James Milroy: Some new perspectives on sound change: sociolinguistics and the Neogrammarians

· Answer the following questions using the book and other sources.

1. Why does Milroy say that sound change appears to have no “obvious function or rational motivation” (146)?

Because sometimes we can’t observe any progress of language and sound change is a mysterious aspect of change in language.

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

The main differences are: they tend to be dichotomous, they are non social in character and Neogrammarians recognize the importance of present dialects (in listening way) although they have written sources.

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

The change depends on the degree of internal cohesion of the community, and change from outside. It has to be maintained by social acceptance and social pressure. 

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

Because we must consider the possibility that sound change is not triggered at this level: a sound change perceived by observes at the segmental level may be secondary phenomenon (e.g.: as a change from [e:] to [i:], what we can observe it at the micro-level)

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

Because sociolinguistics approaches are not very likely to give support to the idea of "blind necessity". Dichotomies are very important to the sound change.

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

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.

Example: /uː/ has changed to /ʊ/ in good and hood but not in food.

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

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

The norms of language are maintained and enforced by social pressures. It is customary to think of these norms as standardizing norms. These norms manifest themselves at different levels of generality.

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

In a paper on /h/ - dropping a change can persist as a variable state for seven or eight centuries without ever going to ‘completion’ in the traditional sense.

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

11. Why isn’t borrowing from one language to another and the replacement of one sound by another through speaker innovation with language as radically different as the Neogrammarians posited (154-6)?

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

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

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

A reason for the inadequacy is that whereas standard languages 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.