What is more common in language uniformity or variability?

The most important fact in a language is variability, as languages are continuously changing.

Laypersons, (non-linguists) strive for uniformity. See what happens with nationalisms.

What kinds of variability exist?

Languages are never uniform entities.

Language is variable when observed at the present day.

Synchronic variability: Geographical: Dialects: Geordie…

Social

Register: Context variable.

Language is variable when observed in the course of history.

Diachronic variability

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

Shibboleth: It is a kind of linguistic password: A way of speaking (pronunciation or the use of a particular expression) that identifies one as a member or a non-member of a particular group. It gives you away.

The group has some kind of social power to set the standards for who belongs to the group: who is “in” and who is “out”.

The purpose of a shibboleth is exclusionary as much as inclusionary.

A person whose way of speaking violates a shibboleth is identified as an outsider and thereby excluded by the group.

The use of the language to distinguish social groups. They don’t mess about. They decide on pure linguistic and political lines.

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?

From his point of view we can liken a synchronic description to a still photograph and a diachronic description to a comparison of a series of still photographs taken a different times. But in reality, however, the history of language is a continuous process: A moving picture.

According to Saussure view, a language is at any given time, a system in which everything holds together in a coherent self-contained structure, but no real language state is a perfectly balanced and stable structure, linguistic change is always in progress.

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?

The unattested states of language are periods in which we have no records of it.

If linguistic change were an abnormal state of affairs, it would be reasonable to think that change is something that strikes language from time to time. But no real language state is a perfectly balanced and stable structure, linguistic change is always in progress and this constant change is perfectly normal.

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?

Uniform states of language are idealizations and variable states are normal.

Yes. We have in the variety of Catalan the problem as politicians have prescript us a normative use and the rest, which is non-standard, like apitxat is regarded as an error.

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

Scare quotes are things that you don’t mean them.

I’m writing this but it isn’t really my opinion. So things that are not standard I have to write them in “italics”.

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

No, they are only different. Perhaps they are incorrect in this moment but they will be perfect in the future

Which of these systems is more irregular? Why?

Myself Yourself Himself Herself Ourselves Themselves

Myself Yourself Hisself Herself Ourselves Theirselves

The 2^nd column is not standard but much more regular.

Him Them are the objects and are more irregular than having the possessives His Their, but such is power of standardness, that we feel that the 1^st column is more regular.

We think that standard is more beautiful (it’s a brain washing) but it has nothing to do with the language itself . It is like thinking that Madrid Spanish is better than others or the RP of the Queen is better.

“… 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?

Traditionally it was impossible to follow the history of spoken language because investigators did not have the technology. Even now, to appreciate change we have to resort to conversation in context and the sociolinguistic patterns will have to be systematic and accountable to the data. This needs an extra effort.

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?

The decisions (or judgements) about the norms are social in the sense that they are agreed on socially = They depend on consensus among speakers within the community.

The past tense + already collocation is frequently observed in American, Scottish and Irish English but not in standard English.

Trudgill points out: “The rules governing the use of the present perfect in standard English seem to altering somewhat and there appears to be an increase in the usage of such forms described above” So, we are not dealing with ungrammaticality but with a change in the norms of usage for some part of the community.

What is the difference between descriptive and prescriptive grammars?

Descriptive grammar is normative because to be accurate, they have to coincide as closely as possible with the consensus norms of the community concerned. To be normative, the linguist’s account of a variety does not have to be prescriptive; that is, it does not have to prescribe how people in a community should speak.

One thing is observing a norm for descriptive purposes and enforcing a norm prescriptively.

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?

Prestige motivations for change means that changes within a language are allowed if they are socially prestigious, valuable or powerful. Most of the times a prestige motivation (for ex. To adopt RP forms) is overridden by the solidarity constraint which requires the speaker to conform to local community norms rather than to norms that are viewed as “external”.

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

??

Actuation: Why did /k/ palatalize before certain front vowels?

PrsE( present English ): cheese, German käse

English/Norse doublets shirt/skirt?

The proximity of the velar consonant to a front vowel is a necessary condition for palatalization but as it does not happen in every case, it is not a sufficient condition.

For the change to take place, the social conditions must be favourable. In some cases they are and not in others. So we must take into account the activities of the speakers in social contexts in addition to the internal structural properties of language.

What is the biological metaphor in language change?

According to Trench, “language has a life as a man or a tree”, but it was Müller who adopted it so strongly that he stated that linguistics is literally a physical science. Language, therefore does not have history, it has growth.

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

Internal history: It focuses on sound-change and morphological change.

External history: Political, social and attitudinal contexts of language.

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

Because there is a controversy between Neogrammarians who state that sound change operates blindly and without exceptions (the Neogrammarian excepcionlessness hypothesys) and other approaches over the last century as the lexical diffusion which invalidates such hypothesys.

The lexical difussion model (Wang 1969) holds that sound change may be lexically gradual.

Changes from /e:/ to /i:/ (meat, peace, leave) are transferred to the new class at differential rates, often leaving a residue of items that do not get transferred (great, break, steak)

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

In Sturtevant’s linguistic Change (1917) we find a great emphasis on this ideas.

Speakers are very important to change in language system.

Social norm- enforcement: Taboo and euphemism

Childish errors: features of the children language

Slips of the tongue: least effort in speech.