Language is variable. Languages are never uniform entities; they can be observed to vary geographically and socially, and according to the situational contexts in which they are used. The idea that language is uniform has also penetrated into the roots of theory, and much of the linguistic theory of this century has been based on the perceived need to treat language as if it were uniform and static
2.What kinds of variability exist?
Geographical
Temporary
Register
Degree or formality
Historical
3.How do we decide if a particular group of speakers belong to a particular dialect or language?
The language is the system of communication of speech and writing that is used by people of a particular country or area, while the dialect is the form of a language that is spoken in one area with grammar, words and pronunciation that may be different from other forms of the same language.
4. Saussure emphasized the importance of synchronic descriptions of languages rather than diachronic. He and his disciples (structuralists) focused on language at different periods as finite entities. Is this reasonable?
Depends because in some aspects the language is always changing and it is considered as a finite entity, and in other the languages are are constantly changing.
5. 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?
To my opinion, it is not abnormal because languages naturally come to a state of evolution. The changes brought about by this evolutionary process in no way reflect a “disturbed structure”.
6. 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 case of the Valencian and Catalan, some people thing that those languages are the same because the grammar are similar or equal, but with other person are two languages diferent with diferents expressions and grammar, it is a controversial attitudes we have in our language.
7. Why does Milroy use “scare quotes” around non-standard and errors?
Because J.Milory uses ‘scare quotes’ because he is using some words as metaphors or he talking about ideas he doesn’t agree with.
8. Are non-standard dialects “incorrect, irregular, ungrammatical and deviant.”?
It depends on consensus among speakers within the community or communities concerned and will differ from one community to another. It is not ungrammatically, only there is a change in the norms of usage for some part of the community. Language descriptions are normative because to be accurate they have to coincide as closely as possible with the consensus norms of the community concerned while the dialect reflects the socially agreed norms of some particular community of speakers
9. Which of these systems is more irregular? Why?
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Myself
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Myself
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The second is more regular than the first, but the second is not the standard. The first column is the standard.
In this question, we have to remark, that the pronouns ‘Hisself’ and ‘Theirselves’ can be used in certain contexts although, they are not considered as grammatically correct.
10. “… 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 decontextualized 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?
I believe that this is due to the variability of the spoken language. If we analyze the spoken language, we will find the fact that a lot of people don’t follow grammatical rules when they are in speech. They don’t follow the rules and this lead to the destructuralisation of language. Due to that, we can have complications when we try to interpret the changes which occur in speech.
11. 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?
I must say that in all languages there are norms and rules but also that there are lots of exceptions to norms and rules and in the colloquial register we miss them out.
The sentence “he ate the pie already” is a colloquial expression considered non-standard in speech, when we talk quickly, with our friends.
12. 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. Prescriptive grammar refers to the structure of a language as certain people think it should be used.
13. 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.
14. What do you think the “prestige motivation for change” and the “solidarity constraint” mean? How are they opposed?
Prestige’ motivation is to adopt RP forms while the solidarity constraint requires the speaker to conform to local community norms rather than to norms that are viewed as ‘external’.
15. Sound change: post-vocalic /r/ in New York/ The change from long āto ōin some dialects of English.
Post vocalic /r/ in New York
The general vocalization of post-vocalic /r/ is an eighteenth-century phenomenon. 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 United States up to the end of World War II. It was the standard model for most radio announcers and used as a high prestige form by Franklin Roosevelt.
r-pronunciation was examined in some detail in the sociolinguistic study of
New York City (Labov 1966). The variable (r) is defined as tautosyllabic (or coda) /r/. This excludes intervocalic /r/, which is never vocalized in the white community, and word-final /r/ before a vowel-initial word, which is vocalized at a much lower rate. The result showed a fine-grained stratification in the use of constricted [r] in formal styles, while in casual style there was a sharp division between (younger) upper middle class speakers and everyone else. There is some evidence of variable r-pronunciation in New York City before World War II which may have provided the raw material for the norm of constricted /r/ (Frank 1948), but the shift to a positive evaluation of r-pronunciation affected all New Yorkers born after 1923 (Labov 1966: Ch. 11). Parallel shifts towards an r-pronouncing norm can be observed in Boston.2 Recent re-studies of New York City speech show that a consistent pattern of r-vocalization characterizes the spontaneous speech of all but the upper middle class and the upper class.
r-pronunciation is primarily a feature of formal speech: a superposed dialect, with a rate of increase of about 1.5 percent a year (Fowler 1986; Labov 1994: 83–87). Feagin (1987) reported a more radical shift to r-pronunciation across three generations in Anniston, Alabam.
16. Actuation: Why did /k/ palatalize before certain front vowels? PrsE: cheese, German käse English/Norse doublets shirt/skirt?
The ultimate aim of historical linguistics is to explain the causation of linguistic change. The question of causation is beset with difficulties, but we can focus on it by standing Weinreich, Labov and Herzog’s formulation of the actuation problem. It is so challenging that historical linguists do not usually address it directly.
The Weinreich, Lavob and Herzog formulation has several implications that are important for a theory of language change and we can cite the example of sound-change, which is sometimes called “natural”.
We must analyse the case of the question: if we have two languages which are very close, and one of theme undergoes this palatalization and the other one does not. We must ask why it happened in one variety but not in the other.
What we observe here are conflicting patterns of change and stability in languages and dialects of similar structure
17. What is the biological metaphor in language change?
It is a notion used by Müller who thinks it does not seem to have been a metaphor at all: linguistics, according to him, is literally a physical science on a par with geology, botany and biology, and not a historical science, such as art, morals ore religion.
The metaphor has weakened since Müller wrot, but there have been many publications on language history since then that have benn based on the idea of the independent “life” of language.
The metaphor is by no means dead. Its acceptance is widespread enough for it to appear in the title of a book on linguistics.
18. What is the difference between internal and external histories of a language?
Internal history of a language refers to the historical development of its linguistic forms (phonology, morphology, syntax and lexicon) and semantics. It is contrasted with external history, which refers to the social and geopolitical history of the language.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_history
19. Look up Neogrammarians and lexical diffusion. Why are they often found in the same paragraph or chapter?
First of all they are often found in the same paragraph or chapter because they are totally opposed and are sometimes compared.
The lexical diffusion model (William Wang, 196), holds that sound-changes can be lexically gradual: so, in a change from /e:/ to /i:/ (such as the EModE change in words of the type meat, peace, leave), items are sent to the new class at differential rates, often leaving a residue of items that do not get transferred (in this case such words as great, break, steak)
Neogrammarian theory has generally been interpreted to mean that the relevant class of items all undergo the change at the same time, I mean, that sound-change is phonetically gradual and lexically sudden. Neogrammarian theory was thus never intended to account for changes in the phonological representations associated with individual lexical items. So, to sum up, I’ve written a question: What was the Neogrammarian theory of language change? Languages change systematically, not randomly.
20. Look up social norm-enforcement, childish errors and slips of the tongue. What have they to do with language change?
A Social norm is the sociological term for the behavioral expectations and cues within a society or group. They have been defined as "the rules that a group uses for appropriate and inappropriate values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors. These rules may be explicit or implicit. Failure to stick to the rules can result in severe punishments, the most feared of which is exclusion from the group." They have also been described as the "customary rules of behavior that coordinate our interactions with others." The social norms indicate the established and approved ways of doing things, of dress, of speech and of appearance. These vary and evolve not only through time but also vary from one age group to another and between social classes and social groups. What is deemed to be acceptable dress, speech or behaviour in one social group may not be accepted in another. Deference to the social norms maintains one's acceptance and popularity within a particular group; ignoring the social norms risks one becoming unacceptable, unpopular or even an outcast from a group. What is deemed acceptable to young people is often unacceptable to elderly people; this difference is caused by the different social norms that operate and are tacitly agreed-upon in such different groups of people. Social norms tend to be tacitly established and maintained through body language and non-verbal communication between people in their normal social discourse.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norm_%28sociology%29
Childish errors
Slips of the tongue
For thousands of years, the scholars and philosophers interested in the nature of language have believed that language and speech are composed of discrete units of sound and meaning. Although the sound represented by the letters d-o-g may be continuous on a physical level, the word can be considered to be composed of separate sounds. This is as true of languages without a written alphabet (and there are thousands of such languages spoken in the world) as those like English with a written form. While these units are not normally observed in error free speech, speech errors which move or substitute, delete or add sounds or words or phrases show the existence of such units, as illustrated in the the following examples:
(1) stick in the mud > smuck in the tid (consonant segments exchange)
(2) ad hoc > odd hack (vowel segments exchange)
(3) unanimity > unamity (syllable deleted)
(4) easily enough > easy enoughly (suffix moved)
(5) tend to turn out > turn to tend out (words exchange)
(6) my sister went to the Grand Canyon > the grand canyon went to my sister (whole phrase exchange).
http://psikoloji.fisek.com.tr/psycholinguistics/Fromkin.html