What is more common in language uniformity or variability?

The most common feature in language between those two is variability. Languages are not dead, and as living entities, they vary and suffer from changes. Milroy states the same saying 'At any given time language is variable'. Uniformity is only found in standardized languages that have been normalized.

What kinds of variability exist?

There are different types of variability concerning language

Social variability. Here we would include the gender, the occupation, the age and so on.

Historical variability

Geographical variability, that is, the dialects. Accents would be also fall into this kind of variability.

Register. Register can be either defined narrowly or broadly. The narrow definition sees register simply as an occupational variety of language, for example teachers, mechanics, computer programmers, and so on. A wider definition of register sees it as a sort of social genre of linguistic usage (the language of a newspaper article, the languafe of a conversation about the weather, academic prose, a recipe in a cookery book and so on. It is important that register is defined primarily by the circumstance and purpose of teh communicative situation; i.e. the definition must be a non-linguistic one. One way of pinpointing a register is to identify a communicative event along three dimensions:

Field. The field is the social setting and purpose of the interaction

Tenor. The tenor refers to the relationship between the participants in the event

Mode. The mode refers to the medium of communication (spoken, written or e-mailed

Idiolect. This concept is worth mentioning. Even though a group of people speak the same language or dialect, each speaker chooses the way he or she wants to talk and make use of the language. The word idiolect refers to the individual style every person make from his/her language

(from Sociolinguistics, A resource book for students; Peter Stockwell)

Variables that depend on one's health or emotional state. When you have a cold, for instance, there are certain phonemes you're not able to pronounce correctly

How do we decide if a particular group of speakers belong to a particular dialect or language?

We can decide it according to the pronunciation, word choice, syntactic structures, etc. used by the speaker. If those are shared with other people, the question answers irself. To illustrate, the second person pronoun 'vos' is only used in certain areas such as Argentina, Venezuela or Uruguay. We would never hear from a 'vos' neither in Ciudad Real nor in València.

If we are looking at languages coming from completely different language groups, it is quite easy to decide, for example, Spanish and Chinese. However, if two linguistic systems are very similar such as the case of Valencian/Catalan, it can be very difficult. It is so difficult, in fact, that it is almost impossible to decide whether a person belongs to a particular dialect or language as the difference between dialect and language is not just based on linguistics but on politics, economics, sociological factors, etc.

 

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?

This is not reasonable at all. As explained above, languages are entities that are in constant change, so it does not really make sense to study it from that point of view.

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?

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.” Can you think of any example of non-professional attitudes to your own language?

Why does Milroy use “scare quotes” around non-standard and errors?

Milroy uses 'scare quotes' because he is expressing non-professional ideas with which he does not agree. It is a mechanism of saying that either a word or a situation is kind of problematic. We can exemplify this in the Spanish language with the following instances:

'Me se cayó'. The reflexive pronoun 'se' should be placed before any other pronoun, either personal, possessive or whatever. In some variants is thought to be correct whilst in other, it is not.

'Haiga' (instead of haya). It is not prescriptive (in the sense of language normativity)

Are non-standard dialects “incorrect, irregular, ungrammatical and deviant.”?

Which of these systems is more irregular? Why?

“… 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?

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?

What is the difference between descriptive and prescriptive grammars?

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.

What do you think the “prestige motivation for change” and the “solidarity constraint” mean? How are they opposed?

Sound change: post-vocalic /r/ in New York/ The change from long âto ôin some dialects of English.

Actuation: Why did /k/ palatalize before certain front vowels? PrsE: cheese, German käse English/Norse doublets shirt/skirt?

What is the biological metaphor in language change?

What is the difference between internal and external histories of a language?

Look up Neogrammarians and lexical diffusion. Why are they often found in the same paragraph or chapter?

Look up social norm-enforcement, childish errors and slips of the tongue. What have they to do with language change?