MILROY, LINGUISTIC VARIATION AND CHANGE
What is more common in language uniformity or variability?
There are different points of conceiving a language:
Diachronic linguistics→ [tr. F. diachronique (F. de Saussure a 1913, in Cours de linguistique générale (1916) iii. 120).] Pertaining to or designating a method of linguistic study concerned with the historical development of a language; historical, as opposed to descriptive or synchronic. (Oxford English Dictionary)
Synchronic linguistics→ [tr. F. synchronique (F. de Saussure a 1913, in Cours de linguistique générale (1916) iii. 117).] Pertaining to or designating a method of linguistic study concerned with the state of a language at one time, past or present; descriptive, as opposed to historical or diachronic. (Oxford English Dictionary)
Uniform states of language are idealizations, so variable states are normal: human languages are continuously changing in the course of the history (variability); however, problems appear when languages are conceived as having finite states of language at different times (uniformity).
What kinds of variability exist?
As languages are variable, they can be variable regarding to the history, the geography (dialect), the society and the situational context in which they are used (register: field, mode and tenor).
This heterogeneity of language is very important in the study of a language.
How do we decide if a particular group of speakers belong to a particular dialect or language?
It is in spoken language when we are able to detect structural and phonetic changes.
Sometimes, it is easy to identify someone as a member of a linguistic group because of the special pronunciation they use; but other times, it is not.
Sibboleth→ A peculiarity of pronunciation that indicates someone's regional and/or social origins, such as toity-toid thirty-third, serving to identify someone from Brooklyn. (from Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language in English Language Reference)
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?
It is reasonable because they followed a pattern based on synchronic descriptions of languages, i.e. focusing on a particular period of time. However, as languages are changing all the time, they should be studied following a diachronic description, that is, looking at the change from one period to another
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?
Unattested→ not existing in any documented form: if a will contains unattested changes, the changes will be disregarded although large masonry instruments were not unattested in the world, they were constructed infrequently. • Linguistics denoting a form or usage ... (From The New Oxford American Dictionary in English Dictionaries & Thesauruses)
If we studied languages following a synchronic linguistics, we would think language as being perfectly structured at some times but flawed at other timesa and the “unattested states” of language would affect the following stage of the language.
However, we know language change is always is progress and all dialects are transitional dialects.
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?
Non-professional attitudes toward languages are found not only in popular circles; there is an ideal of perfect language, but the fact is that a standard (never changes) does not really exist.
Errors are found with regards top the normative; some people think the way they speak is an error, but it is a tendency that will win the standard.
We can say this is the situation of Valencian, my mother tongue, because there is no consensus to whether the different varieties (Valencià, Català, Balear) represent the same language or not. In some geographical variations, we can found that people use lots of Spanish words and it is considered incorrect because it does not follow the normative.
Why does Milroy use “scare quotes” around non-standard and errors?
Milroy uses this term to express that he does not accept the term because it is not really his opinion. The use of “scare quotes” is ironical because he wants to express the disagreement with those non-professional ideas.
Are non-standard dialects “incorrect, irregular, ungrammatical and deviant.”?
Grammaticality is not important for English speakers; the matter is describing accurately the agreement of the speakers’ community, that is, the consensus norm of each community.
Standard→ which is learned and accepted as correct across a community or set of communities in which others are also used: e.g. Standard English, as used especially in writing, vs. regional dialects, creoles based on English, etc. Standardization is the ... (From The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics in English Language Reference)
Dialect→ manner of speaking, language, speech; esp. a manner of speech peculiar to, or characteristic of, a particular person or class; phraseology, idiom.(Oxford English Dictionary)
Which of these systems is more irregular? Why?
|
Myself Yourself Himself Herself Ourselves Themselves |
Myself Yourself Hisself Herself Ourselves Theirselves |
The more irregular is the first column because it is the standard one. Rules and norms are agreed socially, so a community of speakers will differ from another: both communities speak English and norms are a matter of usage, not a matter of grammaticality.
“… 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?
Idiolect→ linguistic system of one person, that differs in some details from that of all other speakers of the same dialect or language. (Oxford English Dictionary).
I think theories are based on written data because there is an enormous variability of situated speeches. As seen above, every person has his/her own linguistic system, and the vast majority of them do not follow the grammatical norms; so spoken data l is not a trustful material to rely when interpreting the changes in a 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?
All language descriptions should be normative, but not prespective. Language descriptions should coincide as possible with the consensus linguistic norms of usafe within the speech comunities; so, they don’t have to prescribe how people should speak.
Normative→ that constitutes or serves as a norm or standard; implying or derived from a norm; prescriptive. (Oxford English Dictionary).
“He ate the pie already” is considered non-standard by speakers of English, however it is more or less acceptable in colloquial speech.
What is the difference between descriptive and prescriptive grammars?
Descriptive→ describing the structure of a language at a given time, avoiding comparisons with other languages or other historical phases, and free from social valuations; as in descriptive grammar, linguistics, etc. (Oxford English Dictionary).
Prescriptive→ that prescribes or directs; giving definite, precise directions or instructions. In later use, in Linguistics: that lays down rules of usage. (Oxford English Dictionary).
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?
The prestige motivation shows us that we often use language to express a superior social status, that’s why there is a social motivation for moving in the Received Pronunciation direction because it is thought dialects are ungrammatical, deviant... The solidarity constraint refers to the variation of a language depending on the social context a speech takes place; people tend to adapt its language to the norms of the local speech community rather than to their own norms to feel integrated.
They are totally opposed. While the first concept expresses an attempt of stand out among other speakers, the second concept expresses an adaptation of our degree of formality to fit in a certain society.
Sound change: post-vocalic /r/ in New York.
The restoration of post-vocalic /r/
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/Atlas_chapters/Ch07_2nd.rev.pdf
It seems clear that the default value in the seventeenth and eighteenth century for North American dialects was consistent r-pronunciation. The areas of r-vocalization in the eastern United States are centered about the major cities of Boston, Providence, New York, Richmond, Charleston, Savannah, and Atlanta. New York City is an exception here; the r-less area surrounding the city is confined to New York and its immediate neighbors, Jersey City and Newark. This geographic constriction of the NYC dialect is characteristic of the dialect as a whole. 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.
r-pronunciation was examined in some detail in the sociolinguistic study of New York City (Labov 1966). 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. 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).
The change from long ā to ō in some dialects of English.
The father-bother merger is a merger of the Early Modern English vowels /ɑː/ and /ɒ/ that occurs in almost all varieties of North American English (exceptions are accents in northeastern New England, such as the Boston accent, and in New York
City). In those accents with the merger father and bother rhyme, and Kahn and con are homophonous as [kɑn]. Unrounding of EME /ɒ/ is found also in Norwich, the West Country, the West
Midlands and in Hiberno-English, but apparently with no phonemic merger.
Actuation: Why did /k/ palatalize before certain front vowels? PrsE: cheese, German käse English/Norse doublets shirt/skirt?
To explain a change in a language, we have to take into account the speakers, their sociak contexts and hte internal structural properties of the language:
With the words above, we observe patterns of change versus patterns of stability in languages and dialects of similiar structure. Perhaps the proximity of the velar consonant to a fron vowel is a necessary condition to palatalize /k/, but it does not happen in every case; so, we have to take into account that, in some cases, the social conditons must have been favoruable to the change (differentiate homonimyc words) or prevented the change.
What is the biological metaphor in language change?
The biological metaphor refers to the fact that a language is seen as a physical science, that is, it is thought that a language has life and changes occur by its capaciticy of change, not by the creativity of speakers. Languages are compared with a living thing: “language birth”, “language death”, “roots of the language”, etc.
What is the difference between internal and external histories of a language?
When people talk about the internal history of a language, they are referring to the sound-change and the morphological changes it has suffered by the pass of the time. However, when they talk about the external history of a language, they refer to the different contexts in which this language occur (politics, society, speakers’ attitude to variation...) and affect the language change.
It was thought that external facts did not affect languages and it did not help to explain changes in linguistic structure. That’s the resason why external history is considered unimportant.
Look up Neogrammarians and lexical diffusion. Why are they often found in the same paragraph or chapter?
Neogrammarian → any of a group of German scholars that arose around 1875; their chief tenet concerning language change was that sound laws have no exceptions. This principle was very controversial because there seemed to be several irregularities in language change not accounted for by the sound laws. (Encyclopedia Britannica).
Lexical diffusion→ the gradual spread of a phonetic or other change across the vocabulary of a language or across a speech community: e.g. the spread of [k] > [
] (in chat, chanter, etc.) across north-west France, attested at the beginning of the 20th century by the survey for the Atlas linguistique de la France.
In the ideal case, the spread would be simultaneously in both respects. So, at a given moment, (a) some words will have changed, or will be used more often in the changed form, while others will not have changed, or will be used less often in a changed form; (b) some speakers will use changed forms, or will use changed forms more often, while others will not use them, or will use them less often. This would lead, again in the ideal case, to smooth variation on both dimensions. (From The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics in English Language Reference)
They often appear together because they are contraries: while the first stands that a diachronic sound change affects simultaneously all words in which its environment is met without any exception; the second stands 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.
Look up social norm-enforcement, childish errors and slips of the tongue. What have they to do with language change?
Childish errors and slips of the tongue might be causes of innovation and eventually of change. Social norm-enforcement normally makes it less difficult for innovations to take hold.