Transcript LING 580: Synchronic linguistic variation and language change Goals:

LING 580: Synchronic linguistic
variation and language change
Goals:
1. Review syllabus & provide course overview
2. Introduction
Synchronic and diachronic linguistic variation
What is meant by “language change?”
The use of the present to explain the past
Read for next time:
Review after today’s lecture: Labov 1, 2; McMahon 1.2-1.4,
For next time: Labov 3, 4
Introductory concepts
2 principle concerns of sociolinguistics:
The study of the interrelationships between language and social
structure; centrally concerned with how language varies (at a single
point in time) and changes (over time) according to how people in a
speech community use it.
Synchronic Variation = language-internal variation at a single point in
the life of a language
Diachronic Variation = language-internal variation observed at two
stages in the life of a language separated by time.
Introductory concepts
What role does the field of sociolinguistics play in research on
language change?
Historical linguists (like McMahon) turn to sociolinguists to explain the
role of synchronic variation in language change.
The primary consequence of sociolinguistics for historical linguistics is
the finding that synchronic linguistic variation is not random, but
structured, and may represent change in progress.
Introductory concepts
What is meant by “language change”?
definition: a disturbance of the form/meaning relationship in human
communication, so that people affected by the change no longer signal
meaning in the same way as others not affected.
--Instability of linguistic form
e.g.
Feed a cold, starve a fever.
•“Starve” used to mean “to die”
If you feed a cold, you will starve of the fever.
“Feed a cold, starve o’ the fever.”
Introductory concepts
Why, then, does language change occur?
--1. geographical isolation
--2. social isolation (eg., segregation in cities)
--3. social differentiation (eg., age, gender, etc.)
Introductory concepts
The use of the present to explain the past
Historical linguistics is able to demonstrate where and when
language changes, and how it has changed, but why a change begins
(the so-called “actuation problem”) has not been successfully
addressed.
problems in interpreting the linguistic data. We use the present to
explain the past partly to help uncover the answers to such problems to
linguistic inquiry as due to:
1. -- Survival of documents
2. -- Representation of dialects
3. -- Incomplete sources
4. – Disputes over matters of fact
5. – Paradoxes of principle: cases in which the facts seem to fly
in the face of an accepted principle.
e.g. Principle: Mergers cannot be reversed
pint/point in 18th century