Christian Moreno Lence’s Exercises

 

Milroy says that the variability in language is more common. According to him ‘change seems to be inherent in the nature of language’ and ‘Languages are never uniform entities’ because he tells us if we looked in the past the language has constantly changed  due to geographical and social variability and ‘according to the situational contexts in which they are used’.

 

Milroy points out three kinds of variability:

- ‘Geographical variability’: according the place where someone lives.

- ‘Social variability’: according to class in which someone belongs to.

- ‘Temporal variability’: ‘according to the situational contexts in which they are used’ Milroy says.

 

Depending on the place you have been born and the social class you belong to, because owed to the place where you live or the social class that you are, therefore, you will speak on a way or other way since it’s not the same people who live in a conflicted neighborhood  than the one who live in a wealthy neighborhood because the first one will usually speak wrongly than the second one.

 

This is reasonable in the fact of that period, in which Saussure lived, owed to linguistics didn’t have the technological advances which structuralists have nowadays, then, it’s understandable that Saussure emphasized the importance of synchronic descriptions of languages rather than diachronic. Howevere, this isn’t really reasonable due to languages change gradually, as Milroy said, that is to say, ‘linguist change is always in progress, and all dialects are transitional dialects’ so, ‘language state is a perfectly balanced and stable structure’ as Saussure and his disciples said it’s impossible and unreasonable, therefore, diachronic description is more logical, because languages change gradually, than sinchronic description, in which languages changes in a given time.

 

According to Milroy, it would be abnormal because of the unattested states of language, hence there would be ‘healthy languages (where everything holds together) and sick languages (where it does not)’, however, we have seen that languages change gradually and so, languages aren’t stable nor perfectly structured  nor hold together, consequently, linguistic change is not abnormal.

 

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.”

 

For instance, we have “leismo” (’Le dije’, to him or her) or “dequeismo” (’Le dije de que’) which are not accepted by the RAE but they are accepted or regularly used by people, or other examples like the wrong use of the ‘Presente de Subjuntivo’, ‘haiga’ instead of ‘haya’.

 

Because, he uses this term for ‘non-standard’ words and ‘errors’ like ‘Me dejao’ ‘Me comprao’  which are common mistakes that people have got used to use them and we will use during our lifetime. This scares to Milroy because

 

Milroy comments that non-standard dialects aren’t “incorrect, irregular, ungrammatical and deviant”, he thinks ‘norms’ are the problem because, in general terms, linguistics attempt to make generalizations or set patterns to everything related to the language, therefore, it is considered ‘standard languages’ as correct and ‘non-standard dialects’ as incorrect and Milroy states that ‘it is not a matter of grammaticality or ungrammaticality of the usage for all speakers of English; it is a matter of accurately describing what is agreed on by speakers in the community concerned as the consensus norm of that community’.

 

The second one is more irregular because the first one is generally used by English speakers and it’s accepted as standard, instead of the second one which could be used by a non-standard dialect in a town, for instance.

So, as Milroy would say, the second one wouldn’t be incorrect but non-standard.

 

Myself

Yourself

Himself

Herself

Ourselves

Themselves

Myself

Yourself

Hisself

Herself

Ourselves

Theirselves

 

Because it was dificult to linguistics to base on speech, historically, due to the lack of materials to get information, therefore, they had to base on written documents which are easier to keep rather than speech information.

 

This is accepted and is spreading in South British English but not in Recieve Pronunciation which is the Standard English. In Spain we have an ocurrence seemed like ‘Le dije que me lo trajera’ (It just happend), it sounds bad but is more or less acceptable, it’s more common to use ‘Le he dicho que me lo trajera’, instead of.

 

- Descriptive grammars: ‘are normative because to be accurate they have to coincide as closely as possible with the consensus norms of the community concerned’ this means that they attend to show every choice in a language, being able to choose any option you prefer or  you think convenient.

- Prescriptive grammars: ‘enforcing a norm’, that is to say, they show how people shuould speak because it’s more correct and standard. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The prestige motivation for change is the way we view our language and how other people use it and solidarity constraint refers the way in which we adapt our language depending on the social context in which we find ourselves. These concepts are opposed because the first one refers to the desire of having a social status and the second one refers to the desire of being accepted by others.

 

Some people who speak English, pronounce a word that contain a vowel followed by an “r”, like they write this word, but on the other hand, others speakers don´t pronounce this “r”.

 

  Because the place and degree of palatization of words depend on the different meaning between the word doublets.

 

The biological metaphor in language change can be attribute to the fact that language pass from one generation to another.

 

Internal is the change caused by structural requirements of the language, or it does not in which case one speaks of externally motivated change.
Internally motivated change usually leads to balance in the system, the removal of marked elements, the analogical spread of regular forms or the like. As language consists of various modules on various levels, a change in one quarter may lead to an imbalance in another and provoke a further change.

With the current kind of change the available structure of the language plays an important role. For instance English has maintained a distinction in voice among interdental fricatives as seen in teeth /ti:þ/ and teethe /ti:ð/ although the functional load is very slight.

 

Internal is the change caused by structural requirements of the language, or it does not in which case one speaks of externally motivated change.

Internally motivated change usually leads to balance in the system, the removal of marked elements, the analogical spread of regular forms or the like. As language consists of various modules on various levels, a change in one quarter may lead to an imbalance in another and provoke a further change.

With the current kind of change the available structure of the language plays an important role. For instance English has maintained a distinction in voice among interdental fricatives as seen in teeth /ti:þ/ and teethe /ti:ð/ although the functional load is very slight.

 

Most of these happen by mistake in the oral language, but it may be possible that these accidental erros become a part of the language, changing its structure and quality.

"Slips of the tongue" stands for an accidental and usually trivial mistake in speaking, usually a a statement that contains a mistake because of a ransposition of initial consonants in a pair of words. Childish errors are the mistakes usually done by kids and young people,  it's our job the avoid this error in the language by correcting them, if we don't do it, the error may become part of the language.