Story of English 2

Is more common variability.There is no language that has a complete uniformity, they all have variations, either in vocabulary, grammar or phonetics. According to Milroy there is not such thing as a perfect language because this is changing all the time.

Variability in language can depend on historical, geographical, linguisticl and social factors. When we talk, for example, about geographical factors we can talk about dialects, which impliques vocabulary and gramatical changes.

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

Because each dialect or language has specific characteristics (in vocabulary, gramatic, phonetic changes, etc) that makes them different from others.

• 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?

Well, languages are constantly changing, so if we study diachronic linguistics we can understand better the evolution of the language.

• 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?

Is not abnormal. Languages changes through a evolutionary period to be adapted to the new situations

• 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?

The castellanisms in Valencian dialect, or in Spanish, the laism, when people says Madriz instead of Madrid, etc.

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

Because is not his true opinion. He makes use of irony through the scare quotes.

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

Any language which has a set of grammatical rules can be labeled as incorrect if these rules are not applied correctly or do not conform to what is usually called standard language.But if this language has his grammar rules, and serves for people to communicate in a clear way,it need not be labeled as incorrect or ungramatical.

Myself

Yourself

Himself

Herself

Ourselves

Themselves

Myself

Yourself

Hisself

Herself

Ourselves

Theirselves

The second system is more regular than the first one, it isn’t considered as standard because the terms “hisself” and “theirselves” are not commonly used because they are not correct in grammatical terms.

“… 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?

Maybe for reasons of comfort. Most people don´t uses to follow the grammatical rules and uses vulgarisms or colloquialisms and everyone has his personal way of speech,. All ythis brokes the structure of language.

• 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, in a high or low level. He ate the pie already” is considered to be non-standard for most speakers of British English but is more or less correct for English in England and Wales.

In linguistics, prescription can refer both to the codification and the enforcement of rules governing how a language is to be used. These rules can cover such topics as standards for spelling and grammar or syntax; or rules for what is deemed socially or politically correct. It includes the mechanisms for establishing and maintaining an interregional language or a standardized spelling system. It can also include declarations of what particular groups consider to be good taste. If these tastes are conservative, prescription may be (or appear to be) resistant to language change. If they are radical, prescription may be productive of neologism. Prescription can also include recommendations for effective language usage.

Prescription is typically contrasted with description, which observes and records how language is used in practice, and which is the basis of all linguistic research. Serious scholarly descriptive work is usually based on text or corpus analysis, or on field studies, but the term "description" includes each individual's observations of their own language usage. Unlike prescription, descriptive linguistics eschews value judgments and makes no recommendations.

Prescription and description are often seen as opposites, in the sense that one declares how language should be while the other declares how language is. But they can also be complementary, and usually exist in dynamic tension. Most commentators on language show elements of both prescription and description in their thinking, and popular debate on language issues frequently revolves around the question of how to balance these.

Weinreich, Labov and Herzog’s (1968) empirical foundations of language change:

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)

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

The prestigious varieties can influence less prestigious varieties which usually incorporate some features in order to become more prestigious.

Solidarity constraint involves people that don´t want speak standar language, they speak with his proper accent and with the words of the geographical place where they live. (e.x: a man from Liverpool who talks with the accent and vocabulary of his city). Constraint requires the speaker to conform to local community norms rather than to norms that are viewed as extremal.

Sound change: post-vocalic /r/ in New York/ The change from long ā to ō in some dialects of English.

American speakers who most commonly drop the r (in what follows we’ll occasionally call this the ‘r-less’ pronunciation) are those from Eastern New England and parts of the South, particularly the coastal area where the old ‘plantation’ culture once existed. It is also part of Black English Vernacular speech. Until recently, dropping the r was part of New York speech as well, though more and more New Yorkers seem to be perceiving it as ‘vulgar’ and avoiding this pronunciation. (The case of New York is especially interesting because of a classic study in sociolinguistics by William Labov showing that the non-rhotic accent is associated with older and middle- to lower-class speakers, and is being replaced by the rhotic accent.)

Even though there is no officially recognized ’standard’ English in the U.S., ‘r-speakers’ are clearly an overwhelming majority, something you hear reflected in the mass media.

British speakers today whose speech is closest to standard British English (called ‘Received Pronunciation’) do not pronounce r after vowel. Postvocalic r was still regularly pronounced in English speech back in Elizabethan times, and it was around that time (l6th century) that the ‘r-less’ pronunciation started spreading across much of England. It did not spread as far as Ireland and Scotland, which is why we hear the ‘r’ pronunciation from the Irish and the Scots today. Many of the original immigrants to the colonies were from Scotland and Ireland, although at the time of settlement most English speakers were still pronouncing r after vowel too.

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

Sometimes this occurs for reasons like the proximity of the velar consonant to a front vowel or by favourable social conditions, because in text’s words we must take into account the activities of speakers in social contexts.

Biological methaphor of language change can be associated to the fact that languages passed from one generation to other.

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? The Neogrammarians (also Young Grammarians, German Junggrammatiker) were a German school of linguists, originally at the University of Leipzig, in the late 19th century who proposed the Neogrammarian hypothesis of the regularity of sound change. According to this hypothesis, a diachronic sound change affects simultaneously all words in which its environment is met, without exception. Verner's law is a famous example of the Neogrammarian hypothesis, as it resolved an apparent exception to Grimm's law. The Neogrammarian hypothesis was the first hypothesis of sound change to attempt to follow the principle of falsifiability according to scientific method. Today this hypothesis is considered more of a guiding principle than an exceptionless fact, as numerous examples of lexical diffusion (where a sound change affects only a few words at first and then gradually spreads to other words) have been attested.

In historical linguistics, lexical diffusion is both a phenomenon and a theory. The phenomenon is that by which a phoneme is modified in a subset of the lexicon, and spreads gradually to other lexical items. For example, in English, /uː/ has changed to /ʊ/ in good and hood but not in food; some dialects have it in hoof and roof but others do not; in flood and blood it happened early enough that the words were affected by the change of /ʊ/ to /ʌ/, which is now no longer productive.

The related theory, proposed by William Wang in 1969 is that all sound changes originate in a single word or a small group of words and then spread to other words with a similar phonological make-up, but may not spread to all words in which they potentially could apply. The theory of lexical diffusion stands in contrast to the Neogrammarian hypothesis that a given sound change applies simultaneously to all words in which its context is found.

William Labov, in Principles of Linguistic Change, takes the position that there are two types of sound changes: regular sound change (respecting the Neogrammarian hypothesis) and lexical diffusion. Labov lists a typology, according to which certain phenomena are typically or exclusively regular (example, vowel quality changes), while others (example, metathesis, or vowel shortening) tend to follow a lexical diffusion pattern.

Paul Kiparsky, in the Handbook of Phonology (Goldsmith editor), argues that under a proper definition of analogy as optimization, lexical diffusion is not a type of sound change. Instead, Kiparsky claims it is similar to leveling, in that it is a non-proportional type of analogy.

Because both deal with the aspect of phonological change in a language. In one hand Neogrammarians defends that sound-change operates in all items without making any type of exceptions at the same time and on the other hand lexical diffusion theory supports that sound-change can occur in a gradual manner.

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

A slip of the tongue is an error in speaking in which a word is pronounced incorrectly, or in which the speaker says something unintentionally.