Language and age: Studying linguistic change in real and apparent time

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Language and ageStudying linguistic change in
real and apparent time

• LIN120 Sociolinguistics
• Instructor Marjorie Pak
• February 27, 2008

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• We know that language changes over time
• Great Vowel Shift in Middle English/mus/ ?
  /maws/
• Do-supportI know not ? I dont know
• These changes have all been observed through
  diachronic studies of historical texts.

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• But can we also see language change happening in
  real time, through synchronic methods of study?
• How do we know when were looking at a change in
  progress?

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• In the ideal world, linguists would have access
  to recorded speech
• spanning several generations
• representing speakers of various ages within each
  sample
• maintaining consistency over other factors
  (style, sex, ethnicity, formality)

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• Were not living in an ideal world
• Linguistics is a young science
• Recording and archiving technology is also young

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• But we can make a lot of progress by looking at
  the role of speakers age in synchronic studies
  of linguistic variation.
• We start with cases where
• Young people sound different from old people.
• The older you are, the more/less likely you are
  to do X.

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• Example Bailey et al. 1991 looked at 14
  features of Texas speech, including
• i ? I before /l/ (field, real)
• e ? e before /l/ (sale, jail)
• y ? Ø after alveolar (Tuesday, student)

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• All three slopes are monotonic (they dont
  change direction)
• The older the speakers, the less likely they
  were to say /fIld/, /sel/, /tuzdi/ instead of
  /fild/, /sel/, /tyuzdi/
• When we see a pattern like this, we can at least
  entertain the hypothesis that were looking at a
  linguistic change in progress.

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• Apparent-time method (Labov 1963, 1966
  following Gauchat 1905)
• We can view synchronic age patterns as a window
  on what has happened in a community over the last
  few generations
• Basic assumption Adults speak the language they
  learned as children.

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• Critical period humans have a period when
  theyre primed to acquire language
• once were past this age (early teens?) its
  impossible to acquire native-like competence in a
  new language
• The way you talk wont change once you hit a
  certain age even if the language changes
• So we can listen to the speech of a 55-year-old
  and get a sense of what the community norms were
  when s/he was a child (50 years ago)

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• Sound change advances from generation to
• generation by incrementation (Labov 2007)
• Child hears speakers of various ages and notices
  that the younger the speaker, the more advanced
  the change
• Child positions him/herself at the end of the
  trajectory and advances the change a little more

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• Sound change advances from generation to
• generation by incrementation (Labov 2007)
• Short-a tensing/æ/ is raised, fronted and
  diphthongized before nasals (other contexts
  depend on dialect)

mæ?n m??n me?n mI?n
mi?n
(grandma) (mom) (aunt)
(sister) (me)
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• The apparent-time method has allowed linguists to
  make considerable advances in understanding
  language change in progress
• But this method isnt perfect! Why not?
• Theres always another possible interpretation of
  a monotonic age slope age grading

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• English t/d deletion (Guy 1980, Guy/Boyd 1990)
• Alveolar stop ? Ø after a consonant at the end
  of a syllable
• best friend ? /bes fren/
• Conditioning factors
• Preceding/following segment
• Style, speech rate
• Morphological structure

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• t/d deletion is less likely to apply if the final
  t/d is a past-tense suffix
• probability of deletion
• Un-suffixed word (mist, past) .65
• Semiweak past-tense word (lost) .55
• Regular past-tense word (missed, passed) .31

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• Semiweak verbs have a vowel change as well as a
  suffix in the past tense
• keep, tell, sell, feel
• With semiweak verbs in particular, age plays an
  important role in t/d deletion
• The older the speakers, the less likely they were
  to delete t/d in semiweak verbs
• Probability of t/d deletion in semiweak verbs
• Age gt.75 .60-.75 lt.60
• 0-18 7 1 0
• 19-44 0 9 3
• 45 0 4 10

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• Observed speech in a 4-year-old girl
• and then I started /startId/ crying and then I
  screamed /skrimd/ and then daddy yelled /yeld/
  at me.. but I kept /kep/ on crying

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• So is t/d deletion in the semiweak verb class a
  change in progress?
• Guy Boyd No! t/d deletion is a stable
  variable, but theres an age grading effect
• Age grading Each generation of speakers modifies
  its linguistic behavior at a particular stage in
  life sometimes well into adulthood. But the
  language itself does not change across
  generations.

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• t/d deletion is a case of late acquisition
• Kids dont realize that theres a past-tense -ed
  on semiweak verbs at all they think the past
  tense of keep is just /kep/
• Much later in life perhaps well past the
  critical period speakers learn that semiweak
  verbs do have a -ed suffix.
• Speakers then apply t/d deletion at the same
  (low) rates as with the regular past-tense -ed.

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• Support t/d deletion doesnt have the
  characteristic features of change in progress
• Changes in progress are usually
• led by working/middle classes and women
• differentiated ethnically and geographically
• socially evaluated, with prestige forms
  increasing in more formal speech
• None of these are true of semiweak-verb t/d
  deletion in particular

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• Another way to tease apart generational
  change-in-progress and age-grading
  interpretations Real-time studies!
• Go back and re-study a community after some time
  has passed.
• Trend study (resample a community with comparable
  speakers)
• Panel study (locate and re-interview the same
  speakers)

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• Real-time trend study 1 Fowlers (1986) restudy
  of Labovs (1963) department store study
• Fowler replicated the NYC department store study
  in exact detail (23 years later)
• All results were reproduced, with rates of
  /r/-pronunciation 10-20 higher

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• Real-time trend study 2Bailey et al. (1990)
  compared their results with an older survey
  (Linguistic Atlas of the Gulf States (LAGS), data
  collected 15-20 years earlier)
• For all the innovative features studied in Bailey
  et al., the percentage of respondents who used
  the feature was higher than the percentage of
  LAGS respondents who did

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• Panel studies track down the same speakers and
  re-study them after an interval of time
• Cukor-Avila (2000) interviewed 4 speakers of
  African-American Vernacular English in a small
  Texas town in 1988, 1992, and 1998
• Older speakers (b. 1913, 1961) change very little
  in the 10-year interval
• Younger speakers (b. 1979, 1982) show increase in
  AAVE features even in late adolescence as
  they spend more time in a nearby city

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• Other panel studies
• Development of uvular /r/ in Montreal (Blondeau
  et al. 2003)
• Yiddish folksinger Sara Gorby (Prince 1987)
• Trudgills study of /r/ pronunciation in British
  pop singers (Beatles, etc.)

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• Panel study results have largely vindicated the
  apparent-time method
• People generally remain stable and when they do
  change, its in the direction of the community
  change

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The problem of how to interpret age trends isnt
limited to linguistics
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• Summary If a synchronic observation of a
  community shows a steady increase/ decrease in
  the frequency of a variable with age, there are
  at least two interpretations
• Generational change in progress (apparent-time
  interpretation)
• Age grading
• Real-time studies (trend or panel) can help
  disentangle these two interpretations, as can
  understanding fundamental principles of language
  change.

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• The apparent-time construct has proven to be an
  excellent surrogate for real-time evidence.
• As with all linguistic researchthe more data,
  the better.
• But considerable progress can be made with
  limited data, as long as the underlying issues
  are understood.

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• References
• Bailey, Guy. 2002. Real and apparent time. In
  Chambers et al. (eds.), Handbook of language
  variation and change (pp. 312-332). Blackwell.
• Guy, Gregory R. and Boyd, Sally. 1990. The
  development of a morphological class. Language
  Variation and Change 2, 1-18.
• Labov, William. 2007. Transmission and diffusion.
  Language 83, 344-387.
• Meyerhoff, Miriam. 2006. Introducing
  sociolinguistics ch.7. Routledge.
• Sankoff, Gillian. (to appear). Cross-sectional
  and longitudinal studies in sociolinguistics. In
  Ammon U, Dittmar N, Mattheier K Trudgill P
  (eds.) Handbook of sociolinguistics, vol. II.
  Berlin De Gruyter.