Answer the following questions using the book and other sources

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

Milroy talks about Sound Change mentioning that it is probably the most mysterious part of change in language, as it seems to have no obvious function or rational motivation.

We could consider the following example: in the change from [e:] to [i:] (words like meet, need, been, keen) it is not possible to check any progress or benefit to the language or its speakers. There is apparently no profit and no loss. Milroy thinks that Sound Change is the weightiest and greatest challenge to our powers o explanation.

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

On the one hand, Milroy affirms that sound change is probably the most mysterious aspect of the language, as it appears to have no obvious function or rational motivation; that there is apparently no profit and no loss.

On the other hand, Neogrammarians’ movement affirms that sound change is “regular”: sound “laws” have no exceptions. Neogrammarian axioms are still very much to the fore in several other branches of linguistic inquiry. They were also interested in how sound change, excluding analogy and borrowing, is implemented.

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

Milroy has an account based on a sociolinguistic approach to the study of language change. This model is different from the others because of its insistence on the methodological priority of the study of language maintenance over the study of language change. It is assumed that a linguistic change is embedded in a context of language (or dialect) maintenance. If a change persists in the system, it has again to be maintained by social acceptance and social pressure.

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

He affirms that in dealing with sound change of the traditional type, the first substantive point that we need to notice is that there is no such thing. Speech “sounds” do not physically change: what happens is that in the course of the 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)?

The reason why Milroy disagrees with the Neogrammarian when they say that sound change is “blind” is because he thinks sound change is a social process with which speakers change their language.

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

Lexical diffusion is a social gradualness process which is gradual, abrupt replacement patterns and can be shown to be regular in some sense and the new form differs markedly. It is compared with “regular” sound change which is also a social gradualness process.

7. What does dialect displacement mean? Give an example.

It is a displacement of one dialect by another which is, for some reason, socially dominant at some particular time. An example is the gradual displacement of heavily inflected West Midland dialects of the Middle English by weakly inflected East Midland dialects.

8. What are “community” or “vernacular” norms? What terms that we have used in class is similar?

These norms, called “community or vernacular”, are observed by speakers and maintained by communities often in opposition to standardizing norms. They also manifest themselves at different levels of generality. 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”?

Milroy mentions that a change can persist as a variable state for seven or eight centuries without ever going to “completion” in the transcendental sense. With this, Milroy wants to explain us that h-dropping is used in a good way.

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

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 innovation, when it happens, must be unstructured and “irregular” and not describable by quantitative or statistical methods. It may be observable.

This distinction between innovation and change has not been sufficiently carefully or consistently observed in historical linguistics, and that man 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?

The sound change/borrowing distinction is sometimes formulated as a distinction between “internally” and “externally” motivated change. This dichotomy, which is a well motivated distinction in certain respects, can be problematic at the level of phonological/morphological structure.

Whether we are dealing with some original event or with a concatenation of “borrowings”, each simple event is equally abrupt – “a sudden replacement of one trill by another”. I mean, 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” (and even that some of these events are independent innovations). 

12. What is necessary for a sound to spread?

All the way through the lexicon, sound changes have by and large observed to spread gradually. The spread of sounds can result from borrowing (the new habit) or a sudden replacement of one trill by another.  A replacement of this sort is surely different from the gradual and imperceptible alterations of phonetic change.

From a sociolinguistic perspective, the complexities with Bloomfield’s assumptions are absolutely striking. It is assumed that the spread of the change is by “borrowing” and implied that the spread therefore does not involve sudden replacement.

13. Why does believing in the ideology of standardization lead to believing in “blind necessity”?

The historical linguistic tradition has been deeply influenced by the consequences of living in a standard language culture. The main influence is the ideology of the standard language.

From a sociolinguistic standpoint, 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. They also are not merely the structural entities that linguists have believed them to be: they are also socio-political entities dependent on powerful ideologies which promote “correctness” and uniformity of usage.

14. What does Milroy mean by “clean” and “dirty” data?

The term “data” is used by Milroy when He refers to language that has already been normalized, it is uniform and idealized.

On the other hand, when Milroy talks about “dirty” data, he refers to it to extent that the data-base of sociolinguistic investigations present itself as irregular and chaotic.