College of educatoo

Eoglish departmeot

Age of sociolioguistc
:Report by
Ahmed mohammed
4th year - Eveoiog c-group
:Supervised by
Arjao Akram

2020..…2019
Age of sociolioguistc
The goal of lioguists who study laoguage
chaoge is to uoderstaod its mechaoisms
aodmotvatoos. To do this, they must irst
reliably ideotfy that a laoguage
chaoge has actu-ally occurred or is stll
occurriog. This artcle will irst brieey
describe the techoiquesdeveloped by
lioguists to capture historical aod oogoiog
laoguage chaoge. It will theoexplaio how,
io the later case, chaoge io progress
might be misdiagoosed. Rather
thaohaviog observed a lioguistc
iooovatoo
iocreasiog io a commuoity over tme
(‘geoera-tooal chaoge’), the lioguist might
have captured a regular associatoo of a
variaot with apartcular lifestage (‘age
gradiog’). A third possibility, which is
perhaps the most commoo,is that both
commuoity aod iodividual chaoge are
occurriog simultaoeously. This artclewill
give examples of all three pateros, aod
discuss why they are importaot to a
geoeraluoderstaodiog of laoguage
chaoge.Humao laoguages arise through a
combioatoo of uoiversal shared
capacites (Chomsky1957) aod the social
ioteractoos of iodividuals aod
commuoites. Like aoy other aspect of
commuoity
social behavior, laoguage is as subject to
,chaoge over tme as clothiog
music,goveromeot policies, geoder oorms
etc. The search for the mechaoisms of
laoguagechaoge was uotl the early 20th
ceotury the occupatoo of historical
lioguists. By carefullyexamioiog the
writogs of earlier geoeratoos or
,civilizatoos
historical lioguists were able,through a
process called ‘comparatve
recoostructoo’, to make educated
guesses at how,for iostaoce, spokeo Lato
evolved ioto its daughter laoguages such
as Freoch, Spaoish,Portuguese aod
Romaoiao, or how the vowels of Eoglish
uoderweot a dramatc reorgaoi-zatoo io
the late Middle Ages. This paiostakiog
work has showed us that maoy dia-
chrooic
chaoges (that is, operatog over tme)
have progressed with a great deal of
lioguistc regularity. The ideoticatoo of
.cooditooiog eoviroomeots (e.g
followiog oasalcoosooaots, followiog high
froot vowels) that favor certaio kiods of
historical chaogeshelped to pave the way
for the rule-based approach of
syochrooic (that is, relatog to apartcular
poiot io tme) geoeratvist lioguistcs io
the mid-20th ceotury.Ofeo missiog from
,historical accouots of laoguage chaoge
however, was ao uoder-staodiog of the
social factors that motvate laoguage
chaoge. Post-hoc descriptoos of
chaios of historical eveots (e.g. [boo] >
[bo˜o] > [bo˜] for the oasalizatoo of
Freoch vow-els) with explaoatoos based
.solely oo lioguistc eoviroomeot (e.g
oasalizatoo occurredbecause of followiog
oasal coosooaots, followed by deletoo
of the coosooaot) did ootprovide a good
accouot of
why these chaoges might have occurred io
.the irst place
This shortcomiog of the comparatve
recoostructoo approach was highlighted
by
UrielWeioreich, William Labov aod Marvio
Herzog (heoceforth WLH) io their 1968
publica-too
Empirical Fouodatoos for a Theory of
Laoguage Chaoge
Theyideotied .)Weioreich et al. 1968(
ive key problems that required
eogagemeot through a difereot
empiricalmethod. The irst is the
’‘coostraiots
problem: What kiods of lioguistc chaoges
?are possi-ble aod which are oot
Historical evideoce cao ooly show us
which chaoges have alreadyoccurred, but
oot which chaoges are impossible. The
secood is the ‘embeddiog’ problem:How
does a laoguage chaoge reach everybody
(or almost everybody) io a giveo
commu-oity? How is it embedded, oot
ooly io lioguistc eoviroomeots, but io
social eoviroo-meots? Historical texts
ofeo represeot ooly a very toy slice of
the
populatoo who spokea laoguage, aod
thus caooot adequately help us to
uoderstaod the spread of
laoguagechaoges. The third is the
:‘evaluatoo’ problem
How do commuoity members react
tolaoguage chaoges, aod what efect to
their
evaluatoos have oo the progress or
oature of achaoge? Social evaluatoo is
ofeo
recoverable from the writogs of
commeotators oo lao-guage, but teods to
be
aoecdotal aod the commeotators are
usually drawo from arestricted social
stratum. The fourth is the ‘traositoo’
problem: How does a laoguagechaoge
from
ooe state at tme A to aoother state at
tme B? Fioally, the ifh problem
is‘actuatoo’: why does a partcular
laoguage chaoge take place wheo aod
where
it does,aod oot at some other tme or
place?WLH argued that these importaot
problems could ooly be addressed by
observiog lao-guage chaoge
as it happeoed
aod from multple social vaotage poiots, ,
iocludiog a wideraoge of ages, social
classes aod localites. Scholars workiog io
the framework of WLHare koowo today
.’as ‘sociolioguists’ or ‘variatooists
Refereoces
Aroaud, Re´oe´. 1998. The developmeot of
the progressive io 19th ceotury Eoglish: a
quaottatve survey. Laoguagerariatoo
aod
Chaoge 10. 123–52.Bailey, Guy, Tom
,Wikle
Jao Tillery, aod Lori Saod. 1991. The
appareot tme coostruct. Laoguage
rariatoo
aodChaoge 3. 241–64