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Introducción a la Historia de la Lengua Inglesa. Prof. Barry Pennock
James Milroy: Some new perspectives on sound change: sociolinguistics and the Neogrammarians.
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”?
It is impossible to see any progress or benefit to the language or its speakers.- the use of one vowel.- sound rather than another is purely arbitrary: there is apparently no profit and no loss.
-What is/are the main difference/s between Milroy’s approach and that of the
Neogrammarians?
The main difference is that for the Neogrammarians it proceeds “with blind necessity” (mit blinder Naturnotwendig). It is obvious that sociolinguistic approaches, which necessarily deal with speakers, are not very likely to give support to the idea of “blind necessity”. First we consider the main general characteristics of the neogrammarian axioms.
-According to Milroy, what is language change dependent on?
The degree to which change is admitted will depend on the degree of internal cohesion of the community (the extent to which it is bound by “strong ties”, which resist change), and change from outside will be admitted to the extent that there are large numbers of weak ties with outsiders.
- Why does Milroy say that sound change actually doesn’t exist?
We must consider the possibility that sound change is not actually triggered at this level: a sound change perceived by observers at the segmental level may be a secondary, and not a primary, phenomenon; although we can observe it at the micro-level (e.g., as a change from [e:] to [i:]), it may be one of a number of a low- level manifestations of a change, or a shift, that originates at a more general level of language use.
-Why does Milroy disagree with the Neogrammarians when they say that sound change is “blind”?
It does not make sense, from this perspective, to say that sound-change is phonetically gradual either. But it is definitely socially gradual; it passes from speaker to speaker and from group to group, and it is this social gradualness that sociolinguistics attempt to trace by their quantitative methods.
-What is meant by “lexical diffusion”?
Sound change and lexical diffusion. Both processes are socially gradual, both are abrupt replacement patterns, and both can be shown to be regular in some sense. The difference between them in terms of phonetic change now becomes one of greater or lesser phonetic distance between State a (before the change) and State B (after the change). What we have traditionally called gradual phonetic change differs from lexical diffusion in that the new form differs only slightly from the older one, whereas in lexical diffusion it differs markedly.
-What does dialect displacement mean? Give an example.
Is the displacement of one dialect by another which is, for some reason, socially dominant at some particular time. For example, there is evidence from recordings to persons born around 1860 which can be interpreted as indicating that much New Zealand English in the nineteenth century was southern British in type (favoured by males), and that it was displaced by an Australasian type (favoured by females) with some effects of mixing and residue.
-What are “community” or “vernacular” norms? What term that we have used in class is similar?
The fact that we can recognize different dialects of a language demonstrates that other norms exist apart from the standard ones, and that these norms are observed by speakers and maintained by communities often in opposition to standardizing norms.
-What does Milroy mean when he says that h-dropping may not ever reach
“completion”?
It should also be noted that the starting point and the end-point of change are not necessarily uniform states. A change can persist as a variable state for seven or eight centuries without ever going to “completion” in the traditional sense.
-Explain what Milroy means by “speaker innovation” and change in the system. How are they connected?
The terms innovation and change should reflect a conceptual distinction: an innovation is an act of the speaker, whereas a change is manifested within the language system. It is also quite clear that this distinction between innovation and change has not been sufficiently carefully or consistently observed in historical linguistics and that many discussions about linguistic innovation. From a speaker-based perspective, we can think of sound-change as moving gradually through a population of speakers, assuming a regular sociolinguistic pattern, rather than postulating gradual movement within the language system.
-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?
Aside from its spread by borrowing, the new habit…. Could have originated only as a sudden replacement of one trill by another. A replacement of this sort is surely different from the gradual and imperceptible alterations of phonetic change. First, the “origin” of this abrupt change is equated with the change itself. Second, it is assumed that the spread of the change is by “borrowing” and implied that the spread therefore does not involve sudden replacement. Neogrammarians, this is not sound-change proper: as we have seen they tended to equate sound-change with innovation internal to the “dialect” concerned.
-What is necessary for a sound to spread?
If we explain the phonetic and other intra-linguistic conditions that lead to this possible change, we have not thereby explained why this particular change took place, and not some other change: what we have explained are the linguistic circumstances that made possible a speakers-innovation. The traditional distinction between “regular sound change” and “borrowing” is otiose, and to apply it at this level simply leads to confusion. 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.
-Why does believing in the ideology of standardization lead to believing in “blind necessity”?
The idea that the sound changes differentiation these well-defined socially-constructed entities must always come about blindly and independently of socially-based human intervention is, on the face of it, absurd: it is another consequence of believing in the ideology of standardization. Standard languages are not merely the structural entities that linguists have believed them to be: they are also socio-political entities dependent on powerful ideologies which promote “correctness” and uniformity of usage ( it is likely that they are in some senses more regular that non-standard forms, but further empirical research is needed into this).
-What does Milroy mean by “clean” and “dirty” data?
Whereas standard languages (being idealizations) provide the investigator with relatively “clean” data which have already been largely normalized, the vernaculars that we actually encounter in the speech community are relatively intractable: the data we encounter is to a greater extent “dirty” data.
OLD ENGLISH TO MIDDLE ENGLISH
Old English
• The Old English we generally study is a kind of standard, elaborated on the basis of one of the dialects spoken at that time (West Saxon) plus the addition of grammatical, syntactic and exical features from other dialects.
• Different dialects spoken depended on where each Germanic tribe settled. (See Heptarchy map).
Old English Periods
• Pre-Old English (449/450-700), paucity of written records.
• Early Old English (700-900), use of a literary dialect (West Saxon). Made important by King Alfred and his collaborators.
• Old English proper (900-1150).
Linguistic Situation in
OE Period
• a. Anglian: spoken north of river Thames.
a.1. Northumbrian: north of river. Humber.
a.2. Mercian: between Humber and Thames.
• b. Kentish: the south-east of England.
• c. West-Saxon: south-west of England.
Changes from Old English
to Middle English
• Morphosyntactic Change
• Syntactic Change
• Lexical Change
Morphosyntactic Change
• Gender in the article system disappears.
OE ME
MASCULINE se wulf þe wulf
FEMENINE seo giefu þe gift
NEUTER þæt land þe land
• Natural gender takes over in the pronoun system: it to refer to most objects and he, she to males and females and some objects
such as ship.
• Simplification of the cases in the article system
OE ME
Masculine All genders
Nom se þe
Acc þone þe
Dat þǽm þe
Gen þæs þe
• Simplification of noun endings
Singular Plural
OE ME OE ME
Nominative stān stone stānas stones
Accusative stān stone stānas stones
Genitive stānes stone’s stanum stones’
Dative stāne stone stāna stones
Plural with s spreads to most nouns
Sing Plural Sing Plural
MASC. stan stanas ® stone stones
FEM. giefu giefa ® gift gifts
NEUT. ship shipu ® ship ships
bok bec ® book books
BUT
man men ® man men
• Simplification of adjective endings
OE ME
• Nom. se wilda wulf te wild wulf
• Acc. tone wildan wulf te wild wulf
• Gen. tas wildan wulfes te wild wulf
• Dat. Tǽm wildan wulfe te wild wulf
• Nom. ta wildan wulfas te wild wulfes
• Acc. ta wildan wulfas te wild wulfes
• Gen. tǽra wildra wulfa te wild wulfes
• Dat. tǽm wildum wulfum te wild wulfes
Syntax From OE to ME
• Word order became more important with the loss of declensions.
• Scandinavian phrasal verbs: gyfen up, faren mid, leten up, tacen to.
• Use of Scandinavian verbal operator get.
• Use of operator do:
Wryteth ye this with your owne hande?
Dyd ye wryte this with your owne hande?
Celtic substratum
• Very few words of Celtic origin are found in Modern English:
• Rivers: Avon, Clyde, Dee, Don, Forth, Severn, Thames, Usk
• Axminster, Caerleon-on-Usk, Exmouth, Uxbridge from the word for water.
• The word whisky/whiskey also comes from a compound of this word: uisge beatha = water of life
• Cities: Belfast, Cardiff, Dublin, Glasgow, London, York
• Landscape words: ben, cairn, corrie, crag, crannog, cromlech, dolmen, glen, loch, menhir, strath, tor:
• First Names: Alan, Donald, Duncan, Eileen, Fiona, Gavin, Ronald, Sheila
• Other words: badger -brock - tejón; peat - turba; bucket – cubo; dun = “dark coloured”, binn = “basket”
• Some of the Celtic words that entered English come from Latin. These words were borrowed during the Roman occupation of Gaul:
• car, carry, carriage, chariot, charioteer, carpenter, carpentry, lance, and lancer.
Latin Influence:
Period of Continental Borrowing from Latin 1st to 5th centuries A.D.
• Around 50 words through Germanic contact with Rome before the invasion and settlement of Britain: straet (strata) , pund (pondo), mil (milia).
(From Roman occupation of Britain . up 410 AD)
Very little influence during this period.
Place names: ceaster (castra = “walled encampment'), for example: Dorchester, Winchester, Manchester, Lancaster, and wic (vicum = “village” ) Greenwich, etc.
Period of the Christianizing of Britain (7th to 10th centuries AD)
• abbot, alms, pope, priest, oyster, fig, pine, cedar, sack, sock, etc.
• loan translations (native word formations in imitation of a Latin model) se haliga gast, godspel
• Toponyms
Scale (dwelling) Scalby Beck
-by (village) Ormsby, Kirkby
-gill (ravine) Aisgill
-fell (hill) Cross Fell
-thorpe (farm) Priesthorpe
-slack (dell, valley) Garton Slack
-thwaite Micklethwaite
Scandinavian Influence
Place-Names of
Scandinavian Origin
• egg for OE ey
• sister for swuster
• leg for shanks
• Word pairs: skiff-ship; skirt-shirt
• OE words replaced by Scandinavian
words:
• take-niman; cast-weorpan
• cut-ceorfan, die-steorfan (starve)
• Function Words
til
though
they, their, them
both
same
against
Linguistic Situation in ME Period 1100-1450/1500
• English co-existed with Anglo-Norman and Latin.
• Latin was the written language of the Church and many secular documents.
• After the Conquest a certain amount of bilingualism in England.
Norman Influence
• In Early ME 91.5 % of words had English origin; in later Middle English this figure had fallen to 78.8 %.
• The language of 5 or 10% of the population became the most substantial source of new words in written ME.
• 13th c. Parisian French superseded Anglo-Norman French.
Vocabulary
• Pre-Conquest French borrowings: prud, castel.
• Early Post-Conquest words. natiuite, canceler, concilie, carite,
• Borrowings increased dramatically around the 13th century, not because of structural gaps but because they were felt to be stylistically more suitable.
Norman and French Word Pairs
• Wile (1154) guile (1225)
• warrant(1225) guarantee (1624)
• warden(1225) guardian (1466)
• reward(1315) regard (1430)
Latin Borrowings in ME
• Words of common use.aggregate, applaude, assimilate, etc.
• Words used in the church, administration, education. curate, pulpit. legitimate; elect, convict. pedagogue, graduate, literate.