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LING 580: Today

LING 580: Today. Goals: 1. What constitute possible changes for the vowel systems of natural languages? 2. Schools of thought (McMahon 2) Neogrammarian Sound Change The Structuralists The Generativists 3. Principles of chain shifting Completed Changes (Labov 5)

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LING 580: Today

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  1. LING 580: Today • Goals: • 1. What constitute possible changes for the vowel systems of natural languages? • 2. Schools of thought (McMahon 2) • Neogrammarian Sound Change • The Structuralists • The Generativists • 3. Principles of chain shifting • Completed Changes (Labov 5) • Changes in Progress (Labov 6) • Read for next time: • Labov 10, 11; review Milroy and Milroy 1987

  2. Introductory concepts (from last time) 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. • Past questions: possible changes for natural languages Present data: studies of change in progress e.g., Philadelphia Vowels • Possible problems with the Uniformitarian principle: -- the role of cities -- the role of rural dialects

  3. 1. What constitute possible vowel system changes? A. The historical record provides compelling evidence for: 1. Shifts 2. Mergers 3. Rotations

  4. 1. What constitute possible vowel system changes? A. The historical record provides compelling evidence for: 1. Shifts: Minimal Chain Shift: a change in the position of two phonemes, so that Phoneme A leaves an original position which B then assumes: /A --> B/ Extended Chain Shift: a change in the position of two phonemes, so that the entering value of one minimal chain replaces the leaving value of a second minimal chain: /A --> B --> C --> D/ 2. Mergers: a change in the position of two phonemes, so that Phoneme A leaves an original position and enters a new position occupied by another phoneme, B: /A/ --> /B/ 3. Rotations: equivalent to Extended Chain Shifts

  5. 2. Schools of Thought: In search of principles • The Neogrammarians (aka “der Junggramatiker”) • -- Paul, Brugmann, Osthoff, Bopp, Grimm, Rask (Leipzig, last 25 yrs of 19th c.) -- “lautgesetz” The ‘sound law’; mainstay of the N. approach -- believed that languages don’t decay in the sense of losing ability to express relations between elements; they evolve alternative strategies. -- most importantly associated with the Regularity Hypothesis: • Sound change is regular and exceptionless • All words of similar phonetic context are affected • All speakers in a speech community are affected • Sound changes are purely phonetically conditioned -- believed that analogy “cleans up” after sound change -- concerned with sounds

  6. 2. Schools of Thought: In search of principles • The Structuralists • -- Saussure (Swiss, early 20th c.); Bloomfield, Hockett (American); Jakobson, Trubetskoy (Prague School) -- believed synchrony, not diachrony, to be primary in importance to linguistics -- distinguished langue from parolewithin the human capacity for langage -- view presupposes a contrast between elements and combination of elements into higher-order units (including the notion of a “phoneme”--minimal element of sound) -- Saussure’s notion of the Linguistic Sign -- attempted to explain the what and why of sound change. what: mergers and splits why: preserve symmetry; pairs of phonemes with a low functional load are likely to merge. -- concerned with systems (syntagmatic; paradigmatic)

  7. 2. Schools of Thought: In search of principles • The Generativists • -- Chomsky (American) -- infinite productivity of language (no closed set of forms); limiting factor is grammaticality -- phonemes don’t change; rules do. -- human languages share or may be distinguished by a set of grammatical components -- generative phonology retained notion of phoneme, holding that components of the grammar interact -- in sound change: • Construct and compare rules and underlying forms for each stage • Change may only occur in the form, ordering, or inventory of rules • Rules may be added or lost at the end of an established rule system. No rule insertion.

  8. 2. Schools of Thought: In search of principles • Applicatios of Structuralist notions in Changes in progress: • Drag and Push chains -- where have these been in operation in completed changes? In changes in Progress? • What do we know about the functional load of (ae)? What was the Structuralists’ prediction regarding pairs of phonemes with low functional load? With high functional load?

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