James Milroy: Some new perspectives on sound change: sociolinguistics and the Neogrammarians.

146-160.

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)?

Because these changes do not influence the progression of languages as he say: ‘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)?

The 19^th Century Neogrammarian movement was based on the idea that changes affect all relevant items in the same way at the same time. Milroy is against these ideas when he says that he does not think that this is a “plausible scenario” for sound change.

The main difference between the approaches of the Neogrammarians and Milroy is that the first group focus on language as an object, and do not take into consideration the speakers that language. In contrast, Milroy firmly believes in the importance of analysing speech and language in social contexts.

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

Language change is dependent on the degree of internal cohesion in a community that is influenced by many other exterior changes that are admitted to the extent that there are large numbers of weak ties with outsiders. It also follows that 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)?

Because according to Milroy there is not a sound change, there is a substitution with another different sound.

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

Because the sound change is a process by which the speakers change their language and as it is an important social process he doesn’t agree with calling it blind sound change as people are not blind.

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

Lexical diffusion is a socially gradual and an abrupt replacement pattern that can be shown to be regular in some sense. In terms of phonetic change is that what we have called gradual phonetic change differs from lexical diffusion in that the new form differs only slightly from the older one, while in lexical diffusion it differs markedly.

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

Dialect displacement is the displacement of one dialect by another which is, for some reason, socially dominant at some particular time. In the text, Milroy refers to the gradual displacement of heavily inflected West Midland dialects of Middle English by weakly inflected East Midland dialects, which led to morphological simplification of the grammar of English more generally.

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

These norms are those which are observed by speakers and maintained by communities often in opposition to standardizing norms and which exist apart from the standard ones (norms that are codified and legislated for, and enforced in an impersonal way by the institutions of society).

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

Milroy explains that a change can persist as a variable state for seven or eight centuries without ever going to “completion” in the traditional sense. In this case he wants to say that whereas the practise of “h-dropping” is commonly used, it is possible that we will never reach a point in which all of the speakers of the English language consider this usage as normative.

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

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.

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.

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 of the fact that the distinction between true sound change and phonological borrowing is poorly motivated.

12. 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.

13. 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.

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

When Milroy speaks about “clean” data in the last section of the text, he refers to language that is uniform, unilinear and normalized (idealized). The “dirty” data is the result of sociolinguistic studies, in which language is considered as irregular and chaotic.