Name : Zandra Yolanda D.

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CHANGE
According to two of the founders of the modern discipline, Saussure (1959) and Bloomfield
(1933), most linguists have maintained that change itself cannot be observed. All that we can possibly
hope to observe are the consequences of change. The important consequences are those that make
some kind of difference in the structure of a language. At any particular time, it certainly may be
possible for linguists to observe variation in language, but that variation is of little importance. Such
variation must be ascribed either to dialect mixture, that is, to a situation in which two or more systems
have a degree of overlap, or to free variation, that is, to unprincipled or random variation. Linguists,
therefore, attached little or no theoretical importance to variation. Only in recent decades have some
of them seen in it a possible key to understanding how languages change.
1. The Traditional View
In the traditional view of language change, the only changes that are important in a language
are those that can be demonstrated to have structural consequences. Structural consequences mean:

 Internal change:
This change occurred when a distinction between two sounds may be lost in a language, as
occurred historically in most varieties of English in the vowels of meet and meat or horse and
hoarse. A distinction may be gained where there was none before, as in a house with an [s] but
to house with a [z], or finally in thin and thing, the [n] and [ŋ]. In each of these cases, a single
phonological unit became two: there was a structural split. So we can find instances of phonemic
coalescence, situations in which a contrast existed at one time but later was lost, and instances
of a phonemic split, situations in which there was no contrast at one time but a contrast
developed. Variation is either controlled by circumstances, e.g. allophonic (as when the p in pin
is aspirated but the p in spin is not), or it is free, i.e. random. Internal change in a language is
observed through its consequences.

 External change:
This is change brought about through borrowing. Changes that occur through borrowing
from other dialects or languages are often quite clearly distinguishable. They may be somewhat
idiosyncratic in their characteristics or distribution and appear, for a while at least, to be quite
“marked” in this way, e.g., the schl and schm beginnings of Schlitz and schmuck, or Jeanne
with the J pronounced like zh. There are often good social or cultural reasons for borrowing,
and the items that are borrowed are usually words used to describe “exotic” objects, e.g.,
pajamas, tea, perfume, and kangaroo, or learned or scientific words.

Of these two kinds of change, internal and external, linguists view the former as being far
more important even though it is the latter that is inclined to come to public attention, as when
efforts are made to “purify” languages. People tend to react to the consequences of external change
by complaining about “falling language standards”, resisting new usages and trying to constrain
variation. The traditional view of language change also favors a “family tree” account of change
and of the relationships among languages. Linguists tend to reconstruct the histories of related
languages or varieties of a language in such a way that sharp differentiations are made between
those languages or varieties, so that at one point in time one thing (that is, a language itself, or a
variety, or even a specific linguistic item) splits into two or more, or is lost.
2. Changes in Progress

Before discussing changes in language, we must distinguish between variation and change for
not all variation is a sign of, or leads to, change. Labov (2001, p. 85) calls “long-term stable
variation”, e.g., the distribution of the (ng), (th), and (dh) variables. In contrast, change has a
direction, being both progressive and linear. For example, the Great Vowel Shift in English took
centuries and is still incomplete, and the Northern Cities Shift (NCS) in the United States has lasted
several generations and shows no sign of weakening (see Gordon, 2002, pp. 254–64). Labov
points out that language change can be readily observed today: “In spite of the expansion and
homogenization of the mass media, linguistic change is proceeding at a rapid rate. So that the
dialects of Boston, New York, Chicago, Birmingham, and Los Angeles are more different from
each other than they were a century ago”.
Various linguists have observed and reported on what they consider to be changes in progress.
For example, Chambers and Trudgill (1998, pp. 170–5) describe the spread of uvular r in western
and northern Europe. All the languages of this part of the world once had either an apical (i.e.,
tongue-tip), trilled, or flap r, but from the seventeenth century on a uvular r spread from Paris to
replace these other varieties. This new r crossed language boundaries, so that it is now standard in
French, German, and Danish, and is also found in many varieties of Dutch, Swedish, and
Norwegian.
Another Phonetician, Gimson (1962, pp. 83-5) has observed that in Received Pronunciation
(RP) the first part of the diphthong in a word like home is tending to become increasingly
centralized and the whole diphthong itself monophthongized. This tendency is seen mostly in the
pronunciation of the younger members of fairly exclusive upper-class and professional social
group, but it can also be observed to be spreading into less exclusive varieties of RP, e.g. the more
general variety favored by the BBC (see also Rosewarne, 1994, for the development now referred
to as ‘Estuary English’). Bailey (1973, p. 19) has pointed out that in the western United States the
distinction between the vowels in such pairs of words as naughty and knotty, caught and cot, and
Down and Don is disappearing. Zeller (1997) has described a sound change apparently now in
progress in and around Milwaukee, Wisconsin: many speakers pronounce words like haggle and
bag to rhyme with Hegel and beg, and bank like benk. This is another instance of the NCS. Zeller’s
investigation showed how it is both age- and gender-related.
In each of the examples just cited the factor of age seems to be important: younger speakers
can be observed to use the language differently from older speakers. One study which was able to
make use of roughly comparable sets of data from two periods of time is Labov’s study (1963) of
certain sound changes in progress on Martha’s Vineyard. The explanation that Labov offers is that
the change is merely an exaggeration of an existing tendency to centralize the first part of the
diphthong. At the time of the survey for the Linguistic Atlas, it appeared that this centralizing
tendency was being eliminated. It was virtually extinct in (aw) and in only moderate use in (ay).
What has happened apparently is that, instead of eliminating the tendency, residents have
exaggerated it to show their solidarity and their difference from the summer population. Labov
(1981, p. 185) points out that, the change also seems to be motivated by a desire to be like those
who have higher social prestige.
Trudgill’s (1972) work in Norwich, England, also shows certain changes in progress. For
example, Trudgill found that the distribution of the variants of the (ng) variable showed that there
were very marked differences between the usage of working-class males and working-class
females: males favored the [n] variant (i.e., pronunciations such as singin’ rather than singing)
much more than did females. He found similar results with other variables, with woman showing
much stronger preferences for standard forms than men. He suggests that women may be more
status-conscious because they are less secure and have less well developed social networks than
men. Another important factor in this differential usage is that working-class speech has
connotations of ‘masculinity’ and women often want to dissociate themselves from it for that
 reason, preferring types of speech which are regarded as more refined. Trudgill devoted a
considerable part of his research effort to investigating working-class speech and what he calls the
“hidden values associated with non-standard speech [which may be] particularly important in
explaining the sex differentiation of linguistic variables” (p. 183). A further analysis showed that
both middle-class and working-class speakers produced very much the same levels of under-and
over-reporting, so the phenomenon appears to be sex-linked rather than social-class-linked.
Trudgill emphasizes that, though it may be correct that in certain communities middle aged-class
women and the young are in the forefront of change toward the standard norm, “in Norwich, at
least, there appears to be considerable number of young WC [working-class] men marching
resolutely in the other direction” (p. 194). They find a certain “covert prestige”, their own form of
solidarity, in such behaviour. (For somewhat similar behaviour among young people in Japan, see
Haig, 1991.). Cheshire’s (1978) finding in Reading, England, that change may be motivated by a
desire for solidarity. We might actually argue that what we see here is not so much a change in
progress but an unconscious resistance to a change being brought in from Standard English.

3. The Process of Change

Labov (1972b, pp. 178-80) proposes a rather detailed outline of what he considers to be the
best the basic mechanism of sound change. The mechanism has thirteen stages, and Labov points
out that the first eight deal with what he calls change from below, that is, change from below
conscious awareness, whereas the last five deal with change from above, that is brought about
consciously. (p. 204). The 13 stages are:
 Sound changes usually begin when the language use of group members from a particular
language-speaking community is limited, namely the period when the separate community
identity becomes weak. Changing linguistic forms are usually in the form of markers of the
status of the region with uneven distribution of language use in the community. At this stage,
the changing linguistic variables have not been determined.
 New changes occur when there is a generalization of linguistic forms by members of a
language-speaking group; this stage is usually referred to as change from below, which is a
change that occurs from social awareness. Linguistic variables indicate that there is no pattern
of variations in language style in the use of language by the speaker, but affects all classes of
words that already exist. The linguistic variable at this stage is an indicator that is defined as a
membership function in the social community.
 Successfully increasing the number of language speakers in the same social group and
succeeding in responding to the same social pressures of society, bringing linguistic variables
towards the process of language change, being different from the parent language. This change
is called hypercorrect change from below.
 When the community value system of native speakers of language is adopted by other
community groups, changes in the sounds of language that relate to community values are
spread to the community groups that adopt them.
 The limits of the spread of language changes are the limits of the language community.
 When changes in the sound of language with all the social values inherent in it reach the limits
of its spread, the linguistic variables become one of the norms that become part of the
community, and will be safeguarded by the community. This linguistic variable is now a marker
and will begin to show its own variation / style.
 Changes in linguistic variables in linguistic systems will always adjust the distribution of other
linguistic elements at the phonological level.
 Adjustment of the structure causes changes in language sounds that are still related to their
native language. But a new group of language speakers will treat the sound of the language it
receives as a new sound in the language-speaking community.
 If a group of language speakers who accept a new language is not from a higher class, then the
community group that comes from a higher class will "influence" the linguistic form.
 The change above is a change from above, a correction for the form of language that changes
because it gets the influence of the language of the higher community groups, namely a
prestigious language model.
 If the prestige (prestigious) language model does not support the linguistic form used by
community groups in several word class forms, then other groups will do hypercorrection,
incorporate the language elements that should be done by prestige language. This is called
hypercorrection from above.
 In a strong change, one form of language will appear, and may also disappear. This is called
the stereotype / language model.
 If language changes occur in higher social classes, language forms will become prestige
language models. Languages which will then be adopted by speakers of other languages in
accordance with the proportion of language-speaking language contacts with prestige
languages.
Language change occurs through complex ways with various ways of change: ways
consciously or unconsciously in changing languages; a place that makes the social level of society
influence the change; also some concepts of "indicators", "markers", "stereotypes", "or"
hypercorrection ".
Changing language from above is a conscious change of language. The change should also be
followed by standard linguistic patterns. Change from below is an unconscious change of language
and the method is far from standard linguistic patterns. What's interesting is that women are
considered to be the first group to bring about language changes, while men are second. Women
have the motivation to follow and adapt to stronger language users while men tend to follow their
friends. Women tend to be more aware of understanding language changes while men do not.