LING 580: Synchronic linguistic variation and language change

1. 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

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.”

5. 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.)

6. 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