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

According to Milroy the replacement of vowel sound is arbitrary and there is no apparently profit and no loss. For example in a change from [e:] to [i:] it is impossible to see any benefit. The use of one vowel-sound rather than another is arbitrary.

What is/are the main difference/s between Milroy’s approach and that of the Neogrammarians?

     The data-base available for study and the methods used to study that data-base are different. Scholars now have access to bilingual and multilingual communities, while The Neogrammarians preferred to study linguistic change in monolingual states. Studies in dialectology don’t focus on whole languages, but on localized varieties in regional speech communities.

Neogrammarians tended to be dichotomous, and their main sources of study were written texts rather than spoken. According to Neogrammarians the sound change is regular, which means that when a sound is observed to have changed in a particular item, the regularity principal predicts that it should also to have changed in all other relevant items. The Neogrammarians also try to separate the language from the speaker. (They were interested only in the language)

According to Milroy, what is language change dependent on?

       It is assumed that a linguistic change is embedded in a context of language or dialect maintenance. The degree to which change is admitted will depend on the degree of internal cohesion of the community (the strong ties will resist a change) and change from outside will be admitted to the extent that there are large numbers of weak ties with outsiders. If a change persists in the system, it has again to be maintained by social acceptance and social pressure.

It means that a change depends on maintenance. Someone starts it and community uses it. 

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

        Because speech sounds do not physically change and in the course of time one sound is replaced by another. Speakers gradually and variably begin to use sound X in environments where speakers formerly used sound Y. What historical scholars actually observe in data from the past is not a sound change, but a diachronic correspondence between language states at two o more points in time - a synchronic correspondence between two or more states of language at the same time.

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

Milroy defends in his theory that sound change is not explainable as a wholly linguistic phenomenon. It is also inherently and necessarily a social phenomenon and it occurs because speakers provoke it in conversation. Speakers often have very strong feelings about it and it is gradual instead; it passes from speaker to speaker and from group to group.

What is meant by “lexical diffusion”?

       A sound change is spread in certain groups of words, not in all the words with that sound. Some words change, but others remain the same. For example the word “house” /hus/ à mouse /mus/; the new pronunciation is spread from one word to another.

What does dialect displacement mean? Give an example.

        It is the displacement of one dialect by another that is socially dominant at some particular time.

For instance: the displacement of Valencian in favour of Spanish, in the Valencian Kingdom.

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

      The norms of language are maintained and enforced by social pressure. Normally, we think of theses norms as standardizing norms, which are codified and legislated for, and enforced in an impersonal way by the institutions of society. But we can recognize different dialects of a language, which means that other norms exist apart from the standard ones. These norms are observed by speakers and maintained by communities often in opposition to standardizing norms. Thus, these forms are so-called community or vernacular norms.

What does Milroy mean when he says that h-dropping may not ever reach “completion”?

      That the society may not reach a consensus in the social norm when deciding whether to drop h or not, which means there will always be some people who will resist dropping H.

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

     An innovation is an act of the speaker, whereas a change is manifested within the language system. It is not known, when an innovation is observed, if it will lead to a change and it is probably thought to be an error or defective usage of some kind. They are related because when an innovation is fully socially accepted, it becomes a change in the 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?

         In order to specify the conditions under which some innovations, and not others, are admitted into linguistic systems as linguistic changes we must take into account that a linguistic change is by definition a sociolinguistic phenomenon: it occurs for reasons of marking social identity, stylistic difference and so on. Now, if we think in Neogrammarian terms about sound change and borrowing, we must accept that all sound change depends on a process of borrowing. Change is negotiated between speakers, who borrow new forms from one another. The main implication of the innovation/change distinction is what an innovation is accepted by a speech community, the process involved is a borrowing one: all sound change is implemented by being passed-borrowed- from speaker to speaker

What is necessary for a sound to spread?

      A process of borrowing is necessary and also the existence of a weak tie on that phoneme. If there were strong tie on that matter, the speakers would be more resistant to borrow that innovation and thus the linguistic change would not occur.

Why does believing in the ideology of standardization lead to believing in “blindnecessity”?

      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) whereas dialects and not standardized languages have fuzzy boundaries and are indeterminate. The idea that the sound changes differentiating these well-defined socially-constructed entities must always happen blindly and independently of sociall-based human interventions is consequences of believing in the ideology of standardization. It means that language evolves for itself

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

      Clean data is offered by standard languages; data which have already been largely normalized.

Dirty data is data offered by vernaculars; it is irregular and chaotic.