1) What is more common in language uniformity or variability?

Variability is more common in language.

2) What kinds of variability exist?

Languages are never uniform entities and they vary geographically and socially, and according to the situational contexts in which they are used.

3) How do we decide if a particular group of speakers belong to a particular dialect or language?

We can decide it because we can note some aspects, like accent or the vocabulary that the groups of speakers use.

4) Saussure emphasized the importance of synchronic descriptions of languages rather than diachronic. He and his disciples (structuralists) focused on language at different periods as finite entities. Is this reasonable?

This isn’t reasonable, because language is a continuous process and it is always changing. A language can’t be a finite entity; language is an infinite entity.

5) The unattested states of language were seen as transitional stages in which the structure of a language was, as it were, disturbed. This made linguistic change look abnormal. Is it abnormal?

If linguistic change were an abnormal state of affairs, this would not be an unreasonable way to look at language: change could then be seen as something that strikes of language from time to time like disease. We could talk of healthy languages and sick languages. Due to that, some people could think that language was disturbed.

6) Milroy (1992: 3) says “the equation of uniformity with structuredness or regularity is most evident in popular (non-professional) attitudes to language: one variety –usually a standard language – is considered to be correct and regular, and others –usually ‘non-standard’ dialects – are thought to be incorrect, irregular, ungrammatical and deviant. Furthermore, linguistic changes in progress are commonly perceived as ‘errors’. Thus although everyone knows that language is variable, many people believe that invariance is nonetheless to be desired, and professional scholars of language have not been immune to the consequences of these same beliefs.”

Can you think of any example of non-professional attitudes to your own language?

Spanish: “me trabajao mucho esta semana”, “escríbelo asin”, “me se cayó al suelo”, etc. These non-professional attitudes can occur when the speaker talk with him/her friends, or with him/her family.

7) Why does Milroy use “scare quotes” around non-standard and errors?

8) Are non-standard dialects “incorrect, irregular, ungrammatical and deviant.”?

Yes they are.

9) Which of these systems is more irregular? Why?

Myself

Yourself

Himself

Herself

Ourselves

Themselves

Myself

Yourself

Hisself

Herself

Ourselves

Theirselves

The second system is more irregular, because it isn’t the standard system

10) “… much of the change generally accepted body of knowledge on which theories of change are based depends on quite narrow interpretations of written data and econtexutalized citation forms (whether written or spoken), rather than on observation of spoken language in context (situated speech). (Milroy 1992: 5) Why do you think this is so?

11) Any description of a language involves norms? Think of the descriptions of your own language. Why is this so? For example: He ate the pie already is considered to be non-standard in which variety of English and perfectly acceptable in which other?

12) What is the difference between descriptive and prescriptive grammars?

A prescriptive grammar lays out rules about the structure of a language. Unlike a descriptive grammar it deals with what the grammarian believes to be right and wrong, good or bad language use; not following the rules will generate incorrect language. Both types of grammar have their supporters and their detractors, which in all probability suggest that both have their strengths and weaknesses.

A descriptive grammar looks at the way a language is actually used by its speakers and then attempts to analyse it and formulate rules about the structure.

Descriptive grammar does not deal with what is good or bad language use; forms and structures that might not be used by speakers of Standard English would be regarded as valid and included. It is a grammar based on the way a language actually is not how some think it should be.

13) Weinreich, Labov and Herzog’s (1968) empirical foundations of language change:

Constraints: what changes are possible and what are not

Embedding: how change spreads from a central point through a speech community

Evaluation: social responses to language change (prestige overt and covert attitudes to language, linguistic stereotyping and notions on correctness).

Transition: “the intervening stages which can be observed, or which must be posited, between any two forms of a language defined for a language community at different times” Weinreich, Labov and Herzog 1968: 101)

Actuation: Why particular changes take place at a particular time.

14) What do you think the “prestige motivation for change” and the “solidarity constraint” mean? How are they opposed?

Sound change: post-vocalic /r/ in New York/ The change from long āto ōin some dialects of English.

Actuation: Why did /k/ palatalize before certain front vowels? PrsE: cheese, German käse English/Norse doublets shirt/skirt?

15) What is the biological metaphor in language change?

16) What is the difference between internal and external histories of a language?

The external history of a language is the history of its speakers as their history affects the language they use. It includes such factors as the topography of the land where they live, their migrations, their wars, their conquests of and by others, their government, their arts and sciences, their economics and technology, their religions and philosophies, their trade and commerce, their marriage customs and family patterns, their architecture, their sports and recreations, and indeed every aspect of their lives. Language is so basic to human activity that there is nothing human beings do that does not influence and, in turn, is not influenced by the language they speak.

It’s possible to view the history of a language merely as internal history – a series of changes in the inventory of linguistic units (vocabulary) and the system by which they are related (grammar), quite apart from any experiences undergone by the users of the language. We can describe how the vocabulary is affected by loanwords or how new words are derived from the language's own lexical resources. We can formulate sound laws and shifts; describe changes that convert an inflected language to an isolating one, or a syntax that puts an object before its verb to one that puts the verb before its object.

17) Look up Neogrammarians and lexical diffusion. Why are they often found in the same paragraph or chapter?

18) Look up social norm-enforcement, childish errors and slips of the tongue. What have they to do with language change?

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