Lecture (9) Language Change Variation and change Why do changes - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Lecture (9) Language Change

 Variation and change  Why do changes spread?  How do we study language change?

 Reasons for language change ◦ Social status and language change ◦ Gender and language variation ◦ Interaction and language variation

Language changes over time in:  Pronunciation Knight o knit o  Meaning o nice meant ‘ precise ’, ‘ fastidious ’, ‘ ignorant ’. o In Shakespeare, hie (‘ hurry ’), stilly (‘ softly ’) and arrant (‘ thorough ’), which have disappeared or, more treacherously, changed their meaning. o Entertain , for instance, meant ‘ keep occupied ’

Language varies in :- o Time o Physical space / setting o Social context Speaker innovation : changes of language are done by the speakers.  Speakers innovate, sometimes spontaneously, but more often by imitating speakers from other communities.  If their innovations are adopted by others and diffuse through their local community and beyond into other communities, then linguistic change is the result.

 Language varies in three ways ◦ in physical space ( regional variation ) ◦ socially ( social variation ) ◦ over time ( language change )

Language variation Language change Stable variation Language change in progress Bell-shaped pattern Steady increase or steady decline All language change has its origins in variation. The possibility of a linguistic change exists as soon as a new form develops and begins to be used alongside an existing form. If the new form spreads, the change is in progress . If it eventually displaces the old form, the change has become a ‘fait accompli’ ’- it has gone to completion..

New form of slang words used by young people o e.g.: really good : super , spiffing , bonzer , groovy , neat , fantastic , magic , excellent , wicked , hot , rad , awesome , cool , sick , boss sound change occurs when one sound is replaced in people’s speech by another over a period of time, or when a sound disappears o e.g.: in New Zealand : new [nu:] , nuclear [ nu:kliə ).

 The sorts of questions sociolinguists ask about such changes are ‘ why do particular changes spread? ’, and ‘ how do linguistic changes spread through a community? ’  Sociolinguists try to identify the particular social factors which favour the spread of specific linguistic changes, and they try to explain how these factors influence the spread of the change.

 Standard English has lost the pronunciation of [r] following vowels in words like star and start .  It does not occur in RP nor in London Cockney dialect.  The loss is still in progress, as there are areas such as south- west England where [r] is still pronounced.

 A survey in the 1960s found that rhoticism was increasing in New York, where it was regarded as prestigious .  More recent research confirms that rhoticism is now well- established as a feature of New York speech, and there is a suggestion that it may be spreading to other cities such as Boston.  It has also been identified as a feature which is spreading in some varieties of New Zealand English.  While [r]-less speech is the prestigious form which is still spreading in England, in some parts of the USA it is the rhotic variety which is increasing.

 Such changes are usually proposed by people in higher social class  Changes from above : o Changes which people are aware of have been described as ‘changes from above’. These are changes where people are conscious of their social significance as desirable or prestige features of speech. o A second meaning refers to the source of the change. In this sense, ‘above’ refers to the fact that a feature is generally spreading downwards through the social groups in a speech community.

 In Martha’s Vineyard, the people resented the fact that the island has been invaded by immigrants and tourists.  They pronounced the words light and house like [ ləit ] and [ həus ], in which the vowel is more centralised .  This pronunciation was associated with the area in the past.  The fishermen used these forms to express solidarity.

 Diphthong centralization, which seemed to be unconscious , was a change to a more conservative pronunciation which used to be associated with the area in the past.  It had been dying out, but it was revitalised to express solidarity between those who identified with the island and felt loyalty to its rural values and peaceful lifestyle.  The centralisation of the vowel in light was particularly significant for signalling Islander identity .

 Other groups on the island with similar attitudes imitated the fishermen, and so the use of centralised vowels spread.  A group of Portuguese Americans, for instance, who had been on the island for several generations and who identified strongly with it, used centralized vowels too.  And, not surprisingly, the American Indians – the indigenous inhabitants of the island – also asserted their status as permanent residents of the island through their speech.

 So not all linguistic changes involve adopting new forms from outside the speech community. Nor do they always involve forms which people are conscious of as prestigious forms.  Vowel centralisation is not an overtly prestigious sound in US speech. On Martha’s Vineyard, however, it was clear that people unconsciously valued this speech feature.  The spread of centralised vowels illustrates how a vernacular feature can acquire social significance and spread through a community. It acquired covert prestige as a marker of a person’s status as a Vineyarder.

 Changes from below : o changes in language that people are not aware of (in that they are changes below people’s level of conscious awareness .). o another meaning refers to a change which spreads from lower social groups upwards through to higher social groups.  Here, the spread of the vernacular forms is considered a signal of covert prestige to express solidarity

 Spread of vernacular forms may or may not be above the level of conscious awareness.  People may adopt new speech features, and especially slang, from lower social groups relatively consciously.  It seems likely that the spread of (th)-fronting in British English (i.e. the substitution of [f] for [ɵ] and [v] for [ð]) is an example of a vernacular change which is spreading upwards through different social groups, and which is above the level of conscious awareness for most speakers,  while the spread of the glottal stop as a substitute for [t] in final position seems to be below the level of consciousness for most speakers.

 Koineization is a process of mixing two speech varieties that belong to the same language .  The term “koine” is borrowed from the Greek word Κοινή which means “a common tongue” .  It is first used in Greece to describe a common language that is created for communication among speakers of different Greek dialects.  As a result, koineization can be understood as a mixing of two dialects that generate a common speech style that is characteristic of a speech community.

 Koineization is not the same as creolization; despite that both of these processes examines specifically the mixing of speech varieties, they differ in their process. Creolization Koineization The speech varieties The varieties are not The varieties are involved exclusive to one limited to the same language. language. Degree of mixing High degree: Moderate degree: May not be able to Able to trace back most point out from the of the speech varieties creole which varieties it that contribute to that involves. koine.

 Trudgill and Britain has summarized four steps for koineization.

 Levelling results in the koine adopting fewer forms than the range of forms in the source dialects.  For example, if people who speak dialects with post-vocalic [r] come into contact with people who do not, levelling generally leads to the disappearance of post-vocalic [r] in the koine.  Social factors are relevant too. So if the people who speak the dialect with post-vocalic [r] have more prestige for some reason (as they did in New York), then the [r] is more likely to survive and be adopted into the koine.  The [r] may be associated with belonging as a local in a particular area, for instance, in which case it will survive as an identity marker , a symbol of local identity.

 Simplification of different features or categories occurs where two groups of speakers from different dialect areas come together, the simpler forms will usually win out.  So when dialect speakers who makes the distinction between he was swimming and they were swimming meet dialect speakers who don’t make this distinction (e.g. they say both he was swimming and they was swimming ), then the process of simplification suggests that the simpler form will survive.  Using only was is simpler than changing from was to were with different pronouns.