UNIT 1, ACTIVITIES:
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?
MILROY, SOME NEW PERSPECTIVES ON SOUND CHANGE: SOCIOLINGUISTICS AND NEOGRAMMARIANS
Why does Milroy say that sound change appears to have no “obvious function or rational motivation” (146)?
Sound change appears to have no rational motivation because it is impossible to see any progress or any benefit to the language or to its speakers. The change of one sound for another is based on individual discretion or preference; so, there is no profit and no lose apparently.
What is/are the main difference/s between Milroy’s approach and that of the Neogrammarians (147-148)?
Neogrammarians’ theory is based on the idea that sound change is regular and always happens in the same context without exceptions (regularity principle) and were also interested in how sound change is compelled: sound change is lexically abrupt, although it is phonetically gradual.
The main difference between them is that Neogrammarians approached the language separated from their speakers and focused it as an object that’s why it was thought that linguistic change is independent of speakers; while Milroy’s sociolinguistic approach necessarily deals with speakers and different social contexts. Another difference is that phonetic change is studied by Neogrammarians as if there were different monolingual states; whereas sociolinguistic research focuses on localized varieties of a language that are not well-defined linguistic entities.
According to Milroy, what is language change dependent on? (149?)
Language change is dependent on a context of language maintenance. The degree to which change is admitted will depend of the degree of internal cohesion of the speech community (“strong ties”, which resist the change) and change from outside will be admitted to the extent that there are large numbers of “weak ties” with outsiders: the change has to be maintained by social acceptance and social pressure.
Why does Milroy say that sound change actually doesn’t exist (150)?
Milroy states that speech sounds do no physically change; but, in the course of the time, one sound is replaced by another and speakers of this dialect start to use the new sound where formerly used the old one.
So, sound change does not exist because what happens is a result of social process.
Why does Milroy disagree with the Neogrammarians when they say that sound change is “blind” (150)?
Milroy and other sociolinguistics state that it isn’t language that changes, but it is speakers who change languages. So this idea it different from that of “blind” change because change is a social phenomenon manifested in language usage.
What is meant by “lexical diffusion” (151)?
Lexical diffusion is a socially gradual process where the new form differs considerably from the original one. A distinction is made between “regular” sound change, where there is a slight change from the older form, and lexical diffusion, where there is a gross phonetic change.
What does dialect displacement mean? Give an example. (152)
Dialect displacement means that a dialect is substituted for another one which is socially dominant in a particular time.
Milroy uses the example that much New Zealand English in the 19th century was southern British in type and it was displaced by an Australian type.
What are “community” or “vernacular” norms? What term that we have used in class is similar (152)?
Community norms are those which exist apart from the standard ones and characterize a dialect as a whole. These norms are observed and conserved by speech communities often in opposition to standardizing norms and manifest themselves at different levels of generality.
What does Milroy mean when he says that h-dropping may not ever reach “completion” (153)?
Milroy explains that a change can persist as a variable state over the centuries and it can not be completed in a traditional sense. He uses the example of h-dropping because it is commonly used, but we might never reach a point where the h-dropping usage is considered normative by all English speakers.
Explain what Milroy means by “speaker innovation” and change in the system. How are they connected (153)?
Both terms should reflect a conceptual distinction:
An innovation is an act of the speaker and when it occurs it must be irregular, unstructured and not describable by methods; so it is speakers who innovate, and not languages. However, a change is manifested within the language system.
An innovation may happen again and again without resulting in a linguistic change in the speech community. A change is not a change until it is assumed as a social pattern in a speech community.
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)?
The propagation of a change is by borrowing. Milroy affirms that the distinction between true sound change and phonological borrowing is poorly motivated with this statement: «a single event of borrowing into a new speech community is as much as an innovation as the presumed original event in the “original speech community”»
What is necessary for a sound to spread (157)?
Sound changes have normally been observed to spread gradually through the lexicon: sound spread can result from borrowing or a sudden replacement of one sound by another; however, all sound changes must be socially conditioned to spread, because they do not become changes until they are
Why does believing in the ideology of standardization lead to believing in “blind necessity” (158)?
From a sociolinguistic point of view, standard languages are not normal languages because they have been created by imposition (planned by human beings and maintained by prescription) and its sound patterns (and its changes, too) are thought to happen by “blind necessity”.
The ideology of standardization takes people to believe that dialects and other languages that have not been standardized have fuzzy boundaries and are indeterminate.
What does Milroy mean by “clean” and “dirty” data (158)?
Milroy talks about “clean data” when referring to the standard language which has been shown as a uniform, unilinear and normalized language. Whereas “dirty data” refers to the vernacular languages we actually encounter in the speech community conceived as irregular and chaotic.
TRANSCRIPTION: “INDO-EUROPEAN EXCERPT FROM BEFORE BABEL”
Radio Sunrise serves the West London community of mixed races, Punjabi speakers and the midst of an English suburb. What can these two languages, Punjabi and English, have in common? In fact, English and Punjabi, as well as other languages of nothern India, like Indi or Gudjurati, are related- something discoverd by chance two hundred years ago by a multilingual English lawyer, Sir William Jones. He was a judge who went out to India in 1783, but he studied languages, oriental languages, before he went. And when he got to India, he became very interested and learnt Sanscrit which is the language of Ancient India, which is first written about 500 a.D. and then he realised he made this great discovery that Sanscrit resembles in some way, has relationsip, with Greek and Latin and other languages. And he gave a very famous discourse in which he says that “these were sprung from some common source”.
It’s surprising that no one spotted the resemblances earlier. Take the numbers again, for example: the Sanscrit, on the right, bears a strong resemblance with Latin and Greek, on the left; but while one, two and three are obvius; four and five need a closer look to spot the connection. Linguists have discovered rules that govern how sounds in different languages are related. Look at the words for “four”, this is one of many examples where a word beggining in “q” in Latin say, is similar with a Greek word begining with “t” and to a Sanscrit word begining with “k”. These sound correspondances can reveal how apparently unrelated languages are members of the same family.
The question is, how can you tell that the languages you’re looking at reflect a single original language and, therefore, form a family? The only way you can do that is by finding systematic similarities between these languages, in every area of their grammar similarities and their sounds similarities, in their inflections, similarities in the syntax of the language and so forth, and the similarities have to be very precise and have to be interlocking for the assertion that these languages form a family or to be believable. You take a look at an English word like “tooth” and see that in Indi is “dant” and that by itself that doesn’t mean very much; but you take a look at English “ten” which shows up in Hindi as “das” and you see the same pattern emerging: you have an initial “t” in English and an initial “d” in Indi. When you find the word “two”, the numeral, in English shows up in Hindi as “do”, and you have got, once again, an initial “t” in English and an initial “d” in Hindi, you begin to think that perhaps this is not an accident.
Linguists have now stablished that a whole range of languages, stretching from Iceland to India, form one family called Indo-European. We can even reconstruct an earlier ancestor of these languages Proto-Indo-European.