Milroy answers
- What is more common in language uniformity or variability?
Variability is much more common.
- What kinds of variability exist?
The different types of variability are found regarding social, economical and political accents. A social accent for example is a “catalán” speaking Spanish who has a different accent in the pronunciation of dark “l”.
- How do we decide if a particular group of speakers belong to a particular dialect or language?
Taking into account the region were he or she belongs to (geographical area); the use of different words and different accent or pronunciation, in general taking into account social, political and economical factors.
- 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?
It is not reasonable. Synchronic is the study of a language in a given moment as if you make a picture and diachronic is the study of the language at different times, as if you make different pictured at different times and you compare them.
- 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 isn´t. It simply shows that languages undergo several changes (transitional stages not sudden changes), “disturbances” which are simply adaptations of the language depending on new necessities.
- 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?
Because he wants to underline his disagreement with these ideas.
- Are non-standard dialects “incorrect, irregular, ungrammatical and deviant.”?
No, because any language which is used for communication purpose with a set of grammatical rules cannot be regarded as incorrect, irregular, ungrammatical and deviant.
-Which of these systems is more irregular? Why?
|
Myself Yourself Himself Herself Ourselves Themselves |
Myself Yourself Hisself Herself Ourselves Theirselves |
The system of the first column is more regular because “hisself” and “theirselves” are not grammatically correct.
It is interesting to point out the following information about the use of those pronouns:
“Our Living Language Speakers of some vernacular American dialects, particularly in the South, may use the possessive reflexive form hisself instead of himself (as in He cut hisself shaving) and theirselves or theirself for themselves (as in They found theirselves alone). These forms reflect the tendency of speakers of vernacular dialects to regularize irregular patterns found in the corresponding standard variety. In Standard English, the pattern of reflexive pronoun forms shows slightly irregular patterning; all forms but two are composed of the possessive form of the pronoun and -self or -selves, as in myself or ourselves. The exceptions are himself and themselves, which are formed by attaching the suffix -self/-selves to the object forms of he and they rather than their possessive forms. Speakers who use hisself and theirselves are smoothing out the pattern's inconsistencies by applying the same rule to all forms in the set.·A further regularization is the use of -self regardless of number, yielding the forms ourself and theirself. Using a singular form in a plural context may seem imprecise, but the plural meaning of ourself and theirself is made clear by the presence of the plural forms our- and their-. Hisself and theirselves have origins in British English and are still prevalent today in vernacular speech in England”.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/hisself
- “… 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?
Because of the high degree of variability, which is present in spoken language. Most of the people don´t follow grammatical rules and tend to use their own patterns. That´s why wrong interpretations could arise from the fact of studying language change based only on spoken language in context.
- 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, it does. Because language is a normative phenomenon and the norms of language are maintained and enforced by social pressures. These are standardizing norms. But other norms exist apart which are those from different dialects and often maintained by communities in opposition to standardizing norms. These norms are called vernacular.
The phrase “He ate the pie already” would be acceptable in colloquial speech but not in formal one (He has already eaten the pie).
- What is the difference between descriptive and prescriptive grammars?
Descriptive Grammar refers to the structure of a language as it is actually used by speakers and writers and it studies the rules and patterns that underlie our use of words, phrases, clauses and sentences. Prescriptive Grammar refers to the structure of a language as certain people think it should be used.
http://grammar.about.com/od/basicsentencegrammar/a/grammarintro.htm
- 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?
The prestige motivation for change refers to the way we use our language to show our social status, and solidarity constraint is the way we adapt our language depending on the social context we are in order to be accepted by other groups.
They are completely opposed since the first one is related to the fact of our desire to be superior or show our higher condition and the second one is concentrated in our wish to be accepted by others and be integrated. Therefore, the first underlines individuality while the second underlines social unity.
- Sound change: post-vocalic /r/ in New York/ The change from long ā to ō in some dialects of English.
POST-VOCALIC /r/ IN NEW YORK:
It seems clear that the default value in the seventeenth and eighteenth Century for North American dialects was consistent r-pronunciation.
The basic vernacular of New York City was consistently r-less in the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth. r-less pronunciation, as a characteristic of British Received Pronunciation, was also taught as a model of correct, international English by schools of speech, acting, and elocution in the
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/Atlas_chapters/Ch07_2nd.rev.pdf
CHANGE FROM LONG ā TO ō:
This change can be noticed for example in Scottish English. I found very interesting the following explanation found in Internet:
“Phonetic changes to which all language is subject are of two Kinds, Organic and Inorganic. The first is dependent on the condition and movement of the vocal organs, and the second is due to acoustic causes (such as faulty imitation) and to the play of reason upon the brute matter of speech, especially through the mental process called analogy. There are two kinds of organic change. The first, called Isolative, occurs where there is a gradual development from one generation to another, extending sometimes over centuries, and often unnoticed by the speakers of the language or dialect. An Isolative change in any given dialect carries with it the great body of words which have in their initial stage the same accented vowel sound. For instance, in Primitive Old English — i.e. the form of English from which all English dialects, provincial or literary, are derived — the word bān (bone) had the sound of ā as in our Mod.Eng. father. In the North of England and in Scotland at an early period the sound, while still retaining its length, began to approach that of a [a] as in Mod.Eng. (northern standard) pat; then it became [æ] as in Mod.Sth.Eng. pat [pæt], then e [ɛ] as in Mod.Eng. pet, then [e] as in Mod.Eng. pate. Thus we have our Mod.Sc. bane, stane, with variations in the Scottish dialects. In the Middle and South of England, on the other hand, this Primitive Old English ā sound became deeper and fuller, and at length, by the action of rounding in the lips and in the back-opening of the mouth, developed into a broad o sound [ɔ], so that even before the time of Chaucer bān was pronounced as [bɔ:n]. The difference between this sound and King Alfred’s bān was so marked that Chaucer wrote it always with an o symbol, but in The Reeve’s Tale he represented it, in the mouth of the northern students, by the letter a. Examples; na, ham, swa, gas, fra, for no, home, so, goes, from. The other O.E. long vowels, e, i, y, o, underwent similar isolative changes, the process of which we can often imagine or trace, although the cause remains obscure…
http://www.dsl.ac.uk/INTRO/intro2.php?num=07
- Actuation: Why did /k/ palatalize before certain front vowels? PrsE: cheese, German käse English/Norse doublets shirt/skirt?
Palatalization may be a synchronic phonological process, i.e., some phonemes are palatalized in certain contexts, typically before front vowels or especially high front vowels, and remain non-palatalized elsewhere. This is usually phonetic palatalization, as described above, but need not to be. It is usually allophonic and it may go unnoticed by native speakers. As an example, compare the /k/ of English key with the /k/ of coo, or the /t/ of tea with the /t/ of took. The first word of each pair is palatalized, but few English speakers would perceive them as distinct.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palatalization
- What is the biological metaphor in language change?
In the last quarter of the 20th century, cognitive linguistics has demonstrated that our conceptual
system is fundamentally metaphorical in nature (Lakoff and Johnson 1980). Metaphor is thus seen
as an essential instrument of cognitive meaning. It is well known that metaphor has both conceptual
and linguistic features. It is also unmistakable that the linguistic or metaphorical expression is an
important source of evidence and the starting point of analysis.
http://www.aitla.unimo.it/VII_Congresso_Milano_22-02-07/abstracts_pdf/stucchi.pdf
- What is the difference between internal and external histories of a language?
The difference between internal and external histories of language is related to external and internal dimensions of linguistic change. Obviously there are internal factors, which favour language change such as psychological factors, structural regularity etc and the external ones are historical and social factors.
There is more information related to this topic at the following web page:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb195/is_5_39/ai_n28876955
- Look up Neogrammarians and lexical diffusion. Why are they often found in the same paragraph or chapter?
Because the theory of lexical diffusion is opposed to the Neogrammarian theory. The Neogrammarians ´position concerning sound change can be split into three parts:
1- sound changes are exceptionless.
2- Sound changes are conditioned by phonetic factors only.
3- Sound changes are phonetically gradual.
The lexical diffusion model asserts as an answer to these three parts that:
1- cannot be maintained since there are exceptions to sound change which cannot be accounted for by analogy.
2- There is massive lexical split, which cannot be accounted for in terms of phonetic conditioning.
3- Lexical split shows that it cannot be the case that all words are affected at the same time and it cannot be the case that all sounds changes are phonetically gradual.
- Look up social norm-enforcement, childish errors and slips of the tongue. What have they to do with language change?
Regarding the social norm-enforcement we know that people are influenced linguistically by members of the social networks to which they belong, acting membership as a linguistic norm-enforcement mechanism, and even within the same social group there may be linguistic differences very closely related to the core/peripheral nature of its members: the speaker’s degree of adherence to the social network (core/peripheral nature) highly affects his or her structure of speech and also the possibility of adoption, and subsequent diffusion, or rejection of a given innovating linguistic feature in process of change.
https://www.um.es/ijes/vol5n1/12-CampoyReview.pdf
Childish errors occur constantly among children because of their lack of knowledge of grammatical rules. For example the change in pronunciation of: [s] > [T].
“Slips of the tongue”: “Linguists have collected and analyzed slips of the tongue at least as far back as the 8th century when the Arab linguist Al-Ki-sa-i wrote his book, Errors of the populace. The Arab scholar's interest in such errors was based on the belief that they might provide clues as to how language changes. Since that time, many linguists have been collecting and analyzing these spontaneously produced speech errors. While slips of the tongue have not contributed much to our understanding of how and why languages change, they do tell us a great deal about what we seem to know about our language and how we use this knowledge to speak and to understand what others say to us.”
http://psikoloji.fisek.com.tr/psycholinguistics/Fromkin.html