Chapter 8 - Language Change Flashcards

Question

How can we know if people are age-grading or whether it's a process of linguistic change?

Answer 1

1) Real time panel study - interview the same people 20 years later and examine their speach, if they still show the variable then there is change. If they don't then it was age grading. 2) Real time trend study - Not the same person but a comparable person is studied

Answer 2

- small island off coast of Massachusetts where Labov found usable data from 30 or 40 yrs before - He compared realization of vowels and supposed there would be a tendency to centralize vowels

Answer 3

Link the realization of vowels to age gender, community, ethnicity, occupation and MOST important their ATTITUDE towards the island

Answer 4

There was a tendency to centralize vowels that was most advanced in - People in their 30s and early 40s - Fishermen - Living in Up-island area > People were exaggerating centralization to show solidarity

Answer 5

-centralization of the diphthongs had lost its importance (tourists and new residents)

Answer 6

- Socially fluid population (people move in and out all the time) - Kinship is less important: children born there produce distinctive local forms their (british) parents don't - Lack of close social networks

Answer 7

- Dialect levelling (two dialects becoming more similar) - Effect of the standard language - The Youth culture of south eastern England

Answer 8

- Women produce the standard forms and hypercorrect more than men (b/c this is the only way they can achieve status) - Women over-report usage of standard forms - Use more formal style

Answer 9

o Utterances take symbolic value o Highly/lowly valued forms (standard is valued more) o Women are said to initiate linguistic change

Answer 10

the Oberwart village in Austria Local farmers traditionally spoke Hungarian, but some women did not want to marry only local farmers. They wanted to marry German speakers so they are blamed for the loss of Hungarian

Answer 11

→ Passing language on to children | → Since women are responsible for the household, any change in a word related to the household is blamed on women

Answer 12

- False claims | - Incorrect predictions

Answer 13

Two groups of different ages and compare their speech at one point in time and draw conclusions

Answer 14

Japanese denasalization (ng vs. g) - Denasalization drops as age increases - younger they are the more they denasalize → We now it is a linguistic change because 20 years ago 60-80 year olds didn't use denasalization, but in 1986 60-80 year olds use denasalization 10-12 % of the time → They are the same age but their language is different

Answer 15

- A change in the society | - age grading

Answer 16

Group to group

Answer 17

1) through Geographical space (urban, city, rural) 2) Group to Group (wave) 3) Style to style

Answer 18

start in the more formal style and make it's way and it only stops once all styles are affected

Answer 19

Begins in the formal speech of the upper class, then the informal speech, than the formal speech of middle class and so on until this feature is typical across all groups and then the upper class will change again!

Answer 20

Conscious and unconcious

Answer 21

``` Change from above - speakers are aware that the upper class speaks differently and they try to mimic them → Can occur in the informal speech of lower class but has a low chance of effecting the entire language ```

Answer 22

Initiates at the Phonetic level in the upper class, then phonemic level, then structural change in the lower class

Answer 23

- change from bellow, natural change | - Some languages are predisposed to lose their cases we do not consciously do this

Answer 24

• Labov’s Study in Philadelphia → Speakers showing the most sound changes: oThe highest social class oThe largest number of local contacts oThe largest proportion of contacts inside and outside the local community →Claims it’s people of the upper class that originate change

Answer 25

Social Class, Social network and LIfestyle?

Answer 26

The Milroys in Ireland: Compared speakers Strong ties with the community and wanted to speak like them = slow to change (less affected by lanagueg change) someone with weak ties = fast to change →Claims L change initiates in middle class

Answer 27

Eckert’s study of high school study in Detroit → labeled as jock and burnouts → Found that behaviour of girls ranged more than boys - more is required →Jocks: more linguistically conservative → Burnouts: participated more in linguistic change

Answer 28

Lexical Transmission: children quire language through parents. They learn a feature while learning first L Lexical Diffusion: happens to adults - a new gradual change in words through age groups (more people say pop and instead of soda)

Answer 29

first 20% slow change, next 60% is a rapid change, final 20% slow

Answer 30

Either the beginning of a change or the end of a change, we don't know the direction unless we look at the previous state of the language

Answer 31

The division of Germany into 3 dialect groups | - word change spreads from south(standard german) to north (dutch) and stops in different places for different words

Answer 32

wave theory - explains how people are affected by the change | Lexical Diffusion - how a specific change GRADUALLY spreads through words over lexical space (but can apply to people)

Answer 33

- Introduced progressively - Can't be reversed - all speakers consistently do the change in the same words (same order of progression)

Answer 34

- Hudson's Study of Vowel assimilation in persian | - Loss of final n in french, after a different vowel in each century

Answer 35

no it is a complement of Language change

Answer 36

- long-standing trends - Internal variation - Social forces of society