2. What is Variation and
Change?
Language variation and change is an
integrated subfield of linguistics that
includes dialectology (the study of
regional variation in language), historical
linguistics (the study of how languages
change over time) and sociolinguistics
(the study of social variation in
language).
Variations in language are the changes
between language and dialect. Internal
and external factors can be the cause of
language change.
3. Why do languages change?
Reasons given by non –specialist.
Change in language is brought about under
the influence of geography.
Change is brought due to change in
internal anatomy.
Economic and political factors play their
role
People are too lazy to use language
properly.
Reasons given by linguistics.
Functional explanation
4. The individual and society play their part
in language change.
The speech habits of one generation are
based on the earlier one and change is
likely to occur during the course of the
acquisitions by others.
Rise of new concepts and discovery of
new objects bring change in the
vocabulary, structure and sounds of a
language.
Geographical conditions also affect the
change in sounds of a language.
5. Language changes because a huge
migration takes place and a prestige is
required, so language change is
moulded to suits new trends.
There are usually five types of changes
occur in a language.
Phonological
Morphological
Syntactical
Semantic
And lexical
6. Regional Variation
,Regional variation is a major aspect of variation in language.
Regional variation is geographically based and shows which part of
the language area a person is from.
Many factors contribute to regional variation (see the section on
Why do languages have dialects? below), but the main reason is the
same why language families develop over time from one ancestor
language: some speakers of a language start to communicate less
with each other (due to geographical separation, for instance), and
so any new features of speech they develop will not spread to those
speakers that they do not communicate with, and this will make
their speech different from that of others in the long run.
The first step in the divergence process is the development of
regional dialects, which can grow into separate languages in time, if
the separation continues and the number of features that
differentiate the dialects grows.
7. Regional Variation
Average people (non-linguists) are usually
aware of regional differences to some extent.
They are usually aware of other people’s dialect
features, but not of their own: basically,
everyone takes their own regional dialect to be
“normal”, “featureless”, and the default way to
speak.
People are often surprised when dialectologists
want to study their speech, since they honestly
think it is unremarkable, and the speech of
other people (in the next village or town) is
what should be studied since those who speak
it really have “an accent”.
8. . The study of regional
variation
When linguists want to study regional
variation, they collect data from a great
range of places in the given language
area, and about all subsystems of
language: pronunciation, grammar, and
the lexicon. Then they enter the results
on maps, usually about one feature per
map. The line that separates the
occurrences of two variants of the same
linguistic variable (basically, a linguistic
feature that has variation) on a map is
called an isogloss.
9. Why do languages have
dialects?
The basic social/historical idea about the reason
for dialect differences, recognized by historical
linguists before dialectology even existed, is
that when speakers communicate more with
some speakers of their language more than with
others the slight changes that occur in people’s
speech will not spread to those with whom the
speakers in question do not communicate.
This, in time, gives rise to dialects of the
language, and, given more time, to the
development of related but separate languages.
What is it then that impedes communication
between people? It is geographical boundaries,
first, and various social boundaries second.
10. Linguistic variation
the term linguistic variation (or simply variation) refers to
regional, social, or contextual differences in the ways that
a particular language is used.
Variation between languages, dialects, and speakers is
known as inter-speaker variation. Variation within the
language of a single speaker is called intra-speaker
variation.
Since the rise of sociolinguistics in the 1960s, interest in
linguistic variation (also called linguistic variability) has
developed rapidly.
R.L. Trask notes that "variation, far from being peripheral
and inconsequential, is a vital part of ordinary linguistic
behavior" (Key Concepts in Language and Linguistics,
2007).
The formal study of variation is known as variationist
(socio)linguistics.
All aspects of language
including phonemes, morphemes, syntactic structures
11. Linguistic variation
"Linguistic variation is central to the study of language
use. In fact it is impossible to study the language forms
used in natural texts without being confronted with the
issue of linguistic variability.
Variability is inherent in human language: a
single speaker will use different linguistic forms on different
occasions, and different speakers of a language will
express the same meanings using different forms.
Most of this variation is highly systematic: speakers of a
language make choices
in pronunciation, morphology, word choice,
and grammar depending on a number of non-linguistic
factors.
These factors include the speaker's purpose
in communication, the relationship between speaker and
hearer, the production circumstances, and various
demographic affiliations that a speaker can have."
(Randi Reppen et al., Using Corpora to Explore Linguistic
Variation. John Benjamins, 2002).
12. Linguistic Variation and
Sociolinguistic Variation
"There are two types of language variation:
Linguistic and Sociolinguistic.
With linguistic variation, the alternation between elements is
categorically constrained by the linguistic context in which they occur.
With sociolinguistic variation, speakers can choose between elements
in the same linguistic context and, hence the alternation is probabilistic.
Furthermore, the probability of one form being chosen over another is
also affected in a probabilistic way by a range of extra-linguistic factors
[e.g. the degree of (in)formality of the topic under discussion, the social
status of the speaker and of the interlocutor, the setting in which
communication takes place, etc.]"
13. Dialectal Variation
"A dialect is variation in grammar
and vocabulary in addition to sound variations.
For example, if one person utters the sentence
'John is a farmer' and another says the same
thing except pronounces the word farmer as
'fahmuh,' then the difference is one of accent.
But if one person says something like 'You
should not do that' and another says 'Ya hadn't
oughta do that,' then this is a dialect difference
because the variation is greater.
The extent of dialect differences is a continuum.
Some dialects are extremely different and
others less so."
14. Types of Variation
"[R]egional variation is only one of many possible types of differences among
speakers of the same language. For example, there are occupational dialects
(the word bugs means something quite different to a computer programmer and
an exterminator), sexual dialects (women are far more likely than men to call a
new house adorable), and educational dialects (the more education people
have, the less likely they are to use double negatives).
There are dialects of age (teenagers have their own slang, and even
the phonology of older speakers is likely to differ from that of young speakers
in the same geographical region) and dialects of social context (we do not talk
the same way to our intimate friends as we do to new acquaintances, to the
paperboy, or to our employer). . . . [R]egional dialects are only one of many
types of linguistic variation."
