Instructor: Alicia Beckford Wassink Rm: THO 335
Office: Padelford A217 Time: W 3:30-5:50
Office Hours: Wednesdays 9:30-11:30 and by appointment
Office Phone: 616-9589
Dept. Phone: 543-2046 (Dept. of Linguistics Office)
Email: wassink@u.washington.edu
Website: http://faculty.washington.edu/~wassink
Welcome to the Website for this course. Enrolled students are encouraged to consult this page regularly across the quarter to consult the syllabus, access the E-Post discussion site, and access the Focus Questions list, which will be regularly updated.
Use the links below to navigate through this site:
Course Description and Syllabus
This course is intended primarily for students desiring advanced coursework in sociolinguistics, or in other areas of linguistics or language study related to historical linguistics. Advanced Sociolinguistics introduces the student to perspectives on language change and its mechanisms, relating these to the social context of language use in the speech community. Both language-internal and language-external (here, social) factors prompting language change (language users are people, after all!) are examined. Readings center around the development of sociolinguistic scholarship into language change, particularly work associated with and continuing that of Weinreich, Labov and Herzog in the 1960s: phonological mergers and splits, chain-shifts, and diffusion of change through the lexicon. We will also explore the role that language contact plays in language change, and current thinking regarding language death. We will consider how language change may progress alongside social change, where language ideology plays a role in the shifting meaning of linguistic forms.
Prerequisites: LING 400 (Introduction to Linguistics) or equivalent (e.g., ENGL 370), LING 432 (Sociolinguistics I), or instructor's permission.
Evaluation:
1.) 45%-- Students in past quarters have requested some means by which they may assess their progress in understanding the technical concepts associated with chain-shifting. There will be, to this end, a take-home exercise given during Week 6. We will choose, as a group, whether this exercise will be self- or peer-graded in class.
2.) 55%-- There are two options for this portion of the seminar grade:
a. Option I: A final term paper examining (the progress of) one example of linguistic change in a speech community, language or language family of student's choice (10-15 pages). Due at the beginning of the final examination period for this course: 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, December 17, 2003.
b. Option II: Students will be responsible for leading discussion of one reading listed below under "Selections for student presentation", related to one topic from the syllabus. Student’s lecture notes will be made available to classmates and the instructor on the day of the presentation. Any overheads used will also be made available (PowerPoint presentations will be added to the course webpage).
Required Readings:
1.) Labov, William (1994) Principles of Linguistic Change: volume 1, internal factors. Oxford: Blackwell.
2.) McMahon, April (1999) Understanding Language Change. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. (first publishing, 1994)
3.) Readings on electronic reserve (does not include optional readings)
Syllabus
Topics and readings: (make sure you consult the online focus questions for each week)
Week 1 October 1
Introduction:
The role of synchronic language variation in language change
The use of the present to explain the past
(After this meeting, read McMahon 1, particularly 1.2-1.4. You may also wish to read Labov 1-2 as a review of today's discussion)
**from Week 2 until the end of the term, listed readings for each week are to be prepared BEFORE that week’s meeting.**
Week 2 October 8
Sound Change: Observations from change in progress
Observations in apparent and real time (Labov 3, 4)
Week 3 October 15
Sound Change, cont.:
Neogrammarian, Generative and Structuralist Views of Sound Change (McMahon 2)
General Principles: Vowel Shifting and Chain Shifts (Labov 5, 6)
Week 4 October 22
Sound Change, continued:
Mergers and Splits (Labov 10, 11: review Milroy and Milroy 1978)
Week 5 October 29
Regularity and the Neogrammarian Controversy (Labov 15 [all], 16 [451-454])
Tensing of Short-a in Philadelphia
Week 6 November 5
Regular Sound Change and Regional Dialect Variation (Labov 17, 18)
Take-home exercise distributed
Week 7 November 12
Sociolinguistic Variation and Linguistic Change: (McMahon 9; review Eckert 1988; optional—Wassink and Dyer (in press))
Understanding the routes linguistic change takes through a speech community
Take-home exercise due
Week 8 November 19
Changes in Progress, cont.:
How is "change in progress" detected? (Labov 1980; Ohala 1980)
Example of "change in progress" (Trudgill, 1988; optional—Dubois and Horvath 2000)
Week 9 November 26
A sociolinguistic theory of change in progress:
Implications for linguistic theory (WLH, 1968; Martinet, 1952; optional—LYS 1972)
Week 10 December 3
Change due to Language Contact: Pidgin Formation and Creolization
Visual and oral modalities (McMahon 10)
video: Idioma de Signios Nicaragüenses (Nicaraguan Sign Language)
Week 11 December 10
Geographical and ideological separation and language death (McMahon 11; Trudgill and Tzvaras, 1975)
The functional character of change: The maintenance of meaning
Articles on Electronic Reserve (these are the selections for student presentation):
Eckert, Penelope (1988) Adolescent social structure and the spread of linguistic change. Language in Society 17:183-208. (week 7)
Labov, William (1980) The social origins of sound change. In Locating Language in Time and Space. New York: Academic Press, 251-66. (week 8)
Martinet, André (1952) Function, structure and sound change. Word 8:1-32. (week 9)
Ohala, J. J. (1980) The Listener as a source of sound change. Working Papers of the Chicago Linguistic Society. (week 8)
Trudgill, Peter (1988) Norwich revisited: Recent linguistic changes in an English urban dialect. English World-Wide, 9:33-49. (week 8)
Weinreich, U., Labov, W., and Herzog, M. (1968) Empirical foundations for a theory of language change. In Directions for historical linguistics; a symposium (W. P. Lehmann and Yakov Malkiel, eds.). Austin, University of Texas Press. pp. 95-188. (week 9)
Trudgill, Peter and Tzvaras, G. A. (1975) A sociolinguistic study of Albanian dialects spoken in the Attica and Biotia areas of Greece. S.S.R.C. report. (week 10)
Further Reading:
General (sociolinguistic theory, language ideology and change):
Dubois, S. & B. Horvath (2000). When the music changes, you change too: Gender and language change in Cajun English. Language Variation and Change, 11, pp 287-313
Labov, William, Malcah Yeager and Richard Steiner (1972) A Quantitative Study of Sound Change in Progress. Philadelphia: U.S. Regional Survey.
Wassink, A. B. & J. Dyer (in press) Language Ideology and the Transmission of Phonological Change: Changing indexicality in two situations of langauge contact, Journal of English Linguistics (March, 2004)
Mergers and Splits:
Milroy, James, and John Harris (1980) When is a merger not a merger? The MEAT/MATE problem in a present-day English vernacular. English World-Wide, 1:199-210.
Mechanisms of sound change:
Stockwell, Robert P. (1972) Problems in the interpretation of the Great Vowel Shift. In Studies in Linguistics in Honor of George L. Trager, M. E. Smith (ed.), The Hague: Mouton, 344-62.
Toon, Thomas E. (1978) Lexical Diffusion in Old English. In Papers from the Parasession on the Lexicon, Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society, 357-64.
----- (1983) The Politics of Early Old English Sound Change. New York: Academic Press.
Trudgill, Peter and Tzvaras, G. A. (1975) Why Albanian-Greeks are not Albanians: Language shift in Attica and Biotia. In Language, Ethnicity, and Intergroup Relations (H. Giles, ed.) European Monographs in Social Psychology 13, New York: Academic.
Wang, William S.-Y. (1979) Language Change: A lexical perspective. Annual Review of Anthropology, 8:353-71.
Week 2:
Readings:
Focus questions:
1.) What are the relative benefits to accomplishing a real time study? The limitations? The benefits of an apparent-time study? The limitations? Which type of study is most commonly conducted in present-day sociolinguistics?
2.) Why did Leonard Bloomfield assert that language change could never be observed?
3.) What is an “age coefficient”?
4.) What is “change from above”? “Change from below”?
Week 3:
Readings:
Focus questions:
1.) What are two ways in which change may spread through the phonological system of a language?
2.) What is meant by the "implementation problem"? the "actuation problem"?
Week 5:
Readings:
Focus questions:
1.) Li's (1982) study of a labial>velar sound change in Atayalic (Taiwan) is an example of change in ___________(apparent/real) time?
2.) How does the finding that Li's results are implicationally scalable support the notion of lexically-diffusing change?
3.) What is the basis for Labov's reinterpretation of the Neogrammarian position to *describe the output of a change* rather than to *characterize the process of sound change itself*?
Week 6:
Readings:
Focus questions:
1.) We learn that the concensus among early lexical diffusionists, such as Gauchat, was that the facts of dialect geography did not support Neogrammarian exceptionlessness.
a.) Summarize the findings and significance of Gauchat's Charmey study (this will require returning to chapters 3,4 for details of the study)
b.) State why dialect geography was felt to provide counterevidence for Neogrammarian sound change (hint: 2 reasons)
2.) Why did Kiparsky, a generative phonologist, reason that language contact/diversity in no way disconfirms exceptionlessness? What lead him to argue that "any borrowing hypothesis must fit the known dialectological and sociolinguistic realities (p. 474)?"
3.) Labov's proposed solution to the regularity question is to accept that both lexical diffusion and exceptionless sound change may be intimately involved in sound change. Rather than simply taking "the middle road", he proposes that these two mechanisms operate at different times, and display different properties.
a.) When is each mechanism predicted to apply?
b.) What are the properties of both types of sound change?
c.) Do you feel this proposal is well-motivated, or a "cop-out"?
Course Overheads
Follow the links below to view the powerpoint presentations for each weekly lecture.
Week 2 -- Introduction, cont. Change in Progress
Week 3 -- Major schools of thought
Week 6 -- Regular Sound Change and Regional Dialect Variation