LING 580: Synchronic linguistic variation and language change

Goals:1. Review syllabus & provide course overview2. Introduction

Synchronic and diachronic linguistic variationWhat 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 concepts2 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 conceptsWhat 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 conceptsWhat 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 forme.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 conceptsWhy, then, does language change occur?

--1. geographical isolation --2. social isolation (eg., segregation in cities)--3. social differentiation (eg., age, gender, etc.)

Introductory conceptsThe 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 documents2. -- Representation of dialects3. -- Incomplete sources4. – Disputes over matters of fact5. – Paradoxes of principle: cases in which the facts seem to fly in the face

of an accepted principle. e.g. Principle: Mergers cannot be reversedpint/point in 18th century