MILROY’S QUESTIONS

 

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 the word meet changed from /me:t/ to /mi:t/ in English there did not

seem to be any advantage in the fact that one sound was replaced by another.

On the other hand, when the word them replaced hem it disambiguated the

system. So, instead of having a lot of similar sounds like him, her hem, for

example, we have him, her, them.

What is/are the main difference/s between Milroy’s approach and that of the Neogrammarians (147-148)?

There are many differences. Probably the main one is that Milroy takes a

sociolinguistic or variationist view of language change while the

Neogrammarians see language as an entity which is somehow separate from

people. For Milroy, languages change because people change it. According to

the Neogrammarians, the changes in language almost seem to be destined to

happen as if the language were, for example, a biological entity.

Neogrammarians believed that sound changes obeyed rules and that the

exceptions to the rules could also be explained by other rules, and so on. Milroy

mentions the example of front-raising . In New York City words like cab,

hat, etc. have gone from /hæt/, /kæb/ to something like /het/, /keb/. For obvious

reasons the Neogrammarians generally used written documents –even for the

present state of the language

According to Milroy, what is language change dependent on? (149?)

Language changed depends on people and sociolinguistic conditions –not on the

internal life of a language, which is a concept that Milroy does not believe in.

Why does Milroy say that sound change actually doesn’t exist (150)?

What actually happens is that one sound is replaced by another.

Why does Milroy disagree with the Neogrammarians when they say that sound change is “blind” (150)?

Because sound change depends on people not on the internal “life” [scare

quotes] of a language.

What is meant by “lexical diffusion” (151)?

This means that rather than a sound being replaced by another throughout the

whole language, the change takes place through word families or in particular

phonetic contexts.  Moreover, a new pronunciation replacing

an old one would be sufficiently different so as to be noticeable, otherwise how

would it spread?

What does dialect displacement mean? Give an example. (152)

When one particular variety of a language is displaced by another. He gives the

example of New Zealand English which used to be very much like Southern

British English but is now more like Australian English.

What are “community” or “vernacular” norms? What term that we have used in class is similar (152)?

“Community” or “vernacular” norms are the norms operating within a language

community. For example, Standard Valencian has aleshores but for many

Valencians that sounds too Catalan so they use a borrowed Spanish word

entonces. In certain contexts if you use the word aleshores, you would be

considered to be an outsider. In other cases, if you use entonces, you would be

considered vulgar. We have used the term the term “non-standard varieties”.

What does Milroy mean when he says that h-dropping may not ever reach “completion” (153)?

H-dropping is common in Cockney. One might say it is the norm. However,

throughout England /h/ is the norm. In other places, people use /h/ in certain

contexts and not in others. Any change might stop or there may be a change

back to a former system.

Explain what Milroy means by “speaker innovation” and change in the system. How are they connected (153)?

Speaker innovation occurs when an individual uses, for example, a particular

pronunciation, or coins (inventa) a new word. Other speakers might imitate this

pronunciation. If this innovation is incorporated into the language system, then

a change can be said to have occurred. In the case of one sound replacing

another we can imagine how a person might use an innovative pronunciation

and how it might spread through a group of speakers to the wider community.

As Milroy says, many innovations are ephimeral and lead nowhere.

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)?

Intra-language (within a language) and inter-language (between languages)

borrowing are similar. Imagine a speaker in your language innovates and coins

a new word or phrase. Gradually other people “borrow” or adopt the word or

phrase and it finally becomes widespread. For example, por un tubo. In a

similar way, people start using the word speed from the English word for

amphetamine. From this word we get the adjective espitoso.

What is necessary for a sound to spread (157)?

Change, if it happens, must happen within a speech community. The community

must adopt an innovation. For this to happen social conditions must be

favourable. Weak ties within a society favour change whereas closely-knit

communities (comunidades cerradas) normally disfavour change.

Why does believing in the ideology of standardization lead to believing in “blind necessity” (158)?

If you believe in blind necessity you must believe that there is an entity –the

standard- that is changing through internal forces that have nothing to do with

speakers.

What does Milroy mean by “clean” and “dirty” data (158)?

 Standard varieties are engineered varieties of a language. In other words, the

guardians of the language (for example, la RAE) dictate which words are

allowed into a dictionary and which structures are permitted or not. This is clean

data –it has been cleaned up. Dirty data, on the other hand, is when we describe

a variety of a language –its inconsistencies such as, for instance, the examples

we have seen in class in which both questions with and without do are found in

the same variety. A diachronic example is John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress in

which two ways of forming the interrogative exist: But why did not you look for

the steps?/ How camest thou by the burden at first? Think of the pronunciations

of dado /daðo/ and /dao/. Only one is standard but we all know that both coexist.

 

 

-BACK-