JAMES MILROY: SOME NEW PERSPECTIVES ON SOUND CHANGE: SOCIOLINGUISTICS AND THE NEOGRAMMARIANS. 146-160.

1_Why does Milroy say that sound change appears to have no “obvious function or rational motivation (146)?

Sound change is probably the most mysterious aspect of change in language, as it appears to have no obvious function or rational motivation. In a change from [e:] to [i:], for example as in such items as meet, keen in the history of English), it is impossible to see any progress or benefit to he language or its speakers – the use of one vowel- sound rather than another is purely arbitrary: there is apparently no profit and no loss.

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

From my point of view, the main difference is that Milroy thinks that language must be analyzed in a social context; however, the Negrommanians concentrating on language as an object.

3_ 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 (the extent to which it is bound by ‘strong ties’, which resist change), and change from outside will be admitted to he extent that there are large numbers of weak ties with outsiders. If a change persists in the system, it has again to be maintained by social acceptance and social pressure: thus, we need to explain, not only how communities resist change, but also how a change is maintained in the system after it has been accepted.

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

In dealing with sound change of the traditional type, the first substantive point that we nned to notice is that there is, in reality, no such thing. Speech ‘sounds’ do not physically change: what happens is that in the course of time on 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)?

It isn’t languages that change –it is speakers who change languages. Such a view is obviously a very long distance away from the Neogrammarian notion that sound is ‘blind’.

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

The principle of social gradualness supersedes the binary division between ‘regular’ sound change and lexical diffusion that Lavob discusses. Both processes are socially gradual, both are abrupt replacement patters, and both can be shown to be regular in some sense.

What we have traditionally 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.

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

At much more general levels there are patterns of dialect displacement –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, and that it was displaced by an Australasian type with some effects of displaced by an Australasian type with some effects of mixing and residue.

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

The norms of language are maintained and enforced by social pressures. It is customary to think of these norms as standardizing norms –norms that are codified and legislated for, and enforced in an impersonal way by the institutions of society. But the fact that we can recognize different ones, and that these norms are observed by speakers and maintained by communities often in opposition to standardizing norms. Some of them, for example, characterize the dialect as a whole and are recognized by outsiders as markers of that dialect.

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

Milroy explains that the change of /h/ dropping can persist as a variable state for seven or eight centuries without ever going to ‘completion’ in the traditional sense. But it will never be considered as normative.

H-dropping is a colloquial term used to describe the "dropping" of initial "h" in words like "house", "heat", and "hangover" in many dialects of English, particularly in England. It is often regarded as a solecism. The same phenomenon occurs in many other languages, such as Serbian, and Late Latin, the ancestor of the modern Romance languages. Interestingly, both French and Spanish acquired new initial [h] in medieval times, but these were later lost in both languages in a "second round" of h-dropping.

http://www.fact-archive.com/encyclopedia/H-dropping

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, and linguistic change.

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. This distinction has not been sufficiently carefully observed, many discussions about linguistic change have been in reality about linguistic innovation.

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 both processes are patterns of linguistic change.

12_ What is necessary for a sound to spread (157)?

All sound change must be socially conditioned, is the most important thing for a sound to be spread. But it won’t be considered a linguistic change until that sound be used by more than one person.

13_ Why does believing in the ideology of standardization lead to believing in “blind necessity” (158)?

Because when a languages becomes a standard language, is because it has been created by the imposition of political and military power, not because of “blind necessity” (because the language by itself has become a standard one).

14_ What does Milroy mean by “clean” and “dirty” data (158)?

Clean data: which have already been largely normalized.

Dirty data: irregular and chaotic.