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

Milroy focuses on his test that the sound change doesn’t have “obvious function or rational motivation”, and this is supported by the comment that says that “the use of one vowel-sound rather than other is purely arbitrary”; The speakers don’t follow any pattern so that’s is why the sound change is arbitrary and they choose which one to use in every moment.

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

 The Neogrammarians were interested in how “sound change” and it focuses the language as a object, but on the other side; Milroy believes that it is necessary that sociolinguistics approaches has to deal with speakers.

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

 According to Milroy “linguistic change is embedded in a context of language” if the change is admitted or not it will depends on the degree of internal cohesion of the community. On the other side, the Neogrammarians depend on documents.

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

  He doesn’t really says that sounds changes do not exist, the only thing he says is that one sound is substituted for another, and if it persist, it needs to be maintained by the speakers.

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

Because he thinks that the changes on the language is caused by the speakers, in other words a social process.

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

A lexical diffusion is a gradual process and a replacement pattern. It takes a form, then changes it and the result is really different to the original one.

· 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”. One example is New Zealand English was Southern British in type and displaced by an Australian type.

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

Norms observed by speakers and maintained by communities. Talking about a vernacular language, it is a original lenguage, that doesn’t uses codes. It’s a norm impossed by friends or family.

To sum up; there are non-standard languages.

· 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 without ever going to “completion” in traditional sense.

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

 An innovation is an act of the speaker, whereas a change is manifested within the language system.

· 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)?

 Milroy says that it’s possible to argue that each single event of “borrowing” into a new speech community is just an innovation as the “presumed original event in the original speech community”.

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

 It is just necessary a process of borrowing that permits the sound to spread.

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

standard languages are not “normal” languages because they are created by the imposition of political and military power so changes that come about in these sound patterns do not come about through blind necessity.

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

 A “clean data” is a language that has been already normalized, and on the opposite way, a “dirty data” is a language considered irregular and chaotic.

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