Answer
the following questions using the book and
other sources.
* Why
does Milroy say that sound-change appears to have no “obvious
function or rational
motivation” (146)?
Milroy says that because sound change is probably the most mysterious aspect of change in language, as it appears to have no obvious function or rational motivation. In a change from [e:] to [i:], for example, (as in such items as meet, need, keen in the history of English), 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 and no loss.
*
What is/are the main difference/s between Milroy’s approach
and that of the
Neogrammarians? (147-148)?
The 19th
Century Neogrammarian
movement was based on the idea that sound change is regular and
therefore, 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 Neogrammarians
and others’ have assumed that linguistic
change is best studied by reference to monolingual states; whereas
Milroy and
other scholars have now access to bilingual and multilingual speech
communities, on which cross-language patterns of variation can be
studied.
Sociolinguistic research is focused on localized varieties in regional
speech
communities, in
which
there are no clearly defined linguistic boundaries.
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.
* 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.
* 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. Sounds don’t change
but are replaced
for others. That
is the
reason why Milroy disagrees with the idea of
“blind” sound change.
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.
* 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
* What
are “community” or “vernacular”
norms? What term that we have used in class is
similar (152)?
These norms
are observed by speakers and
maintained by communities often in opposition to standardizing norms.
We can
recognize different dialects of
languages thanks to these norms, which manifest themselves at different
levels
of generality. A similar term that we have used in class may be is geographical variety, which refers to
dialects and the
wave theory, which implies that a
change
spreads successively to further contexts and social groups.
* What
does Milroy mean when he says that
h-dropping may not ever reach “completion” (153)?
Milroy points
out 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 speakers will
never consider “h-dropping”
as normative.
* 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.
When an innovation is adopted by a speech community, the process involved is fundamentally a borrowing processThe adoption of a linguistic change depends at the speaker-level on a process of borrowing.
* 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.
*
What is necessary for a sound to spread (157)?
The spread of
sounds is a social progress which can result from borrowing or a sudden
replacement
of one trill by another, so
they can be used to identify social patterns.
* 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.
* What does Milroy mean by
“clean” and “dirty”
data (158)?
When Milroy speaks about “clean” data, he refers to the result of the investigation of standarized speaking communities, where the language is uniform, unilinear and normalized (idealized); whereas “dirty” data is the result of sociolinguistic studies, in which language is considered as irregular and chaotic.
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Barry Pennock Speck
© Myriam Martín Torralba
mymarto@alumni.uv.es
Universitat de València Press