Activities on Language Change and Variation
What is more common in language uniformity or variability?
In language is more common variability, although it is problematic. People like uniformity.
What kinds of variability exist?
-Register: context based on variability, formality.
-Geographical: it depends on the place the language is spoken, an example of this are the dialects.
-Social: this kind of variability includes all the changes of languages carried out by the environment in which the speaker develops him/herself.
-Historical: the language has changed in the course of the history.
How do we decide if a particular group of speakers belong to a particular dialect or language?
We decide it using the historical, academicals, geographical and social ideas. Also, we can observer the phonetics, and linguistics aspects of the language. But it is not always so easy to distinguish two languages, or a dialect: for example Portuguese vs. Galician.
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?
I think it is not reasonable by the fact that the language is always changing and Saussure talks about the language as a finite entity.
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?
Linguistic change is not abnormal. Languages constantly change and progress in order to adapt to new situations, stages.
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 ‘scare quotes’ to show the readers that he does not agree with the ideas that are express by that term. The term is expressing non-professional ideas which he does not agree with.
Are non-standard dialects “incorrect, irregular, ungrammatical and deviant.”?
In my opinion non-standard dialects are not incorrect, irregular, ungrammatical and deviant.
Because each dialect has its own rules and different variations inside of the same language. For this is what I think that non-standard dialects are not incorrect, irregular, ungrammatical and deviant.
Which of these systems is more irregular? Why?
http://grammar.about.com/od/basicsentencegrammar/a/grammarintro.htm )
Weinreich, Labov and Herzog’s (1968) empirical foundations of language change:
Constraints
: what changes are possible and what are not.What do you think the “prestige motivation for change” and the “solidarity constraint” mean? How are they opposed?
‘The prestige motivation for change’ is the way in which we observe our language and how other people use it.
‘Solidarity constraint’ refers the way we adapt our language depending on the social context. Our language will vary depending on the context in we find ourselves.
‘The prestige motivation for change’ and ‘solidarity constraint’ are opposed, because the first is concentrated in our wish to be accepted by others; and the another must consider our desire to be in a superior social status.
Sound change: post-vocalic /r/ in New York/. The change from long “ā” to “ō” in some dialects of English.
Post vocalic /r/ in New York
The general vocalization of post-vocalic /r/ is an eighteenth-century phenomenon. 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. It was the standard model for most radio announcers and used as a high prestige form by Franklin Roosevelt.
r-
pronunciation was examined in some detail in the sociolinguistic study ofNew York City (Labov 1966). The variable (r) is defined as tautosyllabic (or coda) /r/. This excludes intervocalic /r/, which is never vocalized in the white community, and word-final /r/ before a vowel-initial word, which is vocalized at a much lower rate. The result showed a fine-grained stratification in the use of constricted [r] in formal styles, while in casual style there was a sharp division between (younger) upper middle class speakers and everyone else. 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.2 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). Feagin (1987) reported a more radical shift to r-pronunciation across three generations in Anniston, Alabam.Actuation: Why did /k/ palatalize before certain front vowels? PrsE: cheese, German käse English/Norse doublets shirt/skirt?
If we analyze this case, we can observe that there are a conflicting patterns of change and stability in languages and dialects of similar structure.
I believe that the place of palatization varied in order to differentiate the meaning between the word doublets.
What is the biological metaphor in language change?
This term is used by Müller who thinks it does not seem to have a metaphor at all.
The metaphor has weakened since Müller wrote, but there have been many publications on language history since then that have been based on the idea of the independent ‘life’ of language.
The acceptance of this metaphor is widespread enough for it to appear in the title of a book on linguistics.
What is the difference between internal and external histories of a language?
Internal history of a language refers to the historical development of its linguistic forms (phonology, morphology, syntax and lexicon) and semantics. It is contrasted with external history, which refers to the social and geopolitical history of the language.
Look up Neogrammarians and lexical diffusion. Why are they often found in the same paragraph or chapter?
The terms ‘Neogrammarians’ and ‘lexical diffusion’ are often found in the same paragraph or chapter because they are opposed and are sometimes compared.
Lexical diffusion (Wang, 1969) holds that sound-change may be lexically gradual. In change from /e:/ to /i:/ ( such as the EModE, change in words as meat, peace, leave) items are that do not get transferred (in this case such words as great, break, steak).
Neogrammarian theory has been interpreted to mean that the relevant class of items all undergo the change at the same time, that is, that sound-change is phonetically gradual and lexically sudden.
Neogrammarian hypothesis are part of the lexical rule component, whereas Neogrammarian exceptionless change is accounted for by post-lexical rules.
Look up social norm-enforcement, childish errors and slips of the tongue. What have they to do with language change?
A Social norm is the
sociological term for the behavioral expectations and cues within a society or group. They have been defined as "the rules that a group uses for appropriate and inappropriate values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors. These rules may be explicit or implicit. Failure to stick to the rules can result in severe punishments, the most feared of which is exclusion from the group." They have also been described as the "customary rules of behavior that coordinate our interactions with others." The social norms indicate the established and approved ways of doing things, of dress, of speech and of appearance. These vary and evolve not only through time but also vary from one age group to another and between social classes and social groups. What is deemed to be acceptable dress, speech or behaviour in one social group may not be accepted in another. Deference to the social norms maintains one's acceptance and popularity within a particular group; ignoring the social norms risks one becoming unacceptable, unpopular or even an outcast from a group. What is deemed acceptable to young people is often unacceptable to elderly people; this difference is caused by the different social norms that operate and are tacitly agreed-upon in such different groups of people. Social norms tend to be tacitly established and maintained through body language and non-verbal communication between people in their normal social discourse.Childish errors
Slips of the tongue
For thousands of years, the scholars and philosophers interested in the nature of language have believed that language and speech are composed of discrete units of sound and meaning. Although the sound represented by the letters d-o-g may be continuous on a physical level, the word can be considered to be composed of separate sounds. This is as true of languages without a written alphabet (and there are thousands of such languages spoken in the world) as those like English with a
written form. While these units are not normally observed in error free speech, speech errors which move or substitute, delete or add sounds or words or phrases show the existence of such units, as illustrated in the the following examples:(1) stick in the mud > smuck in the tid (consonant segments exchange)
(2) ad hoc > odd hack (vowel segments exchange)
(3) unanimity > unamity (syllable deleted)
(4) easily enough > easy enoughly (suffix moved)
(5) tend to turn out > turn to tend out (words exchange)
(6) my sister went to the Grand Canyon > the grand canyon went to my sister (whole phrase exchange).