LANGUAGE VARIABILITY

1.-What is more common in language uniformity or variability?

In language the most common is variability, because each language changes depending on the context, grammar, phonological or syntactical situation.

2.-What kinds of variability exist?

There are a lot of types of variation like: Historical, geographical, grammatical, syntactical, phonological, in vocabulary, etc…

3.-How do we decide if a particular group of speakers belong to a particular dialect or language?

Because of their way of speaking. There are some little differences between the dialects and the official language. As we said before, these differences are grammatical, syntactical, etc… If a speaker uses these variations, we can decide if he belongs to a dialect or another.

4.-Saussure emphasized the importance of synchronic descriptions of languages rather than diachronic. He and is disciples (structuralists) on language at different periods as finite entities. Is this reasonable?

I think that if we study diachronic linguistics, we can obtain a better understanding of the whole evolution of language. So I think it is unreasonable.

5.-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?

No, because language is always changing. There are only a few fixed rules about languages. You can’t apply some fixed rules because language is variable, but this does not mean that is abnormal.

6.-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?

I think that the exemple of Valencian / Catalan is the best example.

First of all, there is no consensus about the fact that Valencian / Catalan / Mallorquin are the same language or not.

Many people consider it as a dialect, and not as a language (it means it is “non-standard”). The main factor that brings people to think that is the geographical variations.

7.-Why does Milroy use “scare quotes” around non-standard and errors?

Because he expresses an idea which is incorrect or he is not agree with.

8.-Are non-standard dialects “incorrect, irregular, ungrammatical and deviant.”?

No, because it depends on the politics. There’s an official language (designed by the state) and the others are called dialects (that maybe are more regular but are not standard). Grammatically, those dialects are as correct as the official language, even more.

9.-Which of these systems is more irregular? Why?

Obviously, the second system is more regular than the first, but it is non-standard because terms like “hisself” and “theirselves” are not correct in grammatical terms. We can called the first system as normative.

10.-“… 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 decontextualized 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?

The answer to that question is given by Mulroy: “Speech is a social activity in a sense that writing is not, and the primary focus of speech is conversation”

I think that each person has its own way of using the speech elements so if we study it, it will be difficult to analyse the changes that occur in speech. That’s the reason why theories are not based on context and are based on decontextualized language.

11.-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?

When we make the description of a language, we have to take care about the exceptions. In some languages there are sometimes more exceptions than fixed rules. The sentence “He ate the pie already” is accepted in speech. Specifically, it is accepted in colloquial speech. I think that the normative (written and formal speech) sentence is: “He has already eaten the pie”.

12.-What is the difference between descriptive and prescriptive grammars?

- Descriptive grammar: refers to the structure of a language as it is actually used by speakers and writers

- Prescriptive grammar: refers to the structure of a language as certain people think it should be used.

 (http://grammar.about.com/od/basicsentencegrammar/a/grammarintro.htm)

13.-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?

The prestige motivation for change refers to the way in which we view our language and how others speak it. We use the prestige motivation to show our social status.

In the other hand, we have solidarity constraint, which means that we use a different way depending on the context. It is, that we use a different variation according to the situation to feel better.

We can say that the difference is that the prestige motivation is an individual feeling and the solidarity constraint is a collective movement.

14.-Sound change: post-vocalic /r/ in New York/

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.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhotic_and_non-rhotic_accents)

15.-Actuation: Why did /k/ palatalize before certain front vowels? PrsE: cheese, German käse English/Norse doublets shirt/skirt?

The place and degree of palatization varied in order to differentiate the meaning between the word pairs.

16.-What is the biological metaphor in language change?

I think that the biological metaphor is related to the fact that languages is constantly changing, in evolution. It evolves from fathers to children.

17.-What is the difference between internal and external histories of a language?

- Those in favor of internal/language-inherent explanations focus solely upon structural or psychological motivations and argue that linguistic change is motivated by, for example, an inherent drive for structural regularity, functional economy, or naturalness.

- Proponents of external explanations claim that it is not possible to understand linguistic innovation and change within an internal vacuum. Rather, it is necessary to examine the historical and social factors that co-occur with linguistic shifts.

(http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb195/is_5_39/ai_n28876955) 

18.-Look up Neogrammarians and lexical diffusion. Why are they often found in the same paragraph or chapter?

They always appear in the same paragraph because they are opposed. Neogrammarians theory says that a given sound change applies to all words with related features simultaneously. The lexical diffusion says that all sound changes derive from a variation of a single word or a small group of words that later affects other words with similar characteristics.

19.-Look up social norm-enforcement, childish errors and slips of the tongue. What have they to do with language change?

-The social norms indicate the established and approved ways of doing things, of dress, of speech and of appearance.

-With regards to ‘childish’ errors in language, we can say that children often make mistakes because they are prone to regularize the language (for exemple in spanish “no cabo” instead of  “no quepo”).