QUESTIONS ON MILROY ARTICLE ON SOUND CHANGE

James Milroy: Some new perspectives on sound change: sociolinguistics and the Neogrammarians.146-160.

Answer the following questions using the book and other sources:

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

Because, as Milroy states, sound change is probably the most mysterious aspect of change in language. Moreover, he says that in some changes it is impossible to see any progress or benefit to the language or its speakers – the use of one vowel sound rather than another is purely arbitrary – there is apparently no profit no loss.

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

The late nineteenth-century Neogrammarian movement has its basis on the idea that sound change is ‘regular’, moreover they believe that sound ‘laws’ have no exceptions. Furthermore, one important Neogrammarian claim is that regular sound change is phonetically gradual but lexically abrupt. It is also assumed that changes affected all relevant items in the same way at the same time.

The Neogrammarian tendency was to separate languages from their speakers and to focus on language as an object. However, Milroy’s approaches observe language in the community, not separating language from its speakers.

Neogrammarians assumed that linguistic change is best studied by reference to monolingual states; while Milroy and other scholars have now access to bilingual and multilingual speech communities, on which cross-language patterns of variation can be studied. Milroy’s kind of studies focus on localized varieties in regional speech communities. In theses speech community researches, Milroy is dealing with highly variable states that do not have clearly defined boundaries.

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

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, and change from outside will be admitted to the extent that there are large numbers of weak ties with outsiders.

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

Because, as Milroy states, speech ‘sounds’ so not physically change: what happens is that in the course of time one sound is substituted for another.

Speakers of a given dialect gradually and variably begin to use sound X in environments where speakers formerly used sound Y.

Linguistic change in general is a result of changes in speaker-agreement on the norms of usage in speech communities.

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

‘Sound change’ is a social phenomenon in that it comes about because speakers in conversation bring it about. Languages do not change - it is speakers who change them. For this reason, Milroy disagree with the Neogrammarians in the idea of that sound change is “blind”.

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

Lexical diffusion is a socially gradual process and abrupt replacement pattern, and can be shown to be regular in some sense. In terms of phonetic change, in lexical diffusion, the new form differs markedly of the original form.

7) 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. An example, which Milroy states, is the gradual displacement of heavily inflected West Midland dialects of Middle English by weakly inflected East Midland dialects.

8) What are “community” or “vernacular” norms? What term that we have used in class is similar (152)?

Theses norms are observed by speakers and maintained by communities often in opposition to standardizing norms. Thanks to theses norms we can recognize different dialects of languages. These norms manifest themselves at different levels of generality; moreover community or vernacular norms can be variable norms – in contrast to standard norms, which are invariant.

The similar term we have used in class is geographical variety, which refers to dialects and accepts them.

9) What does Milroy mean when he says that h-dropping may not ever reach “completion” (153)?

Milroy says that a change can persist as a variable state for seven or eight centuries without ever going to ‘completion’ in the traditional sense. He believes that the h-dropping will never be considered normative.

10) 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.

For a speaker-innovation to become a change, it must be adopted by some community. The adoption of a linguistic change depends at the speaker-level on a process of borrowing.

11) 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. In other words, the distinction between true sound change and phonological borrowing is poorly motivated.

12) What is necessary for a sound to spread (157)?

The spreading of sounds is a social progress; the sounds are passed from speaker to speaker. The sounds have to assume a social pattern in the community.

13) 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 – whereas dialects and languages that have not been standardized have fuzzy boundaries and are indeterminate.

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

Clean data is referred to the normalized language that is uniform and unilinear. While dirty data is the result of sociolinguistic investigations, and language is considered irregular and chaotic.

Standard languages provide the investigator with relatively clean data, but the vernaculars that we actually encounter in the speech community are relatively intractable: the data we encounter is to a greater extent dirty data.

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