Exercises
Here
are the exercises we do for the subject ordered by date.
● Transcription of the Video
about Indo-European
Radio
What could these
two languages, Punjabi and English have in common? In fact, English and
Punjabi, as well as other languages of
He was a
judge who went out to
It’s
surprising that no one spotted the resemblances earlier. Take the numbers
again, for example. The Sanskrit on the right has a strong resemblance to Latin
and Greek on the left, but while one,
two and three are obvious, four
and five need a closer look to spot
the connexion.
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 beginning with Q in Latin, say, is
similar to a Greek word beginning with T, and a Sanskrit word beginning with K.
These sound correspondences (q=t=k) can reveal how apparently unrelated
languages are members of the same family.
Unus--------heis-----ekas
Duo---------duo------dva
Tres---------treis------tryas
Quattuor---tettares---ketvaras
Quinque----pente-----panca
The question
is how can you tell that the languages you are 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 in their sounds, similarities in other inflections,
similarities in the syntax of the language, and so forth). And the similarities
have to be very precise, and they 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 Hindi it’s Dant, and by itself that doesn’t
mean very much. But you take a look at English Ten, and it shows up in Hindi as Das, and you see the same pattern emerging, you’ve got an initial T
in English and an initial D in Hindi. When you find that the word Two, the numeral, in English shows up in
Hindi as Do, and you’ve 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 established that a whole range of languages stretching from
● James Milroy: Some new perspectives on sound change: sociolinguistics and the
Neogrammarians. 146-160.
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)
When Milroy says “sound change is
probably the most mysterious aspect of change in language, as it appears to
have no obvious function or rational motivation”, he means that every sound
chosen to become part of a word is arbitrary (except for iconic words -*see
“Concepts” for a fuller definition-). There is no reason why a sound is chosen
instead of another one, so the fact that a word changes fully or partially in
sound terms will be as meaningless or useful as the previous election of
sounds; it will only depend on social, historical, diachronic or geographical
matters which will have as he says, “no function or rational motivation”. Thus,
that change won’t be of any improvement to the previous pronunciation of the
words (albeit the fact that, sometimes, sound change or abbreviation in
pronunciation is made to simplify the word).
Therefore, due to this difficulty in
knowing with what finality a word changes in terms of sound, we have to first
consider the circumstances under which this change takes place, and this might
enlighten our understanding and give as a clue about why the word evolved, and
if this evolution, basically chosen by the community of speakers, has been of
any use or just the result of a random combination of altering-form factors.
What is/are the main
difference/s between Milroy’s approach and that of the Neogrammarians?
(147-148)
In order to answer this question we
are going to enumerate in first place the characteristics of the
Neogrammarians’ approach, and later, the one of Milroy.
Neogrammarians: they were a German
school of linguists,
originally at the University of Leipzig, in the late 19th
century who proposed the Neogrammarian
hypothesis of the regularity of sound
change. According to this hypothesis, a diachronic sound change affects simultaneously
all words in which its environment is met, without exception. Today this
hypothesis is considered more of a guiding principle
than an exceptionless fact, as numerous examples of
lexical diffusion (where a sound change affects only a few words at first and
then gradually spreads to other words) have been attested. Wikipedia.
Here are the characteristics of the
Neogrammarians’ theories:
-
sound change is “regular”: sound “laws” have no
exceptions. So, if a sound changes in a particular lexical item, it has to
change too in all the other relevant items. If there is any exception, this
will be accounted by another regular change.
-
they were interested in how sound change is
implemented (excluding analogy and borrowing).
-
regular sound change is phonetically gradual but
lexically abrupt, and it affects all relevant items in the same way at the same
time.
-
phonetical gradualness was feasible because of
their tendency to separate languages from their speakers and to focus on
language as an object.
-
they see a “blind necessity” in linguistic change.
-
they tend to be dichotomous.
-
they are non-social.
-
their main sources are written, although they
recognized the importance of listening to present-day dialects. They generally
depended on documentary records of ancient languages and couldn’t adequately
observe language in the community as we do today. They used mostly a
comparative method for completed or almost completed changes in languages that
were usually discrete entities: they couldn’t localize change in progress at
early stages and in localized varieties.
-
they didn’t know if sound change was implemented in
a phonetically gradual manner. As Milroy says “many have believed in the
imperceptibility of change –the idea that sound change takes place in phonetic
steps that are too small for the ear to detect”.
-
social explanations were only used in generalized
ways, and still in the mid-twentieth century, they still assumed that social
explanations weren’t feasible.
-
the object of linguistic investigation is not the language system, but rather the
idiolect,
that is, language as it is localized in the individual, and therefore it’s
directly observable. Wikipedia.
-
autonomy of the sound level: being the most observable
aspect of language, the sound level is seen as the most important level of
description, and absolute autonomy of the sound level from syntax and semantics
is assumed. Wikipedia.
-
historicism: the chief goal of linguistic investigation is
the description of the historical change of a language. Wikipedia.
-
analogy: if the premise of the inviolability of sound
laws fails, analogy
can be applied as an explanation if plausible. Thus, exceptions are understood
to be a (regular) adaptation to a related form. Wikipedia.
-
the Neogrammarians’ main contention was that language change
was systematic. Their critics pointed to the large number of apparent
exceptions to rules such as these, but the Neogrammarians replied that where
the rules seemed not to work, this was always due to one of the following:
a) further rules, perhaps not yet discovered, needed to be
taken into account.
b) the workings of analogy needed to be considered.
c) the word in question had been borrowed from another
language, and so had not undergone the sound-changes concerned.
Pétur Knútsson, Senior
Lecturer of English Language. Faculty
of Humanities,
Now we are
going to look at the sociolinguists:
-
in reference to the Neogramarians’ point number
3, Milroy disagrees: “I do not think that this is a plausible scenario for
sound change”.
-
language study has to take into consideration the
social aspect, and not separate languages from their speakers. He thinks that
then, we commit the error of believing that linguistic change is
language-internal, independent of speakers and imperceptible.
-
in reference to the Neogramarians’ point number
5, Milroy says that sociolinguists disagree with the idea of this “blind
necessity”. He points out that “it isn’t languages that change –it is speakers
who change languages”.
-
Milroy
says that sound change is socially gradual, and he explains a difference with
scholars in the past: they “sometimes have equated phonetic gradualness with
social gradualness”.
-
the sociolinguists have data-base available for
study and methods to study it (access to bilingual and multilingual speech
communities, which question the preference of studying linguistic change by
reference to monolingual states).
-
research in social dialectology, which doesn’t focus on
whole languages, but on localized varieties in regional speech communities
(that is where they identify changes in progress).
-
Milroy
has also tried to combine this type of research with a theory of language
standarization.
-
they have looked at the highly variable states they
find in speech community researches, so there are big differences in data-base.
-
Milroy
thinks that if we had never known about the Neogrammarians’ axioms, we would
have never thought of them as primary principles. He adds that sociolinguistic
findings have laid the groundwork of a new kind of approach to language change,
based on how to define sound change and how to locate it when it is in
progress.
-
in reference to the Neogramarians’ point number
9, Milroy says that “this is a mystical view of change, more appropriate to a
belief system than to a science” because, according to him, if the phonetic
steps of sound change weren’t big enough, we could not detect it in progress.
According to Milroy,
what is language change dependent on? (149)
According to Milroy, language change
depends on two things: maintenance and social acceptation. His personal study’s
priority is to focus on language maintenance over the study of language change.
He says that language change happens in a context of maintenance, this is that
a change will or won’t take place depending on how strong are the boundaries
that a community of speakers have to preserve their language from change, and
“change from outside will be admitted to the extent that there are large
numbers of weak ties with outsiders”.
Then comes
the other factor on which language change depended: the social acceptation. As
Milroy says, “if a change persists in the system, it has again to be maintained
by social acceptance and social pressure; thus, not only communities resist
change, also a change is maintained in the system after it has been accepted”.
Why does Milroy say
that sound change actually doesn’t exist? (150)
As Milroy says, “speech sounds do
not “physically” change: what happens is that in the course of time one sound
is substituted by another; speakers begin to use sound X in environments where
speakers formerly used sound Y. Historical linguistic scholars observe the
result of this essentially social process and apply the term sound change to the phenomenon (…) What
they actually observe is not a sound change, but a “diachronic correspondence”
between language states at two or more points in time. In effect, they use a
system-based term (sound change) for a speaker-based event in time”.
So the conclusion we take from this
is that he doesn’t believe in sound change because he thinks there is no such
thing, that sound doesn’t change on itself, that what we really have is an
evolution of the language in time due to social factors. He says: “linguistic
change in general is a result of changes in speaker-agreement on the norms of
usage in speech communities”. So he is basing this linguistic phenomenon on
social influence.
Why does Milroy
disagree with the Neogrammarians when they say that sound change is “blind”?
(150)
Milroy disagrees because, for the
Neogrammarians there was no social factor which provoked sound change, and, as
they didn’t study the changes in process focusing on a community of speakers,
it was difficult for them to detect a sound change while it was in process; this
is why for them changes were imperceptible until once they had occurred and
they studied the history of changes through the years (historical linguistic
scholars) but for them the change was “blind” because of this.
Milroy, because of being on the
sociolinguists’ side, thinks that changes aren’t blind, that they can be
perceived, even in the moment when they occur, but taking in consideration,
once again, the social factor: “it isn’t languages that change –it is speakers
who change languages. Such a vision is obviously a very long distance away from
the Neogrammarian notion that sound change is ‘blind’ ”.
What is meant by
“lexical diffusion”? (151)
The meaning of this term as well as
‘regular sound change’ will also appear in the section “Concepts” on this web
page.
When Milroy mentions this concept,
he is talking about the phonetic distance between a first state of a word and
the next one which this word presents after having passed through a phonetic
change. Depending on the social gradualness of this change, he distinguishes
between two types of process: a regular sound change and lexical diffusion.
Both could be equally described as a
“socially gradual process” and an “abrupt replacement pattern” which can be
regular in some sense. But they differ in one thing: in a regular sound change
“the new form differs only slightly from the older one, whereas in lexical
diffusion it differs markedly”.
But, as he points out, these two
kinds of sound change aren’t opposing, they are one same thing, just that with
some phonetic differences.
Milroy and sociolinguists claim that
there is no evidence to the Neogrammarian assumption that in regular sound
change all the items change at the same time, because they normally spread
gradually. Therefore, he thinks that this distinction we do between the two
change-processes depending on the gradualness wouldn’t have ever been thought
of “if we had never heard of the Neogrammarians”.
Here there’s some more information:
“In historical linguistics, lexical diffusion is both a phenomenon and a theory. The
phenomenon is that by which a phoneme is modified in a subset of the lexicon,
and spreads gradually to other lexical items. For example, in English, /uː/ has changed
to /ʊ/ in good and hood but not in food;
some dialects have it in hoof and roof but others do not; in flood
and blood it happened early enough that the words were affected by the
change of /ʊ/ to /ʌ/,
which is now no longer productive.
The related theory, proposed by
William Wang in 1969 is 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.
The theory of lexical diffusion stands in contrast to the Neogrammarian hypothesis that a given sound change applies
simultaneously to all words in which its context is found.
William Labov
(*see “Concepts” for more information about him), in Principles of
Linguistic Change, takes the position that there are two types of sound
changes: regular sound change (respecting the Neogrammarian hypothesis) and
lexical diffusion. Labov lists a typology, according
to which certain phenomena are typically or exclusively regular (example, vowel
quality changes), while others (example, metathesis, or vowel shortening) tend
to follow a lexical diffusion pattern.”
Wikipedia.
What does dialect
displacement mean? Give an example. (152)
As Milroy explains, another pattern
of change in more general levels is dialect displacement. This is “displacement
of one dialect by another which is, for some reason, socially dominant at some
particular time”.
He gives two examples:
-
“much New Zealand English in the nineteenth century was
southern British in type (favoured by males), and it was displaced by an
Australian type (favoured by females) with some effects of mixing and residue.”
-
“the gradual displacement of heavily inflected West Midland
dialects of Middle English by weakly inflected
The reasons for dialect displacement
can be various: contact with another language during enough time for the change
to take place (for political, geographical, economical, etc. reasons), a matter
of prestige, imitating a more prestigious zone, or people we admire…
What are “community”
or “vernacular” norms? What term that we have used in class is similar? (152)
In contrast to standarizing
norms (*see “Concepts”), which are codified and legislated and enforced in an
impersonal way by the institutions of society, we find ‘community’ or
‘vernacular’ norms.
These latter ones’ existence is
proven by the fact that we can recognize dialects of a language and therefore
see that they have been accepted by a community of speakers, often in
opposition to standarizing norms. These ‘community’
or ‘vernacular’ norms manifest at different levels of generality, and prove
that in a speech community there is consensus on a pattern of stable variation.
Community norms can be variable, whereas standard norms are invariant.
What does Milroy mean
when he says that h-dropping may not ever reach “completion”? (153)
Milroy says “a change can persist as
a variable state for seven or eight centuries without ever going to
‘completion’ in the traditional sense”.
As he has explained, “linguistic
change is brought about by changes in agreement on norms”, therefore, if any
norm is changed, as it will depend on social consensus, it is very difficult
that it will ever be accepted by the totality of speakers of a language and
therefore be the only variant of this word used following this norm applied by
everyone.
Explain what Milroy
means by “speaker innovation” and “change in the system”. How are they
connected? (153)
There is an associated distinction
between innovation and linguistic change.
-
Innovation:
as it is considered an act of the speaker, we talk about “speaker innovation”.
-
Change:
while innovation depended on the speaker, change depends on the language
system, which is why we talk about “a change in the system”.
The distinction we must make from
this is, as Milroy says, that “it is speakers, not languages,
that innovate”. Therefore we talk about “speaker innovation”, because it
is the speaker who creates the changes, and “change in the system” because it
is the system that changes due to the speakers. So that is how they are
connected: the change in the system is the result of the speakers’ innovations.
This distinction wasn’t very
carefully observed by historical linguists, and many discussions about
linguistic change have been in reality about linguistic innovation. This has
caused confusion about how linguistic change is implemented, which was related
mostly to synchronic variability more than with change itself (once more we see
this is due to the historical linguists’ tendency to not study language change
taking into consideration the speakers’ role, which in this case of ‘speakers’
innovation’ is fundamental).
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)
Neogrammarians tended to equate
sound-change with innovation internal to the dialect concerned. But when
there’s an innovation in a speech community, the process is of borrowing
(borrowing an innovation): a sound change is passed from speaker to speaker and
it becomes a linguistic change when it is accepted by more than one speaker. So
there isn’t that much difference between borrowing and replacing one sound by
another with speaker innovation if we consider that changes are actually
innovations, and their implementation depends on borrowing.
What is necessary for
a sound to spread? (157)
When a sound spreads, the change
isn’t immediate, it is gradual. It happens by borrowing or sound replacing, and
there is another important factor that Milroy reminds us: “a linguistic change
is a change in linguistic structure which necessarily has a social
distribution. If it does not manifest such a distribution, it should not be
counted as a linguistic change”. So we can’t consider any change envisaged as
originated in a language.
Why does believing in
the ideology of standardization lead to believing in “blind necessity”? (158)
Milroy explains that our historical
linguistic tradition has caused us to understand sound change from a
standard-language point of view. This ‘ideology of the standard language’ as
Milroy explains, considered the changes to be originated in languages
themselves, rather than in speech communities.
From a sociolinguistic perspective,
standard languages aren’t normal languages, and they are created by different
kinds of impositions, and this is why they don’t think that sound changes come
by ‘blind necessity’, because for them the language states are planned by
people and are maintained by prescription and thus, aren’t blind but
perceptible.
So the conclusion we make is the
following: Milroy is against the idea of the discreteness of languages, because
he doesn’t see it as inherent in the nature of languages as a phenomenon, and
also against the idea that sound changes must come blindly and independently of
socially-based human intervention.
What
does Milroy mean by “clean” and “dirty” data? (158)
When Milroy
talks about ‘clean’ data he is referring to the data investigators are provided
with by standard languages, which have been largely normalized. Therefore, the opposite
(‘dirty’ data) will be the one which comes from the vernacular languages.
Wrongly, it
has been considered (or idealized) the fact that ‘clean’ data is uniform, unilinear and normalized, and thus, more useful in
linguistic change study. And ‘dirty’ data is considered irregular and chaotic;
that is why, in sociolinguistic investigations, in order to understand
linguistic change, they will have to deal with a more complicated data which,
on the other hand is a more accurate study, contrary to the “standard
ideology”.
● Milroy: Language Change and Variation.
What is
more common in language, uniformity or variability?
In language it is more common to see variability, though some people
would prefer it to maintain uniform and invariable. There are many factors
which make a language change (and we will list them in the next question).
Languages themselves are the best proof of the assertion that they change, as
no one remains the same as it was in a start. So uniformity is only an
impossible desire of some to keep languages stable when their nature is
variable.
Actually, Milroy explains that human language is continuously changing, each one has changed in the course of history and
is still doing so in the present. He adds that there is no stable human language.
What
kinds of variability exist?
The basic kinds of
variability are:
-
Geographical: depending on the zone where a language
is used it will present different variations (in the accent, in the vocabulary,
use of grammar, etc).
-
Diachronic: as languages are constantly changing, in
time, they will vary according to the changes which take place in each stage of
the history.
-
Social: depending at the same time on various things
like class, gender, age, sex, occupation…
How do
we decide if a particular group of speakers belong to a particular dialect or
language?
If we focus on the
analysis of the language itself used by the group of speakers, there are traces
in the accent and the use of certain vocabulary which might help us determine
where the speakers are from.
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?
We must start by pointing out that it is a mistake to consider a
language as a finite entity at different periods in time, as it is actually one
same thing subject to change along the course of history.
To consider it a finite entity makes it almost impossible to explain its
changes, as the process of change might not be very perceptible and it might be
thought that for unknown reasons, at different stages in time, a language has
become so different from its original form that it doesn’t even seem the same
language, and thus, it is considered that it isn’t the same language, that we
have different finite entities depending on the time we study them.
With diachronic descriptions we can tell why a language that at an
initial stage had a word X, when it reached a later stage, this one became Y.
So maybe a synchronic study can detect differences in a word from one stage to
another in time, but it can’t tell how the process took place and for what
reasons, how many times the initial word had changed, and of course, it might
not take to consideration the possibility that it would continue changing in
the future (if it wasn’t already doing so at the moment of the study).
Therefore, diachronic study offers a better possibility to see in more detail
the reasons and circumstances under which the changes happened and it gives a
more complete view of the evolution process.
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?
We have to consider the fact that change is a natural process in every
language, and some changes might be unattested for many different reasons. But
the fact that a language’s evolution from one stage to another can’t be
justified doesn’t make linguistic change abnormal.
Milroy explains that “the equation of uniformity with
structuredness or regularity is most evident in popular (non-professional)
attitudes to language” and adds that “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”.
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?
There are many examples of non-professional attitudes towards a
language, like it could be the case of Valenciano: specially time ago, when it
was thought that using it instead of Spanish meant a lack of culture and high
social status. That happened mostly among the people who supported a Spanish
nationalism and wanted to have uniformity and one single language in use. But
this also happens now on the other way round towards Spanish: there are some
Valenciano nationalists who refuse to speak in Spanish because they want to
claim Valenciano as the proper language to be spoken in
Why does Milroy use “scare quotes” around non-standard and errors?
He uses these scare quotes because he is talking about what others
consider “non-standard” languages and “errors” and he is showing his
disapproval towards this consideration, as he doesn’t consider that a variety
of the “standard” language should be considered so. A variety isn’t an error,
it’s just not the standard language but it is as respectable because it has
been accepted in consensus by the community of speakers of that dialect, and
because uniformity in linguistic terms shouldn’t be the most desirable.
Are non-standard
dialects “incorrect, irregular, ungrammatical and deviant.”?
Non-standard dialects aren’t incorrect, irregular and deviant. Though
some people would like to consider them so, they are only another dialect which
for some reason isn’t considered as important as the one used as the “standard”
one. It is just a dialect which has some variants in relation to the one called
“standard” due to many different factors, and the idea of following just the
“correct” and “regular” standard language is just a desire of some to think
that languages are invariable and that they should never change and should be
uniform. But variety shouldn’t be considered something negative; just something
that happens and is normal.
The non-standard words, constructions, etc. should be correct as long as
they are not used when the standard dialect is being spoken, otherwise you
would be using those words in a linguistic context where they are not correct;
but they will be correct in another standard of that language where they can be
used and be seen as correct and where they have been accepted by the community
of speakers.
Which of these systems is more irregular? Why?
|
Myself Yourself Himself Herself Ourselves Themselves |
Myself Yourself Hisself Herself Ourselves Theirselves |
The first column, although it is the one which contains the pronouns that
we use and therefore is the grammatically correct one, is more irregular
because the original form of the pronoun has changed when the morpheme –self has been added in the case of
“himself” and “themselves”. The morphemes, “his” and “their” (according to the
simple possessive pronoun structure) in the second column have changed to
become the personal pronouns “him” and “them” in the normative pattern.
“…
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 decontexutalized 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?
In my
opinion, this happens because it is very difficult for the linguist to be able
to study spoken language in context as it may vary from one to another
depending on the different speakers and other circumstances of the
communicative act. Therefore, it is easier to study written data and decontextualized citation forms.
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?
We have to consider in the first place that there isn’t an absolute
standard of grammaticality of the construction ‘past tense + just/already’, and
it isn’t a matter of being correct or not for all English speakers; if it is
correct or not will depend on what is agreed on by speakers in the community,
and each one will arrive to a particular consensus norm where it will be either
correct or not.
This construction is used in American, Irish, Scottish and Southern
British English.
It is interesting to point out too that inside a language like English,
this construction is correct in some geographical areas and not in others, but
in other languages it can be correct in everyone (like it is the case of
French).
Many times it is thought that the standard language has norms that
should be respected by all the variables of that language, otherwise, they are
committing a mistake. But actually, in cases like the example “he ate the pie
already”, where in the standard English it would be wrong to put together the
adverb ‘already’ with a past simple instead of putting it with a present or
past perfect, it may be correct in other dialects, and therefore the norm
applied in the standard English doesn’t suit the other dialects where that
combination is accepted.
So, my conclusion is that any language has norms, but we have to bare in
mind that, as a language might have many varieties, these norms can be
flexible, and vary depending on each dialect, so they can be correct in one
context and be considered as mistakes in another one. The difficulty that the
prescriptive linguist finds isn’t to determine what is ‘grammatical’, but to
determine the extent of the community of speakers within which that structure
is the consensus norm. And although there can be linguistic facts in the
differences among different language varieties, there are also social facts
(differences in speaker-agreement within communities).
So all language descriptions must be normative,
but not prescriptive: languages have to obey the consensus norms of each
community, and linguists shouldn’t prescribe how people in a community have to
speak, but describe the norms that each community uses.
What is the difference between descriptive and
prescriptive grammars?
A descriptive grammar is one which simply describes the grammatical
rules of a language, with objectivity and not trying to induce the reader to
use one particular rule or norm above another. On the other hand, a
prescriptive grammar is one which not only gives the rules, but also says which
ones should be used in each situation.
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?
When we talk
about prestige in linguistics we refer to the attitude of some speakers when
they try to imitate a variety of a language that for some reason is thought to
have prestige, in order to be considered as prestigious. This can happen for
political, ideological reasons, a matter of trends… Some times certain
languages or variants of languages have been popular and there has been a
tendency to imitate them (most of the time depreciating the others).
On the
contrary we find solidarity constraint: this is when people from a community
reaffirm their own language or variety and feel proud of it and want to use it
above the other one which is at that moment considered to have more prestige.
This makes the people who are using that language proud of it and of belonging
to that community of speakers.
So their
opposition is that prestige is more about adopting another language or variant
considered prestigious in order to imitate it and be considered related to that
prestige for speaking in such a way, and with solidarity constraint people
don’t imitate another language or variety, they reaffirm their own and feel
proud of it.
Sound
change: post-vocalic /r/ in
English pronunciation is divided into two main
accent groups: A rhotic
speaker pronounces the letter R in hard or water. A non-rhotic
speaker does not. In other words, rhotic speakers
pronounce written /r/ in all
positions, while non-rhotic speakers pronounce /r/ only if it is
followed by a vowel sound in the same syllable.
In linguistic terms, non-rhotic
accents are said to exclude the phoneme /r/ from the
syllable coda. This is commonly referred to as the post-vocalic R, although
that term can be misleading because not all Rs that
occur after vowels are excluded in non-rhotic
English. Pre-vocalic and post-vocalic rules only hold true at the syllable
level. If, within a syllable, an R occurs post-vocalically, it is dropped from
pronunciation in non-rhotic speech.
Examples of rhotic accents are: Mid Ulster English, Canadian English,
General American, Irish and Scottish. Non-rhotic
accents include
Rhotic and non-rhotic accents: Wikipedia.
URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhotic_and_non-rhotic_accents
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
Phonological
history of English low back vowels: Wikipedia.
Actuation: Why did /k/ palatalize before certain front
vowels? PrsE: cheese,
German käse English/Norse doublets shirt/skirt?
The palatalization of /k/ before front vowels
happened in some languages and in others closely related it didn’t.
There are conflicting patterns of change and stability in languages and
dialects of similar structure: the proximity of the velar consonant to a front
vowel may be a necessary condition for palatalization,
but as it doesn’t happen in every case, it isn’t a sufficient condition.
What might have happened is very closely related to the social factor:
where the change was adopted, the social conditions were favourable; where it
wasn’t adopted, they weren’t.
What is the biological metaphor in language change?
The biological metaphor in language change considers language as a
living thing which lives and changes depending on the speakers. Language is
something alive which can also die (as it has happened to many languages and
dialects which have come extinct or not used any more for communicative
purposes). The ones which are ‘alive’ resemble a living thing as with the pass
of time they adapt to the speakers’ new necessities and evolve, just as the
animal species evolved along history to be adapted to the changes in the planet
in order to survive (as Darwin explained in the Theory of Evolution: only the
species which adapted to the circumstances were the ones who have reached
successfully their now-a-days’ state).
What is the difference between internal and external
histories of a language?
As a result of the emphasis on internal language systems, descriptive
accounts commonly separate the internal history of a language from its external
history.
Internal history: sound and morphological change. Its main contribution
has been to specify the linguistic constraints on change, not its causes.
External history: the political, social and attitudinal contexts of
language.
Some historical accounts of English have been internal, while others
have been about the external history of the language. The traditional position
gives far more importance to the internal system-based history thinking that
the external history doesn’t contribute much to the explaining of changes in
the linguistic structure.
Other linguists like Milroy disagree, as for them change can’t be
justified without attending to the social factors as well (for example because
otherwise it would be contradictory to the actuation principle as it is
speakers who actuate the changes). So the conclusion they draw is that the
causes of change are multiple, therefore, both speakers and systems need to be
equally taken into account, specifying the link between speaker-activity and
change in language systems.
Look up Neogrammarians
and lexical diffusion. Why are they
often found in the same paragraph or chapter?
When we talk about the process of language change, there are two opposed
theories that we could mention: the one of the Neogrammarians, and other
approaches over the last century such as lexical diffusion (Wang, 1969). That is
why, due to their theory opposition, they are both mentioned together.
The difference between them is that for the Neogrammarians, sound-change
operates blindly and without exceptions; a relevant class of items all undergo
a change at the same time, so sound-change is phonetically gradual and
lexically sudden. According to lexical diffusion, sound-change can be lexically
gradual, items are transferred to the new class at
differential rates, often leaving a residue of items that aren’t transferred.
Look up social
norm-enforcement, childish errors and
slips of the tongue. What have they to do with language change?
Social norm-enforcement: there are many kinds of social
norm-enforcements, as after all, in an overall definition of this concept we could
say that it is making people obey certain established norms (for example a
teacher could enforce norms to the students, when we drive we have to followed
some enforced norms in order to all drive following some same principles and
that way avoid accidents, etc.).
Childish errors are mistakes that children do when they speak because
they still don’t know all the language norms, irregularities, syntactic
structures, etc. A slip of the tongue is an accidental and usually trivial
mistake in speaking.
In the case of social norm-enforcement we could say that when a language
change takes place and it’s accepted by the community of speakers, a norm is
created, and not necessarily enforced, it’s just a process that takes place and
becomes a rule. But these rules can change for many different reasons and there
shouldn’t be any prescriptive impositions about their use, leaving out the idea
of having one single standard-enforced set of rules.
When we relate childish errors or slips of the tongue to language
change, we could say that sometimes in a language there are people who use
differently the language (different order of words in a phrase, different
pronunciation, different vocabulary…) and this sometimes reminds certain
linguists of childish errors; but as we explained before, there aren’t such
things as errors as long as the speakers have accepted a difference from the
‘normative’ language as correct.
● Transcription of the poem.
Dearest Creature in creation
'dɪərist
'kɾiːtʃə in kɾi'eiʃən
Studying English pronunciation,
stʌdiːiŋ 'ɪŋlɪʃ
prənʌntsi'eiʃən
I will teach you in my verse
ai wil tiːtʃ juː in mai vɜːs
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse.
saʊndz laik kɔːps kɔː hɔːs ænd wɜːs
I will keep you, Susy, busy,
ai wil kiːp juː 'suzi 'bizi
Make your head with heat grow dizzy;
meik jɔː hed wið hiːt ɡɾəʊ diziː
Tear in eye your dress you'll tear;
tiə in ai jɔː dres jəl teə
Queer, fair seer, hear
my prayer,
kwiə feə siə hiə mai preə
Pray, console your loving poet,
prei kən'səʊl jɔː lʌviŋ
'pəʊit
Make my coat look new, dear sew it!
meik mai kəʊt lʊk njuːw diə səʊ it
Just compare heart, beard and heard,
ʤʌst kəmpeə haːt biəd ənd hɜːd
Dies and diet, Lord and word,
daiz ənd daiət lɔːd and wɜːd
Sword and sward, retain and
sɔːd ənd swɔːd ritein ənd britən
(Mind the latter how it is written);
maind ðə lætə haʊ it iz ritən
Made has not the sound of bade,
meid həz nɒt ðə saʊnd əv bæd
Say, said, pay, laid, but not plaid.
sei sed
Now I surely will not plague you
naʊ ai ʃɔːli wil nɒt pleig ju
With such words as vague and ague,
wið sʌtʃ
wɜːdz əz veig ənd eigju
But be careful how you speak,
bʌt biː keəfʊl
haʊ ju spiːk
Say gush, bush, steak, streak, break, bleak,
sei gʌʃ bʊʃ steik striːk breik bliːk
Previous, precious, fuchsia, via,
priːviəs preʃəs fʊkʃiə vaiə
Recipe, pipe, studding-sail, choir,
resipiː paip stʊnsei kwaiə
Woven, oven, how and low,
wəʊvən ʌvən haʊ ənd ləʊ
Script, receipts, shoe, poem, toe.
skript risiːts ʃuː pəʊim təʊ
Hear me say, devoid of trickery:
hiə miː sei divɔid əv trikəri
Daughter, laughter and Terpsichore,
dɔːtə laːftəˑnd tepsikari
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles.
taifɔid miːzəlz tɒpsəl ailz
Exiles, similes, reviles,
eksailz similiːz rivailz
Holy, holly, signal, signing
həʊli hɒli signəl sainiŋ
Same, examining, but mining
seim iksæminiŋ bʌt mainiŋ
Scholar, vicar, but cigar,
skɒlə vikə bʌt sigaː
Solar, mica, war, and far,
səʊlə maikə wɔː(r) ənd faː
From "desire" desirable,
frəm dizaiə dəzairəb(ə)l
admirable from "admire",
ədmaiɾəb(ə)l frəm ədmaiə
Lumber, plumber, bier, but brier,
lʌɱbə plʌmə biə bʌt briər
Topsham, Brougham, renown, but known.
tɒpʃəm brau(w)əm rinaʊn bʌt nəʊn
Knowledge, done, lone, gone, none, tone,
nɒliʤ dʌn ləʊn gɒn nʌn təʊn
One, anemone, Balmoral,
wʌn ænemoni bælmɒrəl
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel,
kitʃin litʃən lɔːndri lɒrəl
Gertrude, German, wind, and mind.
gɜːtruːd ʤɜːmən wind ənd maind
Scene, Melpomene, mankind,
siːn melpɒməni mænkaind
tortoise, Turquoise, Chamois-leather
tɔːtəs tɜːkwɔiz ʃæmwʌ leðə
Reading, Reading, heathen, heather,
riːdiŋ rediŋ hiːðən heðə
This phonetic labyrinth
ðis fənetik læbərinθ
Gives moss, gross, brook, brooch, ninth, plinth.
givz mɒs grəʊz brʊk brəʊtʃ nainθ plinθ
Billet does not end like ballet,
bilet dʌz nɒt end laik balei
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
buːkei wɒlit
mælit ʃælei
Blood and flood are not like food,
blʌd ənd flʌd aː nɒt laik wʊd
Nor is mould, like should and could.
nɔː(r) iz
məʊld laik ʃʊd ənd kud
Banquet is not nearly parquet,
bænkwit iz nɒt nɪɘliː paːkei
Which doesn’t exactly rhyme with khaki.
witʃ dʌzənt
igsækli raim wið kaːki
Discount, viscount, load, and broad,
diskaʊnt viskaʊnt
ləʊd ənd brɔːd
Towards, to forward, to reward,
təwəːdz tə fɔːwəd tə riwɔːd
Ricocheted and crocheting, croquet?
rikəʃeid ənd krɒtʃətiŋ krəʊkei
Right! Your pronunciation's O.K.
rait jɔː
prənʊnsieiʃənz əʊ kei
● Exercises about
Elocution: the art of careful public speaking
using clear pronunciation and good breathing to control the voice. It is the study of formal speaking in pronunciation, grammar, style, and tone.
Elocution emerged as a formal discipline during the eighteenth century.
Polyglossia: the coexistence of multiple languages in the
same area.
Monoglossia: only one language exists or rules in one area.
What
kind of English does Puttenham recommend?
After
rejecting various forms of the language as unsuitable, he then defines for the
poet the form which is “the natural, pure and most usual of all his country”.
On his account Arte of English Poesie (1589), he says “the poet shall take that usual
speech of the court, and that of
Copious: in large amounts; more than enough.
Trope: a word or
expression used in a figurative sense. A figure of speech using
words in non-literal ways, such as a metaphor.
Why
does
-
The linkage of language and war was a very common trope in the 18th
century, and it was normal as in this period of time
-
The claim for the predominance of figurations of war is not often
encountered in standard histories or theoretical accounts of the period. But it
was a society at war abroad and at home despite the bourgeois degree of
political accountability and responsibility.
Encomium: A formal expression of praise; a tribute.
Who
wrote the “Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English
Tongue” (1712)?
It was written by Swift. It was one of the central
texts in language debates of the period. It is an important intervention, by
means of a specific reading of a linguistic and literary tradition combined
with an answer to the problem of linguistic change, in the political history of
the period. It was the only prose piece he ever signed. It begins claiming that
the project embodied in the Proposal will be very advantageous.
Do
Johnson and Swift agree that the English language has degenerated?
They do agree because Johnson said “tongues,
like governments, have a natural tendency to degeneration (…) let us make some
struggles for our language”. And Swift attacked “those who would postpone any
reform of the language to a time of peace”. Therefore, Swift accorded enormous
significance to linguistic reform.
Swift
proposed an Academy. Who else?
It was also proposed by Dryden, Defoe, Addison
and Wilson. Moreover, there were already academies in existence in
Why were the Whigs against an
academy?
The Whigs
are often described as one of the two original political parties (the other being the Tories) in
England
and later the United Kingdom
from the late 17th to the mid-19th centuries. Although the Whigs' origin lay in
constitutional
monarchism and opposition to absolute rule, either party might be termed
"conservative" by modern standards. Both parties began as loose
groupings or tendencies, but became quite formal by 1784, with the ascension of
Charles James Fox
as the leader of a reconstituted "Whig" party ranged against the
governing party of the new "Tories" under William Pitt
the Younger.
The Whig party slowly evolved during the 18th
century. The Whig tendency supported the Protestant Hanoverian succession and
toleration for nonconformist
Protestants (the "dissenters,"
such as Presbyterians), while the Tories supported the exiled Stuart royal
family's claims for the throne (Jacobitism), the
established Church of England
and the gentry. Later on, the Whigs drew support
from the emerging industrial interests and wealthy merchants, while the Tories
drew support from the landed interests and the British Crown. The Whigs were originally
also known as the "Country Party" (as opposed to the Tories, the
"Court Party"). By the first half of the 19th century, however, the
Whig political programme came to encompass not only
the supremacy of parliament over the
monarch and support for free trade, but Catholic emancipation, the
abolition of slavery and, significantly, expansion of
the franchise (suffrage). Eventually the Whigs
would evolve into the Liberal Party
(while the Tories became the Conservative
Party).
What does
He is saying that an academy wouldn’t work in
What reason does Swift give for the
decay of Latin?
The change of their government into a Tyranny,
which ruined the study of Eloquence; no further Use or Encouragement for
popular Orators: giving freedom and employment to towns in Gaul, Spain and
Germany; the slavish Disposition of the Senate and People; the invasions from
the Goths and Vandals.
What does “suffer” mean in p.66 line
2?
They are
talking about the problem of linguistic mutability, which was a factor in the
campaign for language standarisation. Many writers
saw the fact that language changes as a positive threat to their fame and
reputation.
Who was the first person, involved
in German cultural nationalism, to make the link between language and nation?
Herder was
the first to proclaim this link and his idea was taken into German Romanticism
and to the cultural nationalism which arose across
What was
He proposed
that the clergy should be taught pronunciation so they could act as the medium
by which it could be propagated.
How did several authors describe other
European languages? Do you agree?
French was
“flimsy”, Italian was merely “neat”, Spanish “grave”, Saxon, High Dutch “Belgic” and the Teutonic tongues were “hoarse” and “rough”.
In which novel did Defoe capture the
“colonial fantasy”?:
In Robinson
Crusoe.
Locke thought that learning Latin
wasn’t necessary for which group of people?
For the various ranks of the bourgeoisie. For them it was better to learn correct
English.
How did learning to speak English
using standard English empower people?
The
importance of a correct mode of expression in business was obvious. The
bourgeois sphere of trading and business had the same requirements as those
professions which had previously been restricted. And the growth and
development of the bourgeois stimulated the new interest in the vernacular as
the vehicle of social and political life.
What kind of English is deemed to be
“proper” English?
The one
found in the upper and middle ranks, over the whole
How was the inculcation of
linguistic patterns carried out with middle-class children?
Giving them rewards and
punishments.
What was the purpose of training
women linguistically in the 18th century according to
To fulfill the role of the mother, passing on pure language to the
child and to act as a companion to the male in the public sphere.
Why did Locke warn against children
talking to servants?
Because they could learn from them a wrong language.
What was the difference between the
mistakes made by the working classes and those made by the gentry according to
He said
that unlike working-class speech, the gentry’s mistakes are not structural.
There were no general errors, their deviations only occurred in some words.