Did /f/ Change to /h/ in Spanish because of Basque? Four Moments of Language Contact in the History of Spanish

2018 ◽  
pp. 45-75
Keyword(s):  
2009 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela Ralli

This paper deals with [V V] dvandva compounds, which are frequently used in East and Southeast Asian languages but also in Greek and its dialects: Greek is in this respect uncommon among Indo-European languages. It examines the appearance of this type of compounding in Greek by tracing its development in the late Medieval period, and detects a high rate of productivity in most Modern Greek dialects. It argues that the emergence of the [V V] dvandva pattern is not due to areal pressure or to a language-contact situation, but it is induced by a language internal change. It associates this change with the rise of productivity of compounding in general, and the expansion of verbal compounds in particular. It also suggests that the change contributes to making the compound-formation patterns of the language more uniform and systematic. Claims and proposals are illustrated with data from Standard Modern Greek and its dialects. It is shown that dialectal evidence is crucial for the study of the rise and productivity of [V V] dvandva compounds, since changes are not usually portrayed in the standard language.


Allpanchis ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (79) ◽  
pp. 91-111
Author(s):  
Carlos Garatea Grau

El propósito de este artículo es mostrar el complejo universo textual producido en el Perú durante el inicial contacto de lenguas y situarlo en la historia del español colonial. A partir de referencias y ejemplos se avanza sobre una compleja realidad, marcadamente heterogénea, que refleja la diversidad inherente al contacto durante los siglos XVI y XVII. Al mismo tiempo, se ofrecen testimonios sobre la importancia del discurso jurídico en el registro del español andino y se concluye enfatizando la notable capacidad verbal de Guamán Poma de Ayala. Abstract The aim of this article is to show the complex textual universe produced in Peru during the language contact and, in particular, in the history of the Spanish colonial. From references and examples when traveling over a complex reality, markedly heterogeneous, that reflects the diversity inherent in the language contact during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. At the same time, offer testimonials about the importance of legal discourse in the register of the Andean Spanish and concludes by highlighting the notable verbal capacity of Guaman Poma de Ayala.


Linguistics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 745-766
Author(s):  
Elisabeth Stark ◽  
Paul Widmer

AbstractWe discuss a potential case of borrowing in this paper: Breton a- ‘of’, ‘from’ marking of (internal) verbal arguments, unique in Insular Celtic languages, and reminiscent of Gallo-Romance de/du- (and en-) arguments. Looking at potential Gallo-Romance parallels of three Middle Breton constructions analyzed in some detail (a with indefinite mass nominals in direct object position, a-marking of internal arguments under the scope of negation, a [allomorphs an(ez)-/ahan-] with personal pronouns for internal arguments, subjects (mainly of predicative constructions) and as expletive subjects of existential constructions), we demonstrate that even if there are some semantic parallels and one strong structural overlap (a and de under the scope of negation), the amount of divergences in morphology, syntax and semantics and the only partially fitting relative chronology of the different constructions do not allow to conclude with certainty that language-contact is an explanation of the Breton facts, which might have come into being also because of internal change (bound to restructuring of the pronominal system in Breton). More research is necessary to complete our knowledge of a-marking in Middle Breton and Modern Breton varieties and on the precise history of French en, in order to decide for one or the other explanation.


2013 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 599-644 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bridget Drinka

This paper explores the complex role of language contact in the development of be and have auxiliation in the periphrastic perfects of Europe. Beginning with the influence of Ancient Greek on Latin, it traces the spread of the category across western Europe and identifies the Carolingian scribal tradition as largely responsible for extending the use of the be perfect alongside the have perfect across Charlemagne’s realm. Outside that territory, by contrast, in “peripheral” areas like Iberia, Southern Italy, and England, have came to be used as the only perfect auxiliary. Within the innovating core area, a further innovation began in Paris in the 12th century and spread to contiguous areas in France, Southern Germany, and northern Italy: the semantic shift in the perfects from anterior to preterital meaning. What can be concluded from these three successive instances of diffusion in the history of the perfect is that contact should be regarded as one of the essential “multiple sources” of innovation, and as a fundamental explanatory mechanism for language change.


2021 ◽  
pp. 289-298
Author(s):  
Janne Saarikivi

The question as to how the linguistic and archaeological data can be combined together to create a comprehensive account on the prehistory of present ethnicities is a debated issue around the globe. In particular, the identification of the new language groups in the material remnants of a particular area, or discerning in the material culture correlates for the language contact periods reflected in the loan word layers are complex and often probably insolvable questions. Regarding the early history of the Finns and the related people, Valter Lang’s new monograph on the archaeology of Estonia and the “arrivals of the Finnic people” (Läänemeresoome tulemised, 2018) has been considered a paradigm changing work in this respect. In my article I argue that despite undisputed progress in this ouevre, many of the old questions regarding time, place and method are still in place.


Slovene ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 258-302 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria S. Morozova ◽  
Alexander Yu. Rusakov

The article aims to clarify the notion of “balanced language contact” and to model the situation of a language contact (in the present and the past) in one of the ethnically and linguistically mixed regions of the Montenegrin-Albanian linguistic border. The study focuses on the situation in the bilingual community of thevillageofVelja Gorana, located in the area of Mrkovići inSouthern Montenegro. The community of the village, as it seems at a first glance, provides a good example of a “balanced contact” situation. The language situation in Velja Gorana is described in the article as a set of micro-situations, or scenarios, developing on family and individual levels. Attention is paid not only to the communication in the family domain, but also to the external relations of the community members. Following on from this material, the authors attempt to develop a methodology for assessing the role of both languages in such communities in general, showing which factors influence individual linguistic behavior; how this behavior may change during an individual lifetime; how the different speakers’ strategies amalgamate in what can be considered as behavior of a multilingual speech community. Analyzing the information on the history of Velia Gorana, in particular, conducting a detailed examination of the origins, genealogies and marriage strategies of its families, allows the authors to reconstruct the mechanisms for the development of “linguistic exogamy” in the community of Velja Gorana and to make assumptions about the nature of the contact situation in this region in the past.


2018 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-29
Author(s):  
Motoki Nomachi

This article considers the context of language contact and discusses four typologically relevant morphosyntactic features (definite and indefinite articles, the merger of instrumental and comitative cases, and the non-pro-drop tendency) and their possible changes in the Kashubian dialect in Canada. A comparison of the data on the Kashubian dialect recorded in Prussia during the mid-19th century by Hilferding and in the present-day by the author in the Renfrew area (Ontario, Canada) revealed no significant difference, even though the Kashubian spoken in the area has undergone various innovations due to the influence of English. Both grammatical and sociolinguistic analyses of the history of the contact situation suggested that the conservativeness of grammatical changes in the dialect can be explained by the prolonged isolation of the speakers in their new homeland, and by the fact that the intensive language contact and collective bilingualism between Kashubian and English are relatively new phenomena.


Author(s):  
Alexandru Nicolae

Chapter 6 highlights the novel theoretical and empirical facts brought about by the word order changes that occurring in the passage from old to modern Romanian, showing how the diachrony of Romanian may contribute to a better understanding of the history of the Romance languages and of the Balkan Sprachbund, as well as to syntactic theory and syntactic change in general. One important dimension of diachronic variation and change is the height of nouns and verbs along their extended projections (lower vs higher V- and N-movement). The two perspectives from which language contact proves relevant in the diachronic development of word order in Romanian, language contact by means of translation and areal language contact, are discussed. The chapter also addresses the issue of surface analogy vs deep structural properties; once again, Romanian emerges as a Romance language in a Balkan suit, as Romance deep structural properties are instantiated by means of Balkan word order patterns.


2002 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul T. Roberge

As a phenomenon to be explained, convergence in historical linguistics is substantively no different than in creolistics. The general idea is that accommodation by speakers of “established” languages in contact and the formation of new language varieties both involve a process of leveling of different structures that achieve the same referential and nonreferential effects. The relatively short and well-documented history of Afrikaans presents an important case study in the competition and selection of linguistic features during intensive language contact.


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