Re: Learning a language
From: Eugene Holman (holman_at_elo.helsinki.fi)
Date: 06/15/04
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Date: Tue, 15 Jun 2004 06:33:39 +0300
In article <10csjepkib16f22@corp.supernews.com>, "alexB"
<alexb7623@hotmail.com> wrote:
> "Eugene Holman" <holman@elo.helsinki.fi> wrote in message
> news:holman-1506040119090001@c518-m3.eng.helsinki.fi...
<deletions>
>
> Thanks for explaining. I appreciate it. I will have to read it 5 more times
> at least to get a sense (perhaps) of some fine print. There is also a huge
> gap between us and ultimately it boils down to how differently our minds
> work. It is aside from the fact that I am totally ignorant in the matters
> you are talking about. My hope is to catch the pith.
>
> I want to use this opportunity to test your theory. I will give it a
> touchstone. But first I want to rephrase the key part to make sure I
> understood it correctly. You are saying that what happened at Martha's
> Vineyard can be used as a model to the fact that a separate pidgin English
> (apart from a standard English) was developed 300 years ago by the African
> slaves in America.
In a very general sense, yes. The speakers of a language, any language,
are constantly subject to conflicting social pressures to express
themselves so that they can be understood by everyone else who speaks the
same language, and to use the language in a way which expresses their
individuality and thus distinguishes them and the peer group they
identitfy with at any particular time from everyone else. For a
relatively recent theoretical framework, see L. Milroy 1987, *Language and
Social Networks*. In the slave subcultures that developed in North America
there were many communicative needs, but one of them was to elaborate
varieties of English that would reflect the different social statuses of
slave and slave-owner. Briefly put, slave-owners had more and better
access to the standard Englishes of the time than slaves did, and the
choices that they made with respect to the variety of English that they
elaborated and handed down to the next generation were governed by a
different input and by different norms than the English, including the
heavily accented and "broken" foreigners' English, that the slaves had
access to and handed down to their offspring. Different vernacular norms
arose and, as was the case in Martha's Vineyard, some of their features
became sociolinguistic markers, that is to say, features of usage widely
recognized as signs of a specific social identity: "Why do you say /gwain/
rather than /'goiN/? Because that's what is expected of slaves when they
speak their recognized form of vernacular English."
> You are saying that their sole motivation was to
> distinguish themselves, to set themselves apart.
Please. don't put words into my mouth. I'm saying that this is a factor,
one factor. In Labov's recent monumental work in linguistic change he
recognizes three types of factors that contribute to the process which
allows linguistic innovations to acquire semiotic valency and thus
establish themselves as changes and social markers: structural factors,
functional factors, and social factors. Structural factors make it
probable that certain types of linguistic innovation, such as the loss of
the redundant ending in the third person singular present of English verbs
(he goes > he go), will occur, functional factors, the desire to express
individuality by testing or even flaunting existing norms, will allow it
to become established in a given vernacular norm, and social factors, the
ability to resist pressure to conform to the old norm and consciousness
that this alternative norm serves to distinguish "us" from "them", will
provide the confidence and motivation to use this alternative norm in at
least certain types of communicative situations. This is what, in Labov's
formulation, resulted in the reversal of the trend to level the
"centralization" of the aw and ay variables that had been noted in
Martha's Vineyard by Kurath and his fieldworkers during the 1930s and
semioticize it as a linguistic sign of "native islander status".
> I assume it for granted
> that I am correct in interpreting what you said this way, if not, disregard
> the rest of the message.
I've tried to give more detail. I've been taught to distinguish carefully
between linguistic innovations and linguistic changes. Due to the
complexity, irrationality, and high degree of redundancy in all human
languages, innovations will constantly by cropping up. Indeed, speakers of
the same language will come up with the same innvations, such as dropping,
generalizing, or mirror-imaging that pesky third person singular present
of English verbs (he goes > he go, or I goes, you goes, he goes, or I
goes, you goes, he go) due to "drift". What is done with the innovations
produced by drift as new vernacular norms are elaborated is a different
issue altogether, see e.g. J. Cheshire "Present Tense Verbs in Reading
English" (1978).
> Now, using your theory please explain the first and second consonant shifts
> in Germany during the Middle Ages.
First, you have your dates and times all wrong.
The First Sound Shift, aka the Grimm's law changes (e.g. PIE *p > PG *f,
PIE *d > PG *t, PIE *gh > PG *g), took place during the last-pre-Christian
millennium in conjunction with the spread of the Indo-European dialects
spoken by the agriculturalists and conquerers from the south-east into
what are now northern Germany and southern Scandinavia.
The Second Sound Shift, aka the High German Sound Shift (e.g. PG *p > HG
pf/ff, PG *t > HG ts/ss, PG *k > HG kx/xx) took place much later, beginning
in what are now Switzerland and south-eastern Germany some time during the
first five centuries of the Christian era and arguably still going on, or
at least stalled, with modern Standard German reflecting a more
conservative stage of the change than the phonologically most innovative
(in this respect) Alemennic dialects of Switzerland.
> The Second one is the Grim' Law, I
> reckon. Was it that the whole nation was driven by the desire to set itself
> apart from itself?
It was the first one, not the second one, that is popularly known as
Grimm's Law.
Why these changes took place is, given the time depth, difficult to say.
However many linguists in this part of the world attribute the massive
changes undergone by Indo-European as it was introduced to the area
concerned, already sparsely inhabited by pre-Indo-European foragers, some
of whom evidently spoke Finno-Ugric languages, to a period of language
contact followed by a period of rapid Indo-Europeanization of some
pre-Indo-European language, possibly a Finno-Ugric one. Of all the
reconstructed Indo-European matrix languages (e.g. Proto-Germanic,
Proto-Romance, Proto-Slavic, Proto-Baltic, etc.) Proto-Germanic shows the
most radical innovations in phonology (e.g. the Grimm's law changes, the
mergers of PIE *o and *a to PG *a, and of PIE *â and ô to PG *ô, the
replacement of a mobile musical accent with a fixed root-initial one) and
morphology (the radical restructuring and simplification of the IE case
system, the radical restructuring and simplification of the IE systems of
tense and mood, the systematization of Ablaut in the verb system, as well
as the introduction of the dental past tense marker), not to mention the
high frequency of basic vocabulary items such as 'hand' and 'finger' with
no equivalents outside of Germanic, to a pre-Indo-European substrate
language. Simply put, proto-Germanic appears to have originated as
Indo-European restructured with many features taken over from some earlier
language that would have been quite different in phonology, morphology,
and
lexicon.
Why the phonological changes collectively referred to as the Second Sound
Shift took place I cannot say. I do not subscribe to the old
pre-theoretical explantion of it being the consequence of "Steigerung des
Lebensgefühls" due to the beauty of the Alpine areas from which it
radiated northwards. I would not be surprised, although I will not further
speculate, if it might have had something to do with the introduction of
Germanic to an area with a Celtic substratum. The varieties of Germanic
most affected by the Second Sound Shift are relatively late colonial
varieties located at the southernmost periphery of the Germanic dialect
continuum in areas that once had Celtic populations.
The Second Sound Shift today plays an important role in distinguishing one
local variety of German from another, something every student of German
dialectology learns when acquainting his or herself with the so-called
Benrath line
(http://www.deutsch-lernen.com/learn-german-online/german_language.htm#benrath).
Which constellation of sounds the Second Sound shift affected plays an
important role in determining which German traditional dialect is which
(http://www.deutsch-lernen.com/learn-german-online/german_language2.htm)
and thus has obvious sociolinguistic relevance.
Regards,
Eugene Holman
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