LING001

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LING001

• Sociolinguistic Variation
• 4-6-2009

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Language in Space and Time

• Language change and variation
• Language clearly changes

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Change vs. Variation

• No change, no variation
• No variation, no change
• The material of biological change variation in
  natural selection
• Darwin If we possessed a perfect pedigree of
  mankind, a genealogical arrangement of the races
  of man would afford the best classification of
  the various languages now spoken throughout the
  world and if all extinct languages, and all
  intermediate and slowly changing dialects, were
  to be included, such an arrangement would be the
  only possible one. Yet it might be that some
  ancient languages had altered very little and had
  given rise to few new languages, whilst others
  had altered much owing to the spreading,
  isolation and state of civilisation of the
  several co-descended races, and had thus given
  rise to many new dialects and languages.
  (Origins, p342)

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It happens to all of us...

• The Queen no longer speakers the Queens English

5 1950s 8 1980s S standard
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What is this?
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Soda map 52.97
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Pop chart 25.08
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Coke?! (12.38)
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Also

• soft drink 5.89
• tonic 0.67
• cocola 0.29
• fizzy drink 0.14
• dope 0.03
• lemonade 0.01 (Florida)

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Types of variations

• Language variation can be based on
• geographical region
• gender
• age
• social class
• ethnicity
• speech context

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Regional Variations

• e.g. Canadian vs US (out and about)
• wicket window with clerk
  behind it
• hydro electricity,
  electric bill
• skidoo snow mobile
• grade ones first graders
• head (of dept) chair (of dept)
• homo milk whole milk
• brown (bread) whole wheat (bread)

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Regional Variations

1. I teach Ferdinand the calm cat to fetch cold cups
   of coffee. Who knows more about tasting things?
   He's used the book

http//alt-usage-english.org/audio_archive.shtml
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Regional Variations

• Atlas of North American English (Labov, Ash
  Boberg 2006)
• Available on line at Penn Library
• E.g., cot-caught merger (two distinct
  phonemes are merged into one)
• Johnson (2007)
• Boston cot-caught merger (also, Don-Dawn)
• Small towns in RI on Mass. border no merger
• But recent migrants from Boston introduced the
  merger into the local community
• younger siblings now have merger, but not old
  ones, indicating that the merger system must be
  sufficiently represented to be acquired (about
  20)

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beating vs. beatin
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(No Transcript)
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Variation in Society Register

• Formal/polite vs. conversational/casual
• I was quite enthusiastic about the prospect.
• I was, like, totally psyched!
• E.g., Korean and Japanese use honorific suffixes
• Korean -si (added to verbs), -keso (added to
  nouns)
• e.g. Korean register/politeness suffixes to show
  social rank distance between speaker and listener
• -yo (added to verbs)

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(No Transcript)
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Variation by Gender

• Consensus language change is often led by
  females
• In English, differences are subtle, and also much
  debated Lakoff (1975)
• hedges sort of, kind of, I guess
• super polite forms I would really appreciate it
  if
• tag questions ..., isnt it? (no Cameron et
  al 1988)
• hyper-correct grammar and pronunciation
• empty adjectives, intensifiers thats so
  gorgeous, thats nice
• more color terms (periwinkle, mustard, ...)

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Gender

• Koasati (Native American language, Louisiana)
• male characterized by final s
• female male
• lakawwil lakawwis I am lifting it
• molhil molhis we are peeling
  it
• lakaw lakaws he is lifting
  it
• ip ips he is
  eating it
• iltolihn iltolihns we are
  working
• otil otils I am
  building a fire

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Social Class

• S.C. Ross, England 50 years ago
• Upper Class Non-Upper Class
• looking glass mirror
• have a bath take a bath
• sick ill
• rich wealthy
• wireless radio
• house home
• bike cycle

Many of these have no social connotations now, or
have opposite arbitrariness of sociolinguistic
markers
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Variation in Society

• A common misconception about non-standard
  varieties of English is that they are
  unsystematic and lazy or illogical forms of
  the language
• this is directly related to the conception of
  language change
• Linguists have studied these dialects for over 50
  years, and have found that their non-standard
  features are typically found in prestige
  varieties of other languages/dialects
• Three examples
• Latin (recall the 2nd lecture of the semester)
• double negation
• the use of /r/ in American English

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Progress or Decay

• Whats special about Latin?
• Latin is a Romance language, more directly
  related to French, Italian, Spanish, etc.
  English is a Germanic language
• language contact did bring in lots of words of
  Latin origins

Latin rich morphology sometimes
Spanish poor morphology
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Progress or Decay
Latin poor morphology
Spanish rich morphology elsewhere
Latin no articles (a vs the), definiteness
is marked by word order dog barks means the
dog barks, barks dog means a dog barks
Spanish does have articles for definiteness
(un vs. al)
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Double Negation

• I didnt see anyone.
• I didnt see noone.
• Often considered illogical -- two negatives
  make a positive
• However, this type of negative agreement is
  standard in a wide range of languages
• Romance, Slavic, Greek, Hungarian, Flemish,
  Afrikaans, Lithuanian, Japanese, ...
• English-learning children make use of double
  negation, regardless of the variety they are
  exposed to

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• Gianni non ha visto niente Italian
• John not has seen nothing
• John didnt see anything
• Dhen ipa tipota Greek
• not I.said nothing
• I didnt say anything
• Janek nie pomaga nikomu Polish
• Janek not helps nobody
• Janek doesnt help anybody
• Johnwa nanimo tabe-nak-atta Japanese
• John nothing eat-Not-Past
• John didnt eat anything

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rise and fall of r

• The history of the r-less speech (Youth and
  Viga-JFK)
• origin in England a prestige dialect that did
  pronounce r
• spread to US and carried inland
• r-less became fashionable in England but only
  spread to some coastal cities (Boston, New York,
  Savanna, GA, etc.)
• now standard American English is rhotic
• Rhotic dialects are more prestigious in NYC

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Department Store Study

• Sociolinguistic study by William Labov (now
  _at_Penn) in 1960s
• Ask sales people at department stores location of
  item that he knew was on the fourth floor
• fourth floor or fouhth flooh
• Ask to repeat careful pronunciation
• fourth floor or fouhth flooh

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The Battleground

• High prestige Saks Fifth Avenue
• Middle prestige Macys
• Low prestige S. Klein

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R-results

• more rs in careful pronunciation
• social stratification
• Saks gt Macys gt S. Klein
• floorwalkers gt salesclerks gt stockboys
• gender women gt men
• age younger gt older (Saks)

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Use of r
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Across the Atlantic NY vs. Reading
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Summary

• Language is embedded in culture and society, and
  carries the respective values
• some variables are remarkably stable (e.g.,
  R-less speech)
• people are quite sensitive to the sociocultural
  implications of language variation
• But the most interesting, and non-trivial, kind
  of variation resides below consciousness
• Serious analysis requires structural knowledge of
  language (e.g., Labovs article for reading this
  week on African American English)
• Wednesday Language change