Chapter 8 - Language Change Flashcards
What Does Historical Linguists Do?
Chart out how and why long term, far reaching changes occur in a language
What do prescriptivists say?
- Proscribe a way that we should say things
- Believe that changes to the norm result from sloppiness
What does every instance of change start with?
Variation
What do traditional approaches claim about language change
- We can not see a change we can only see the consequences
- The important changes = permanent structural changes
- Variation is not important - it is random
What two things are sociolinguists interested in regarding language change
- How linguistic variation relates to L. change
* How L. change relates to social variables (social class, gender, age)
Traditional HIstorical linguistics looks only at what?
Structural concequences of change
What two types of change do Traditional Historical Linguists consider?
o Internal change: within the language because of some innate development, direction that the language is predisposed to change (phonological, morphological, syntax, semantics etc.)
o External change: at the pressure of external factors - other languages, economics (borrowing)
Examples of internal and external change?
Internal :
>Phonological - Lenition
> Morphological change - a napron sounds like an apron, so we artificially moved the word boundary
> Syntax -grammaticalization of I’m going
External:
> Phonological borrowing - the sound /j/ (as in jean)
> Lexical borrowing - yogurt (turkish)
Give an example of a language that encourage borrowing
- Urdu encourages borrowing from the arabic languages to stress their heritage
Give an example where borrowing was discouraged
The Nazis wanted to irradicate all non-german borrowed words (hitler actually stopped them!)
What type of change to Historical linguists value as being more important
Internal Change
What was the Major theoretical model discussed in class?
Family tree model - one sound has a phonemic split and there are two, and then those phonemes change etc.
Criticism of family tree model
- says that the process of change is instant.
- ignores external influences because they belong to different branches
- Focuses on the consequences (results)
What is the Wave Theory
- Various changes are floating from different centres and spread equally in all sides and directions (but at different speeds)
- circles can interact
- waves of changes diffuse through a language
- can affect linguistic, social and geographical space
Does every variation cause change?
NO and we cannot predict which ones will lead to change
What is long term/stable variation
a long lasting variation UNlikey to lead to a change
ex. h dropping, g dropping
- Related to social class, style, age, gender, social network etc
What is the Northern cities chain shift?
- typical of major urban centres: Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland and buffalo
- Some aspects are detectable in Milwaukee, Pittsburg, Columbus and Indianapolis
-Canada not affected
CHAIN SHIFT: Each vowel receives a new place of articulation by pushing other vowel out (domino effect)
ex. bit > bet / but
Do sociolinguistics believe you can see changes in progress?
YES
Give an example of a change in progress
The spread of uvular r in Europe:
o In France the king could not pronounce the trill /r/ and instead was pronouncing the uvular. So people started to imitate him and this change began to spread
o Has yet to reach Great Britain
What is the Lexical Diffusion Model
- Changes travel gradually \
\through linguistic, social or geographical space
2 Major factors effecting difusion
1) Density - How many people live in that place
2) Influence of language urban centers - the prestige of the language in the nearest center
Gravity Model
- Change first effects urban centers then smaller citys and finally rural areas (geographical space)
What prevents diffusion between close cities?
Spatial barriers - mountains, rivers, political boundaries
ex. Detroit isn’t affected by chain shift like windsor because of a national boundary
What is age grading?
- using speech appropriately to the speaker’s age
ex. child who only speaks native language until 10, will not speak that language for fear of embarrassment
How can we know if people are age-grading or whether it’s a process of linguistic change?
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
Explain the background of Labov’s study “Martha’s vineyard” ?
- 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
Labov was the first to do what?
Link the realization of vowels to age gender, community, ethnicity, occupation and MOST important their ATTITUDE towards the island
What did Labov disocover
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
What was shown in a subsequent study about the island in 2003?
-centralization of the diphthongs had lost its importance (tourists and new residents)
What happened in Milton Keyes?
- 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
The dialect of Milton Keyes youth is affected by what 3 things
- Dialect levelling (two dialects becoming more similar)
- Effect of the standard language
- The Youth culture of south eastern England
How does dialect differ in women?
- 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
What is a linguistic marketplace?
o Utterances take symbolic value
o Highly/lowly valued forms (standard is valued more)
o Women are said to initiate linguistic change
What is an Example of women initiating L change?
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
What are some ways women are blamed for L change?
→ 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
What can unsuitable data cause?
- False claims
- Incorrect predictions
Apparent time study?
Two groups of different ages and compare their speech at one point in time and draw conclusions
Give an example of Real-time confirmation
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
If we find a difference in speech through an apparent time study it can either be…?
- A change in the society
- age grading
Is the Wave Theory, group to group or style to style?
Group to group
What are the three ways changes can spread?
1) through Geographical space (urban, city, rural)
2) Group to Group (wave)
3) Style to style
Changes fro style to style with in an individual change in what direction?
start in the more formal style and make it’s way and it only stops once all styles are affected
Changes from style to style across groups
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!
Two types of language change?
Conscious and unconcious
What is conscious change
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
Change begins in what level of speech
Initiates at the Phonetic level in the upper class, then phonemic level, then structural change in the lower class
unconscious change
- change from bellow, natural change
- Some languages are predisposed to lose their cases we do not consciously do this
Give an example of how change is affected by Social class
• 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
What are the three social factors affecting L change
Social Class, Social network and LIfestyle?
Give an example of how social network can affect L change
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
Give an example of how lifestyle affects language change
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
Transmission vs diffusion
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)
Language changes according to an S-curve, explain.
first 20% slow change, next 60% is a rapid change, final 20% slow
25% of the pop. speaks with one variable 75% says another. where on the S-curve are we?
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
Give an example of diffusion over geographical space
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
Lexical diffusion model and wave theory are very similar, how are they different?
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)
When a change is introduced through individual usage it is..
- Introduced progressively
- Can’t be reversed
- all speakers consistently do the change in the same words (same order of progression)
example of speakers producing a change in the same progression
- Hudson’s Study of Vowel assimilation in persian
- Loss of final n in french, after a different vowel in each century
is lexical diffusion a mechanism of language change?
no it is a complement of Language change
Factors affecting language change
- long-standing trends
- Internal variation
- Social forces of society
