Why does Milroy say that sound change appears to have no "obvious function or rational motivation"? (146) Because in any change it is impossible to see any progress or benefit to the language or its speakers. The use of a sound is purely arbitrary: there is no profit and no loss.

What is/are the main difference/s between Milroy’s approach and that of the Neogrammarians? (147-148) Neogrammarians think that sound change is ‘regular’: sound ‘laws’ have no exceptions. The regularity principle predicts that it should also have change in the same way in all other relevant items. If there is an apparent exception, this will be accounted for by another regular change.

According to Milroy, what is language change dependent on? (149) It depends on the degree of internal cohesion of the community (the extent to which it is bound by ‘strong ties’, which resist change). If a change persists in the system, it has again to be maintained by social acceptance and social preassure.

Why does Milroy say that sound change actually doesn’t exist? (150) Speech ‘sounds’ do not physically change: what happens is that in the course of time one sound is substituted for another.

Why does Milroy disagree with the Neogrammarians when they say that sound change is "blind"? (150) Because for him it isn’t languages that change – it is speakers who change languages.

What is meant by "lexical diffusion"? (151) It is a gradual sound change in which the new form differs markedly from the older one.

What does dialect displacement mean? Give an example. (152) It happens when one dialect is displaced by another which is, for some reason, socially dominant at some particular time. Ex. Spanish in Valencia in the 60’s displaced Valencian.

What are "community" or "vernacular" norms? What term that we have used in class is similar? (152). They are norms that exist apart from the standard ones. These norms are observed by speakers and maintained by communities often in opposition to standardizing norms. Community norms can be variable norms – in contrast to standard norms, which are invariant. We have talked in class about "non standard" or "language use in a natural place" which is not found written.

What does Milroy mean when he says that h-dropping may not ever reach "completion"? (153). Because this is a variable state that has persisted for seven or eight centuries without ever going to ‘completion’ in the traditional sense. It happens when the direction of change is in progress for instance by a social class variable.

Explain what Milroy means by "speaker innovation" and change in the system. How are they connected? (153). An innovation is an act of the speaker, whereas a change is manifested within the language system. It is speakers, and not languages, that innovate. An innovation, when it occurs, must be unstructured and ‘irregular’ and not describable by quantitative or statistical methods. The relation is that it must be speakers rather than languages who ‘favour’ the new variants. When we observe a linguistic innovation we do not know if they are going to become changes. For a speaker-innovation to become a change, it must be adopted by some community.

Why isn’t borrowing from one language to another and the replacement of one sound by another through speaker innovation with a language as radically different as the Neogrammarians posited? (154-6). When an innovation is taken up by a speech community, the process involved is fundamentally a borrowing process, i.e. the implementation of a sound change depends on the ‘borrowing’ of an innovation.

What is necessary for a sound to spread? (157). All sound change is implemented by being passed from speaker to speaker, and it is not a linguistic change until it has been adopted by more than one speaker.

Why does believing in the ideology of standardization lead to believing in "blind necessity"? (158). Standard languages are created by the imposition of political and military power so changes in them cannot come through blind necessity. These language states are planned by human beings. That is not inherent in the nature of ‘language’. The idea that changes come about blindly and independent from human intervention is absurd.

What does Milroy mean by "clean" and "dirty" data? (158). Standard languages (being idealizations) are supposed to be ‘clean’ because they are normalized. The vernaculars used by a speech community are ‘dirty’ because they are irregular and chaotic.