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Curvilinear Principle
In sociolinguistics, the curvilinear principle states that there is a tendency for linguistic change from below to originate from members of the central classes in a speech community's socioeconomic hierarchy, rather than from the outermost or exterior classes.Labov, William. Principles of Linguistic Change, vol iii: Social Factors. Malden and Oxford: Blackwell. 2001. Overview First proposed by William Labov,Labov, William. 1973. The social setting of linguistic change. In Thomas Sebeok (ed.), ''Diachronic, Areal, and Typological Linguistics'' (Current Trends in Linguistics 11), 195–253. The Hague, Netherlands: Mouton. the curvilinear principle departs from traditional nineteenth century notions that language change generally originates in the highest or lowest classes of society. Instead, it states that variant forms leading to language change are typically introduced and motivated by the intermediate groups—the upper-working class and lower-middle class. The principle can ...
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Philadelphia Study
The Philadelphia study was a study designed to test the Curvilinear principle as referred to by William Labov, through careful gathering and analysis of research on language variants in five Philadelphia neighborhoods. His research goal was to "discover the social location of the innovators of linguistic change and therefore focuses on the embedding of individuals in their neighborhood".Ash, Sharon. "Social Class."" ''The Handbook of Language Variation and Change,'' 402-422. Malden, Mass: Blackwell.Labov, William. Principles of Linguistic Change, vol iii: Social Factors. Malden and Oxford: Blackwell. 2001. Methods To test his hypothesis, Labov identified socially and ethnically central groups by gathering information on five Philadelphia neighborhoods through census data and initial surveys. He selected particular blocks in each neighborhood as an initial research point using a specific set of criteria including full occupancy of dwellings, high levels of interaction between p ...
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Sociolinguistics
Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any or all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used, and society's effect on language. It can overlap with the sociology of language, which focuses on the effect of language on society. Sociolinguistics overlaps considerably with pragmatics and is closely related to linguistic anthropology. Sociolinguistics' historical interrelation with anthropology can be observed in studies of how language varieties differ between groups separated by social variables (e.g., ethnicity, religion, status, gender, level of education, age, etc.) and/or geographical barriers (a mountain range, a desert, a river, etc.). Such studies also examine how such differences in usage and differences in beliefs about usage produce and reflect social or socioeconomic classes. As the usage of a language varies from place to place, language usage also varies among social classes, and it is t ...
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Change From Below
Change from below is linguistic change that occurs from below the level of consciousness. It is language change that occurs from social, cognitive, or physiological pressures from within the system. This is in opposition to change from above, wherein language change is a result of elements imported from other systems.Labov, William. "Transmission and Diffusion". ''Language''. Volume 83, Number 2, June 2007, 344–387. Linguistic Society of America.Ash, Sharon. "Social Class". ''The Handbook of Language Variation and Change'', 402–422. Malden, Mass: Blackwell. Change from below first enters the language from below the level of consciousness; that is, speakers are generally unaware of the linguistic change. These linguistic changes enter language primarily through the vernacular and spread throughout the community without speakers' conscious awareness. Since change from below is initially non-salient, the changing features are not marked characteristics and are difficult for speaker ...
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Speech Community
A speech community is a group of people who share a set of linguistic norms and expectations regarding the usage (language), use of language. It is a concept mostly associated with sociolinguistics and anthropological linguistics. Exactly how to define ''speech community'' is debated in the literature. Definitions of speech community tend to involve varying degrees of emphasis on the following: * Shared community membership * Shared linguistic communication A typical speech community can be a small town, but sociolinguists such as William Labov claim that a large metropolitan area, for example New York City, can also be considered one single speech community. Early definitions have tended to see speech communities as bounded and localized groups of people who live together and come to share the same linguistic norms because they belong to the same local community. It has also been assumed that within a community a homogeneous set of Norm (social), norms should exist. These assump ...
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The Curvilinear Principle, Frequency Of Variable Use According To Social Class
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the most frequently used word in the English language; studies and analyses of texts have found it to account for seven percent of all printed English-language words. It is derived from gendered articles in Old English which combined in Middle English and now has a single form used with nouns of any gender. The word can be used with both singular and plural nouns, and with a noun that starts with any letter. This is different from many other languages, which have different forms of the definite article for different genders or numbers. Pronunciation In most dialects, "the" is pronounced as (with the voiced dental fricative followed by a schwa) when followed by a consonant sound, and as (homophone of the archaic pr ...
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William Labov
William Labov ( ; born December 4, 1927) is an American linguist widely regarded as the founder of the discipline of variationist sociolinguistics. He has been described as "an enormously original and influential figure who has created much of the methodology" of sociolinguistics. He is a professor emeritus in the linguistics department of the University of Pennsylvania and pursues research in sociolinguistics, language change, and dialectology. He retired in 2015 but continues to publish research. Biography Born in Rutherford, New Jersey, Labov majored in English and philosophy and studied chemistry at Harvard (1948). He worked as an industrial chemist in his family’s business (1949–61) before turning to linguistics. For his MA thesis (1963) he completed a study of change in the dialect of Martha's Vineyard, which he presented before the Linguistic Society of America. Labov took his PhD (1964) at Columbia University studying under Uriel Weinreich. He was an assistant profes ...
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Curve
In mathematics, a curve (also called a curved line in older texts) is an object similar to a line (geometry), line, but that does not have to be Linearity, straight. Intuitively, a curve may be thought of as the trace left by a moving point (geometry), point. This is the definition that appeared more than 2000 years ago in Euclid's Elements, Euclid's ''Elements'': "The [curved] line is […] the first species of quantity, which has only one dimension, namely length, without any width nor depth, and is nothing else than the flow or run of the point which […] will leave from its imaginary moving some vestige in length, exempt of any width." This definition of a curve has been formalized in modern mathematics as: ''A curve is the image (mathematics), image of an interval (mathematics), interval to a topological space by a continuous function''. In some contexts, the function that defines the curve is called a ''parametrization'', and the curve is a parametric curve. In this artic ...
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Concave Function
In mathematics, a concave function is the negative of a convex function. A concave function is also synonymously called concave downwards, concave down, convex upwards, convex cap, or upper convex. Definition A real-valued function f on an interval (or, more generally, a convex set in vector space) is said to be ''concave'' if, for any x and y in the interval and for any \alpha \in ,1/math>, :f((1-\alpha )x+\alpha y)\geq (1-\alpha ) f(x)+\alpha f(y) A function is called ''strictly concave'' if :f((1-\alpha )x + \alpha y) > (1-\alpha) f(x) + \alpha f(y)\, for any \alpha \in (0,1) and x \neq y. For a function f: \mathbb \to \mathbb, this second definition merely states that for every z strictly between x and y, the point (z, f(z)) on the graph of f is above the straight line joining the points (x, f(x)) and (y, f(y)). A function f is quasiconcave if the upper contour sets of the function S(a)=\ are convex sets. Properties Functions of a single variable # A differentiab ...
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Norwich, England
Norwich () is a cathedral city and district of Norfolk, England, of which it is the county town. Norwich is by the River Wensum, about north-east of London, north of Ipswich and east of Peterborough. As the seat of the See of Norwich, with one of the country's largest medieval cathedrals, it is the largest settlement and has the largest urban area in East Anglia. The population of the Norwich City Council local authority area was estimated to be 144,000 in 2021, which was an increase from 143,135 in 2019. The wider built-up area had a population of 213,166 in 2019. Heritage and status Norwich claims to be the most complete medieval city in the United Kingdom. It includes cobbled streets such as Elm Hill, Timber Hill and Tombland; ancient buildings such as St Andrew's Hall; half-timbered houses such as Dragon Hall, The Guildhall and Strangers' Hall; the Art Nouveau of the 1899 Royal Arcade; many medieval lanes; and the winding River Wensum that flows through the cit ...
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Received Pronunciation
Received Pronunciation (RP) is the Accent (sociolinguistics), accent traditionally regarded as the Standard language, standard and most Prestige (sociolinguistics), prestigious form of spoken British English. For over a century, there has been argument over such questions as the definition of RP, whether it is geographically neutral, how many speakers there are, whether sub-varieties exist, how appropriate a choice it is as a standard and how the accent has changed over time. The name itself is controversial. RP is an accent, so the study of RP is concerned only with matters of pronunciation; other areas relevant to the study of language standards such as vocabulary, grammar and Style (sociolinguistics), style are not considered. History RP has most in common with the dialects of South East Midlands, namely London, Oxford and Cambridge. By the end of the 15th century, "Standard English" was established in the City of London, though it did not begin to resemble RP until the late ...
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Lower East Side
The Lower East Side, sometimes abbreviated as LES, is a historic neighborhood in the southeastern part of Manhattan in New York City. It is located roughly between the Bowery and the East River from Canal to Houston streets. Traditionally an immigrant, working-class neighborhood, it began rapid gentrification in the mid-2000s, prompting the National Trust for Historic Preservation to place the neighborhood on their list of America's Most Endangered Places in 2008. The Lower East Side is part of Manhattan Community District 3, and its primary ZIP Code is 10002. It is patrolled by the 7th Precinct of the New York City Police Department. Boundaries The Lower East Side is roughly bounded by East 14th Street on the north, by the East River to the east, by Fulton and Franklin Streets to the south, and by Pearl Street and Broadway to the west. This more extensive definition of the neighborhood includes Chinatown, the East Village, and Little Italy. A less extensive definit ...
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New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the List of United States cities by population density, most densely populated major city in the United States, and is more than twice as populous as second-place Los Angeles. New York City lies at the southern tip of New York (state), New York State, and constitutes the geographical and demographic center of both the Northeast megalopolis and the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban area, urban landmass. With over 20.1 million people in its metropolitan statistical area and 23.5 million in its combined statistical area as of 2020, New York is one of the world's most populous Megacity, megacities, and over 58 million people live within of the city. New York City is a global city, global Culture of New ...
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