week 7

Question 1

dialect geography

Answer 1

first study of accents and dialects

focus on NORMs (non-mobile, old, rural males)
findings: hotchpotch of forms, free variation of speech

Question 2

linguistics-generative phonology

Answer 2

Chomsky

ideal-speaker, ideal-listener

Question 3

observer’s paradox

Answer 3

how to monitor people’s behaviour without them knowing they are being monitored

Question 4

linguistic variable

Answer 4

Sociological methods in linguistics enabled linguists to see that the hotchpotch of forms
(variants) is not free at all; on the contrary, it is context-dependent and both observable
and analysable; in other words, language variation is structured.