Linguistics Variation & Change

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

Milroy says that sound change is the most mysterious change in language, as it has no obvious function or rational motivation. Also he adds that certain changes do not benefit the language or its speakers in any way. These changes do not aid the progression of languages either- the use of one vowel sound rather than another is purely arbitrary- there is apparently no profit and no loss.

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

The late 19th Century Neogrammarian movement was based on the idea that sound change is regular and therefore, that sound laws have no exceptions. Another important Neogrammarian claim is that regular sound change is phonetically gradual but lexically abrupt; changes affect all relevant items in the same way at the same time. Milroy makes it clear that he 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 Neogrammarians and sociolinguists like Milroy is that the Neogrammarians focus on language as an object, and do not take into consideration the speakers of the said language. In contrast, Milroy firmly believes in the importance of analysing speech and language in social contexts.

We can also refer that the Neogrammarians think that linguistic change is best studied by reference to monolingual states, whereas sociolinguistic research can be carried out in bilingual and multilingual speech communities and on localized varieties of regional speech communities, in which there are no clearly defined linguistic boundaries.

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

Milroy assumes that language change is embedded in a context of language maintenance. The degree to which the change is admitted will depend on the degree of internal cohesion in the community (consensus norms), and change from outside will be admitted to the extent that there are large numbers of “weak ties” with outsiders. It also follows that if a change persist in the system, it has to be, again, maintained by social aceptance & social pressure.

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

Speech “sounds” do not physically change, what happens is that in the course of time one sound is substituted by another.

Part of speakers start to use gradually the sound A in a context whereas the sound B is the “normal” one.

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

Sound change is a social phenomenon by which the speakers change their language; and that is why Milroy disagrees with the idea of “blind” sound change.

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

The principle of social gradualness supersedes the binary division between “regular” sound change & lexical diffusion (Lavob discussion); the difference between the two forms is not too obvious.

Lexical diffusion is a socially gradual process and abrupt replacement patterns, by which a form changes and the resulting form is markedly different to the original one. Can be shown as regular in some cases.

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 talks about 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.

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 often in opposition to standardizing norms which manifest themselves at different levels of generality.

We can link the community norms to the wave theory (H. Schuchardt 1868), which the language change usually starts in restricted contexts within a certain community like a wave caused by a stone dropped into the water. The cahnge then spreads successively to further contexts and social groups until it is realized in all contexts and with all speakers.

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. He means that 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. Language is changing.

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. Speakers (not languages) innovate.

When an innovation takes place in a speech community, the process involved is a borrowing process; moreover, the implantation of a sound change depends on the borrowing of an innovation.

It should be added that an innovation must be unstructured and irregular and not describable by quantitative or statistical methods.

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)?

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”, this affirmation leads Milroy to state that the distinction between true sound change and phonological borrowing is poorly motivated.

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. We must point out that the spreading of sounds is a social process.

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.

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.

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

“Clean” data in the last section of the text refer to language that is uniform, unilinear and normalized (idealized).

“Dirty” data are the result of sociolinguistic studies, in which language is considered as irregular and chaotic.