Chapter 9
Language Change
Language change happens over time, and
is also governed by social and physical circumstances. Sociolinguists study why
particular changes spread, and how they spread.
Two phenomena of change are discussed in
this chapter: post vocalic /r/ and the spread of vernacular forms:
Post vocalic /r/
In many parts of England and Wales, the
Standard English has lost the pronunciation of /r/ after vowels in words like
“star” or “card”. The loss of post vocalic /r/ has begun in the 17th
century in the south-east of England, but areas at the south-west of England
are pronouncing the post vocalic /r/. The change, however, is moving slowly
towards the West. The accents of post-vocalic /r/ are called “rhotic”. In
England, rhotic accents are described as rural and uneducated. However, in USA,
it is extensively used. Many US accents are rhotic. A research made in 1960
found out that rhoticism is regarded as prestigious in New York. It was used by
the young people of the upper middle class in their formal and casual speech,
which indicated that it is spreading. However, Eastern England is generally
non-rhotic.
**This linguistic variation proves the fact that complexity
of variation and language change, as well as the arbitrariness of the forms
that are regarded as prestigious to some communities, and bad to others.
The spread of vernacular forms:
Vernacular pronunciations also spread in
speech communities. A linguistic survey made in 1950 in Martha’s Vineyard,
showed that the community use the vernacular forms of the earlier generations
to mark itself from the tourists or visitors to the island. Speakers changed
their pronunciation to seem more conservative that is associated with the area
in the past. Even if this pronunciation has died out, it was used to express
solidarity and loyalty to the rural values of the place. Therefore, they
pronounced words like “light” as close to “layeet” and “house” as close to
“heyoose”. The people of vineyard unconsciously valued the feature of “vowel
centralization” in their speech.
**This linguistic variation proves the
fact that how a vernacular feature can acquire social significance and covert
prestige.
How do
changes spread?
1- from
group to group:
The wave metaphor is suitable to
visualize or understand the spread of language change from one group to
another.
1-
Any
particular change spreads simultaneously to different directions, but not with
the same rate. Social factors such as gender, age and status affect the rate.
2-
In
any speech community the waves intersect. A speaker simultaneously belongs to
different groups like social, age and region groups. A change may spread to any
of these dimensions and into other groups.
3-
Linguistic
changes infiltrate groups from the speech of people on the margins between social
or regional groups via the middle people who have contacts in more than one
group.
2- from
style to style:
The change is from one style to another.
Ex: for more formal to more casual style. In the same time, it spreads from one
individual to another within a social group, and subsequently from one social
group to another.
When a change is a prestigious one it
usually starts at the top of the speech community, in the most formal style of
the highest social group of the community. For example, if we want to trace the
spread of the post vocalic /r/ in New York, we will find it first happening in
the most formal style of the highest social group in the community. it then
moves to the less formal style of the group, and simultaneously it also spreads
to the most formal styles of other groups, until it reaches the speech of the
people of the lower social groups. The change gradually spreads from style to
style and from group to group till it reaches completion.
On the other hand, a vernacular change,
such as the vowel centralization in Martha vineyard’s case, happens in people’s
casual styles. It spreads slowly, and may never be accepted by the highest
social group in the community. New vernacular forms spread in the middle of the
social class range (this includes the upper working class). Also younger people
adopt new forms more quickly than old people. Therefore in London, we hear the
vernacular pronunciation of the glottal stop for /t/ sounds in the formal
styles of young people.
4-
From Word to Word (lexuical Diffusion):
Sound change can
also spread from one word to another. It
spreads through different words one by one. This is called lexical diffusion.
When a sound change begins, all words with the same sound change one by one,
not in the same time.
For example, in
Belfast, a vowel change affected the vowel in the word “pull” before “put”, and
“put” changed before “should”.
In New Zealand, a
vowel change, which is currently in progress, merged vowels of words “beer” and
“bear” which were distinct. The distinction between “rarely” and “really” has
already disappeared.
How do we
study language change? (apparent-time study, real-time study)
Real-Time
Study:
A very reliable method of studying
language change is real-time study. This is done by tracing change over time
through comparing a sample of people speech in a time with another similar
sample years later.
An interesting real-time study was made
by Peter Trudgill, who returned to Norwich after fifteen years of his study of
speech patterns in Norwich. He found out that some of the variation he had
noted in his original study had led to linguistic change as he predicted. The
vowels of “Bear” and “beer” which were distinct have completely merged in the
speech of all speakers except those who belong to the highest social group. There
were also other changes that were continuing. In the following years, the Norwich
young people have completely substituted the sound /Ө/ with /f/ in words like
“thin”.
So in real – time study, you build on
earlier work or earlier information when studying the change. Therefore,
dictionaries that state thee exact time of word use are also important in
tracing change over time.
Apparent-time study:
Information on the use of language by
age groups can reveal the direction of the linguistic change in a community.
There are Stable linguistic changes,
(meaning that the patterns of language use by the social groups have not
changed for 50 or 60 years ago. A bell-shaped pattern is more typical of stable
variation) like:
-
The
deletion of (-ed) suffix in past tense verbs in English-speaking communities.
-
h -
dropping in Norwich.
-
The forms of (in) versus (iŋ) in Norwich.
-
The use of /d/ instead of /ð/ in words like
“then” or “theses” in New York.
Increasing change is like the
substitution of the glottal stop for /t/ sound in Norwich. This means that there is a linguistic change
in progress.
A steady increase or decline in the use
of a linguistic form by an age group suggests that a change is in progress in
the speech community.
Comparing the speech of people from
different age groups can be useful clues for language change. This is called apparent-time
method of studying change. Differences between the speech of older
people and younger people are taken as indications of change in progress. Young
people use more innovative and new forms, while older speakers use more
conservative and old forms.
When the change involves a spread of a
prestigious form, we realize the spread easily, as young people use it more
extensively, which means that a new form was introduced. However, new less
prestigious or vernacular forms can hardly be realized because it will only be
shared by young people. An age-grade pattern of the young people is the
extensive use of vernacular and less prestigious forms. When the young people
grow old, they will use more formal and more standard forms to respond to the
society pressures. This is why it is difficult to spot the spread of vernacular
or less prestigious forms.
A social dialect survey made in Sydney
has found that HRTs were used extensively by teenagers rather than adults. This
suggested that it would make a change as the young people will keep using these
forms as they grow old. But the researchers had to ensure that this is not an
age-grade pattern, and that it may be repeated among the teenagers only. In
order to resolve such problems we need to know other factors rather than age
that cause language change in communities: social status, gender and
interaction.
As for social status, a linguistic change may enter a
community through any social group. Different types of changes are related to
the different kinds of groups. Members of the most social status tend to
introduce changes into the speech community from a neighboring speech community
that has greater status and prestige. For example:
Ø Upper class London speech community has
prestige in the eyes of many communities outside London. Therefore, middle
class people of Norwich will introduce prestige forms of London in to
the Norwich speech community. The pronunciation of the vowel in “top” or “dog”
has changed from /ta:p/ and /da:g/ to RP /top/ /dog/.
Ø French words like sangfroid or savoir
fair were introduced by educated middle class people who learnt
French.
Ø Younger speakers of upper middle
class introduced the post vocalic /r/ from New York.
Ø Lower class speakers are more influential in
spreading less conscious linguistic changes. Low class men adopt speech forms
from neighboring local workers to express solidarity.
Ø The upper working class is a social group whose networks are
open and provide exposure to many linguistic forms. This group has introduced
to Norwich the change of the pronunciation of the vowel sound in words like
“hell” and “tell”. The spread of this change depends on wither the change will
infiltrate into the upper middle class people in Norwich before they re aware
of its less prestigious status compared to RP.
Ø In Australia, the HRT spreads among lower
socio-economic groups. People in low-paid jobs use them as a solidarity marker.
Currently, it is regarded as vulgar by older higher status speakers. So it may
remain in the low social class.
As for Gender and language change:
Women tend to be associated with changes
towards prestige or vernacular norms more than men. Men often introduce
vernacular change.
1-
In Ucieda,
(village in Spain) men are forced tom marry women from outside the village. The
women inside the village refuse to marry local working farmers. Their
speech reflects their social aspirations, and that is why they use more
Castilian final /o/ pronunciation rather than the dialectal /u/ pronunciation.
The women speech in this village is leading to a change towards the prestige
standard Castilian Spanish.
2-
In Martha’s
Vineyard, men speech leads to a change towards vernacular
pronunciations. This is done by reviving the older and conservative
pronunciations like centralization of vowels. This pronunciation expresses the
loyalty to older values.
3-
In Norwich,
men speech leads to a change towards vernacular pronunciations.
They change pronunciation of vowels in words like “hell” towards a vernacular
pronunciation /hΛl/. This pronunciation expresses the loyalty to older values.
However, the Norwich women are leading a change towards RP.
4-
There
are two types of exception:
Ø Women sometimes introduce vernacular
forms into a community: In Belfast, women are introducing more vernacular forms
into their speech community. The reason why they do this is because prestige is
a relative concept. Within the working class prestige is associated with the
area that has full employment, which is Ballymacarett in Belfast. This is why
women of Clonard (which does not have employment) take vernacular forms from
Ballymacarett. It is a vernacular form that is admired and regarded as
prestigious as that of Clonard. Also this is because Clonard’s women’s social
networks are multiplex, which makes their speech change move towards vernacular
forms.
Ø There are communities were women do not
lead linguistic changes into any direction. In Iran or India, women are not
expected to have any motivation to innovate linguistic forms, and it will lead
them no where if they did. Therefore, they do not lead linguistic changes into
any direction.
As for Interaction and Language Change:
Interaction is important for providing
the channels of linguistic change. Interaction, or lack of it, affects the
language change. For example:
1-
Isolation affects language change in a speech
community. For instance, in a tightly-knit community, people have less contact
with the outside world. That is why we find conservatism in the speech. We can
see this in the following communities:
a)
Western
Isles of Scotland, where Scottish Gaelic survived.
b)
North
and East Cape of New Zealand, where Maori survived.
c)
Mountain
villages in Italy, Spain and Switzerland, where Italian, Spanish and French
were preserved.
d)
Sardinia,
which is famous for its conservative forms.
e)
Iceland,
where the geographical situation made people separate and scattered. Although
this situation naturally leads to dialectal differences, the Icelandic
linguistic forms were conservative due to the fact that people from all places
in Iceland shared strong cultural and political ties.
2-
Face
to face interaction
affects linguistic change. Some linguists believe that face to face interaction
is crucial before the change happens. For example, in Norwich many young
speakers use cockney forms of London. This change spread from London to Norwich
through the people who spent time in London. The word “brother” is pronounced
as “bovver” by many Norwich young speakers. This is an attempt to signal
solidarity with a certain cultural group that is represented by pop music, and
which is against old established linguistic forms. The Norwich people who spent
time in London in this case are regarded as the link or the channel that
spreads the linguistic new forms from London to Norwich. The change must also
have a prestige to complete the change transmission. This prestige can be for
expressing solidarity (overt prestige) or for expressing social status (covert
prestige). Face to face interaction also helped in promoting the use of glottal
stops in areas close to London faster than areas which are distant from London.
3-
Media
affects language
change. The use of vernacular or cockney forms like “bovver” by admired people
or actors in TV can encourage the people to adopt these vernacular forms.
Cockney TV heroes can promote the spread of vernacular forms. But face to face
interaction is needed to complete the forms transmission. Face to face
interaction has a stronger effect than that of the media. The media could not be able to promote the
use of glottal stops in speech in Liverpool or New Castle as quickly as in
oxford.
4-
When
a form is associated with the capital, it seems more prestigious to speakers of other speech
communities, which makes them adopt the form faster.
5-
Referential
and affective functions affect
language change. In an Indian village called “kupwar” there are three languages
used: Kannada, Urdu and Marathi. The people in the village use the three
languages in their daily activities. Therefore, the three languages became
identical in grammar and word order and inflection. In the same time, each
language wants to be distinguished from the other, so the differences were at
vocabulary level. In the case of Kupwar, language change does not make the
language unintelligible to different social groups. This is because language has
to fulfill its referential function. (Providing information).
Glossary:
Rhoticism /r/ نطق الصوت
Rhotic accent /r/ لكنة تنطق الصوت
Non-Rhotic accent /r/ لكنة لا تنطق الصوت
Infiltrates يتوغل
Glottal
stop كالهمزة، وينتج عن قطع مفاجئ للهواء أثناء الكلام (t)
أو (d)
نطق الحرف
HRT:
High Rise Terminal نبرة صوتية مرتفعة تستخدم عند نطق السؤال
Relative
concept مفهوم نسبي يختلف تفسيره من شخص لآخر
Inflection
الإعراب
Unintelligibility
غموض وعدم فهم
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