacement of heavily inflected West Midland dialects of Middle English by weakly inflected East Midland dialects.

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

Community or vernacular norms are the name of that language norms that are not standardized (not codified or legislated). They are norms observed by the speakers and maintained by communities often in opposition to standardizing norms.

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

Milroy wants to say that a sound change in language (like de h- dropping) have to be accepted by the community of speakers. If not all the members of the speech community adopt the ‘new’ norm, the change cannot be produced so that, the h- dropping never reach a completion.

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

Speaker innovation refers is an act of the speaker and change is produced within the language system. When an innovation is taken up by a speech community, the process involved is fundamentally a borrowing process; therefore, the implantation of a sound change depends on the borrowing of an innovation: all sound change is implemented by being passed from speaker to speaker, and it is not a linguistic change until it has been adopted by more than one speaker.

11- 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.

12- 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.

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

Standard languages provide clean data and that clean data have already been largely normalized. The vernaculars offer dirty data, which are relatively intractable.