Activities 1
1- What is more common in
language uniformity or variability?
The most common one between
those two is the variability rather than uniformity, except for the dead
languages.
Variability may become
problematic.
According to Milroy : at any given time a language
is variable (p.1).
2- What kinds of variability
exist?
Geographical variability : ( dialects) relating to the place in an area, country etc. where
something or someone is.
Social variability : relating to the speakers’ vocabulary.
Different people use a
different range and kind of lexis in order to communicate with the others.
(being polite or rude)
Historical variabity : (diachronic) relating to the time.
Register: depending on the context; it is a contextually based variety. It can be
formal or informal.
3- How do we decide if a
particular group of speakers belong to a particular dialect or language?
In some cases it is clear, but
if it is not, we can observe some language characteristics as the grammar, the
phonetics, basic linguistics… etc
Besides we can base on
geographical, historical, economical and political aspects.
4- Saussure emphasized the
importance of synchronic descriptions of languages rather than diachronic. He
and is disciples (structuralists) focused on language at different periods as
finite entities. Is this reasonable?
No, I think that it is unreasonable because languages are changeable, they
change all the time, so it is better to study diachronic linguistics to know
the changes between periods rather than study a particular period.
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?
No, It is not abnormal, because language changes constantly and also it
undergoes a state of evolution
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.”
6- Can you think of any
example of non-professional attitudes to your own language?
First of all, I have to say
that I live in Valencia, so I know Valenciano ( or Catalan ) and Spanish, so
I’ll speak about the non- professional attitudes of these.
Spanish: There are some
mistakes as the typical “dequeismo” ( me dijo de que), or others as “mercao”
instead of “mercado”, “me sa caido”, “digistes”, “asin”, “ayer ha muerto”…
Valenciano: There are many
mistakes due to the geographical variety of the speakers, and also castellanism
and barbarism.
Some examples are:
Arena – sorra (geographical
variety or dialect), puesto (castellanism)
7- Why does Milroy use “scare
quotes” around non-standard and errors?
Milroy uses scare quotes to
express that he does agree with the concept, so he uses the irony and other
mechanisms.
8- Are non-standard dialects
“incorrect, irregular, ungrammatical and deviant.”?
No, because if these non-standard dialects realize the
function of all the languages (communicate) they shouldn’t be considered like
incorrect, irregular or something like that
9- Which of these systems is
more irregular? Why?
|
Myself Yourself Himself Herself Ourselves Themselves |
Myself Yourself Hisself Herself Ourselves Theirselves |
The first one, because the
standard is not the prettiest and it’s more irregular.
The second column is more regular, it is composed with the possessive forms
of the pronouns plus “self” or “selves”,
nevertheless it can not be considered as standard because “hisself” and
“theirselves” are not correct according to the grammatical norms.
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?
I think that it is because the
spoken language is more variable.
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?
Yes, norms are very important
in whatever language, but we have to considerate the importance of exceptions,
above all in colloquial language.
For example, in the example of
the question “he ate the pie”, it is an exception, because this phrase is
grammatically incorrect ( he has already eaten the pie) but colloquially it can
be used as correct.
12- What is the difference
between descriptive and prescriptive grammars?
Descriptive grammar is a
technical that describes how the words of a language are actually used, rather
than saying how they ought to be used, however, prescriptive grammar is a
technical that states how a language should be used, rather than describing how
it is used.
( information obtained of “
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English”)
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.
13- What do you think the
“prestige motivation for change” and the “solidarity constraint” mean? How are
they opposed?
The prestige motivation for change is the way we view our language and how
other people use it and solidarity constraint refers the way in which we adapt
our language depending on the social context in which we find ourselves.
These concepts are opposed
because the first one refers to the desire of having a social status and the
second one refers to the desire of being accepted by others.
14- Sound change: post-vocalic
/r/ in New York/ The change from long āto ōin some dialects of English.
Post-vocalic /r/ in New York
Many of us who speak English
as a native language pronounce words like darling, far, bore or near the same
as we write them: with vowel followed by r in the same syllable. But there are
many other English speakers who do not pronounce the r - sound in this place
(called ‘postvocalic r’) - although they have the sound everywhere else, like
at the beginning of a word. Linguists use the classy terms rhotic and
non-rhotic for these two pronunciations.
In some people’s speech this
‘dropped’ r reappears when the word is followed by a vowel, so you sometimes
hear nevah but never again. Such speakers occasionally go on to insert an r
where it doesn’t belong, and say sofa but sofer and chair .
Looked at geographically,
American speakers who most commonly drop the r (in what follows we’ll
occasionally call this the ‘r-less’ pronunciation) are those from Eastern New
England and parts of the South, particularly the coastal area where the old
‘plantation’ culture once existed. It is also part of Black English Vernacular
speech. Until recently, dropping the r was part of New York speech as well,
though more and more New Yorkers seem to be perceiving it as ‘vulgar’ and
avoiding this pronunciation. Even though there is no officially recognized
’standard’ English in the U.S., ‘r-speakers’ are clearly an overwhelming
majority, something you hear reflected in the mass media.
British speakers today whose speech
is closest to standard British English (called ‘Received Pronunciation’) do not
pronounce r after vowel. Postvocalic r was still regularly pronounced in
English speech back in Elizabethan times, and it was around that time (l6th
century) that the ‘r-less’ pronunciation started spreading across much of
England. It did not spread as far as Ireland and Scotland, which is why we hear
the ‘r’ pronunciation from the Irish and the Scots today. Many of the original
immigrants to the colonies were from Scotland and Ireland, although at the time
of settlement most English speakers were still pronouncing r after vowel too.
http://www.pbs.org/speak/seatosea/americanvarieties/southern/dahling
The change from long ā to
ō in some dialects of English.
The father-bother merger is a
merger of the Early Modern English vowels /ɑː/ and /ɒ/ that occurs in almost all varieties
of North American English (exceptions are accents in northeastern New England,
such as the Boston accent, and in New York City). In those accents with the
merger father and bother rhyme, and Kahn and con are homophonous as [kɑn]. Unrounding of EME /ɒ/ is found also in Norwich,
the West Country, the West Midlands and in Hiberno-English, but apparently with
no phonemic merger.
15- Actuation: Why did /k/
palatalize before certain front vowels? PrsE: cheese, German käse English/Norse
doublets shirt/skirt?
Because the place and degree of palatization of words depend on the different meaning between the word
doublets.
16- What is the biological
metaphor in language change?
Biological metaphor analyses the real communicative contexts in which the
more extended analogy of ‘evolution’ occurs and emphasizes three specific
pragmatic sub-functions, i.e., descriptive and explanatory function, definitional function, and
evaluative and critical interpretative function.
http://www.aitla.unimo.it/VII_Congresso_Milano_22-02-07/abstracts_pdf/stucchi.pdf
17- What is the difference
between internal and external histories of a language?
Internal is the change caused by a structural requirements of the language,
or it does not in which case one speaks of externally motivated change.
Internally motivated change usually leads to balance in the system, the
removal of marked elements, the analogical spread of regular forms or the like.
As language consists of various modules on various levels, a change in one
quarter may lead to an imbalance in another and provoke a further change.
With the current kind of change the available structure of the language
plays an important role. For instance English has maintained a distinction in
voice among interdental fricatives as seen in teeth /ti:ž/ and teethe
/ti:š/ although the functional load is very slight.
http://www.uni-due.de/SHE/HE_InternalExternal.htm
18- Look up Neogrammarians and
lexical diffusion. Why are they often found in the same paragraph or chapter?
Because the theory of lexical
diffusion stands in contrast to the Neogrammarian
hypothesis that a
given sound change applies simultaneously to all words in which its context is
found.
In historical
linguistics, lexical
diffusion is both a phenomenon and a theory. The phenomenon is that by which a
phoneme is modified in a subset of the lexicon, and spreads gradually to other
lexical items.. Historical linguistics (also
diachronic linguistics or comparative linguistics) is primarily the study of
the ways in which languages change over time. ... The English language is a West
Germanic language that originates in England. ...
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Lexical-diffusion
19- Look up social
norm-enforcement, childish errors and slips of the tongue. What have they to do
with language change?
The social norm is the rules that a group uses for appropriate and inappropriate values,
beliefs, attitudes and behaviours. These rules may be explicit or implicit.
Failure to stick to the rules can result in severe punishments, the most
feared of which is exclusion from the group. A common rule is that the some
norms must frequently be displayed; neutrality is seldom an option.
http://changingminds.org/explanations/theories/social_norms.htm
The childish’ errors in language, we can mention that children make
mistakes because their language formation is not all completed, they need more
information, they need to learn more. As I say, everything is possible with the
time. So, for example, a child can not know that there are irregular verbs and
he/she uses an /–ed/ instead of the right form: “I eated two apples”.
http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/lingu/events/lanyu_fora/2004fall/KarenKirkeNYUabstract.pdf
The slips on the tongue is an accidental and usually trivial mistake in speaking
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/slip+of+the+tongue