Transparency and language contact

2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 218-252
Author(s):  
Luisa Seguin
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
The Other ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
Haitian Creole ◽  
Specific Contact ◽  
Discourse Grammar ◽  
One To One ◽  
Contact Situation

Abstract When communicating speakers map meaning onto form. It would thus seem obvious for languages to show a one-to-one correspondence between meaning and form, but this is often not the case. This perfect mapping, i.e. transparency, is indeed continuously violated in natural languages, giving rise to zero-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-one opaque correspondences between meaning and form. However, transparency is a mutating feature, which can be influenced by language contact. In this scenario languages tend to evolve and lose some of their opaque features, becoming more transparent. This study investigates transparency in a very specific contact situation, namely that of a creole, Haitian Creole, and its sub- and superstrate languages, Fongbe and French, within the Functional Discourse Grammar framework. We predict Haitian Creole to be more transparent than French and Fongbe and investigate twenty opacity features, divided into four categories, namely Redundancy (one-to-many), Fusion (many-to-one), Discontinuity (one meaning is split in two or more forms,) and Form-based Form (forms with no semantic counterpart: zero-to-one). The results indeed prove our prediction to be borne out: Haitian Creole only presents five opacity features out of twenty, while French presents nineteen and Fongbe nine. Furthermore, the opacity features of Haitian Creole are also present in the other two languages.

Talking about MOTION in Middle English

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Huber
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
Old English ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
The Other ◽  
Motion Verbs ◽  
Text Type ◽  
Anglo Norman ◽  
Contact Situation ◽  
Analysis Of Motion

Chapter 6 begins with an overview of the language contact situation with (Anglo-) French and Latin, resulting in large-scale borrowing in the Middle English period. The analysis of 465 Middle English verbs used to express intransitive motion shows that there are far more French/Latin loans in the path verbs than in the other motion verbs. The range of (new) manner of motion verbs testifies to the manner salience of Middle English: caused motion verbs are also found in intransitive motion meanings, as are French loans which do not have motion uses in continental French. Their motion uses in Anglo-Norman are discussed in terms of contact influence of Middle English. The analysis of motion expression in different texts yields a picture similar to the situation in Old English, with path typically expressed in satellites, and neutral as well as manner of motion verbs being most frequent, depending on text type.

When the Construction Is Axla, Everything Is Axla: A Case of Combined Lexical and Structural Borrowing from Arabic to Hebrew

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 337-348 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roey J. Gafter ◽  
Uri Horesh
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Lexical Borrowing ◽  
Syntactic Structures ◽  
Modern Hebrew ◽  
Specific Contact ◽  
Theory Of Language ◽  
Contact Situation

This article examines a borrowing from Arabic into Hebrew, which is a combination of a lexical borrowing and a structural one. The Arabic superlativeaħla‘sweetest, most beautiful,’ pronounced by most Modern Hebrew speakers [axla], has shifted semantically to mean ‘great, awesome.’ Yet, as our corpus-based study illustrates, it was borrowed into Hebrew—for the most part—with a very particular syntactic structure that, in Arabic, denotes the superlative. In Arabic itself,aħlamay also denote a comparative adjective, though in different syntactic structures. We discuss the significance of this borrowing and the manner in which it is borrowed both to the specific contact situation between Arabic and Hebrew and to the theory of language contact in general.

Outlawing orality: Western Yiddish reflexes in German fiction

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-96
Author(s):  
Lea Schäfer
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Contemporary Fiction ◽  
Original Form ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
German Jews ◽  
Acculturation Process ◽  
Data Source ◽  
Contact Situation ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries

AbstractThis study analyses how fictional languages can be influenced by natural languages exemplified by the use of Yiddish. It shows how a fictional language can be a data source for research on historical development of Western Yiddish (WY) and its sociolinguistic situation. In contrast to the varieties of Eastern Yiddish (EY), which are still spoken today, Western Yiddish was given up during the complex acculturation process of West-Ashkenazic Jewry during the nineteenth century. As a language driven by a pejorative view of language variations and by growing antisemitism, Yiddish found its way into German fiction, where it is still used in contemporary fiction as a means of characterising Jewish figures. This article presents the main results of a corpus study on 53 of such fictional texts from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Yiddish examples in Yiddish script will be primarily quoted in their original form and then be transliterated following the YIVO romanisation system (cf. Weinreich 1968). It will be shown that reflexes of spoken WY can be found in these imitations of Yiddish. This data can be used as secondary evidence of WY structures. Furthermore, the data gives an impression of the intensity of the language contact situation between German and Yiddish. In addition it gives insights into mechanisms of how German Jews were excluded from the German ideal of a Sprachnation.

Contact-induced changes

Diachronica ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 373-427 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald Winford
Keyword(s):  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Conventional Wisdom ◽  
The Other ◽  
Primary Language ◽  
Contact Situation ◽  
Crosslinguistic Influence ◽  
Induced Changes ◽  
Key Terms

Traditionally, contact-induced changes in languages have been classified into two broad categories: those due to ‘borrowing’ and those due to ‘interference’ by an L1 or other primary language on an L2 in the course of second language acquisition (SLA). Other terms used for ‘interference’ include ‘substratum influence’ and ‘transfer.’ Inconsistencies in the use of these terms pose a problem for the classification and analysis of the outcomes of contact-induced change. Moreover, labels like these, unfortunately, have been used to refer both to the outcomes of language contact and to the processes that lead to such results. This imprecision in the use of key terms poses serious problems for our understanding of what is actually involved in the two types of crosslinguistic influence. Moreover, it has led to inaccuracy in our assignment of changes to one or the other category. The aim of this paper is to reassess the conventional wisdom on the distinction between borrowing and ‘interference,’ and to clarify the vehicles of change as well as the outcomes characteristic of each. My approach is based on Van Coetsem's (1988) distinction between two transfer types – borrowing under RL agentivity, and imposition under SL agentivity, with their shared but differently implemented processes of imitation and adaptation. Crucially, this approach recognizes that the same agents may employ either kind of agentivity, and hence different transfer types, in the same contact situation. It is the failure to recognize this that has sometimes led to inaccuracy in accounts of the nature and origins of contact-induced changes, as well as to conflicting classifications of the outcomes of contact. The present paper proposes a more rigorous and consistent classification, based on the kinds of agentivity involved.

scholarly journals Language Contact in Social Context: Kinship Terms and Kinship Relations of the Mrkovići in Southern Montenegro

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 305-343 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria S. Morozova
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
The Other ◽  
Linguistic Evidence ◽  
The Social ◽  
Kinship Relations ◽  
Contact Situation ◽  
Kinship Terminology

The purpose of this article is to study the linguistic evidence of Slavic-Albanian language contact in the kinship terminology of the Mrkovići, a Muslim Slavic-speaking group in southern Montenegro, and to demonstrate how it refers to the social context and the kind of contact situation. The material for this study was collected during fieldwork conducted from 2012 to 2015 in the villages of the Mrkovići area. Kinship terminology of the Mrkovići dialect is compared with that of bcms, Albanian, and the other Balkan languages and dialects. Particular attention is given to the items borrowed from Albanian and Ottoman Turkish, and to the structural borrowing from Albanian. Information presented in the article will be of interest to linguists and anthropologists who investigate kinship terminologies in the world’s languages or do their research in the field of Balkan studies with particular attention to Slavic-Albanian contact and bilingualism.

Modern Greek V V dvandva compounds: A linguistic innovation in the history of the Indo-European languages

2009 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela Ralli
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
High Rate ◽  
Compound Formation ◽  
Modern Greek ◽  
Late Medieval Period ◽  
European Languages ◽  
History Of ◽  
Internal Change ◽  
Contact Situation ◽  
Asian Languages

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.

Progressive periphrases in language contact

2021 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-127
Author(s):  
Rossella Maraffino
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
The Other ◽  
Minority Languages ◽  
Internal Development ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Alpine Area ◽  
Diffusion Pattern ◽  
The One

Abstract In this paper, I will deal with the diffusion pattern of the progressive periphrases (PROGPER) attested in the minority languages that are present in the areas of Swiss Grisons, Trentino-Alto Adige and Friulian Carnia. I will individualize on the one hand the vectors of diffusion between the standard languages and the minority varieties; on the other hand, I will explain the mechanism of adaptation or re-elaboration of the borrowed structure in the replica language. Finally, I will pinpoint which of this structure replication seems to be the result of an internal development witnessed in the Alpine area.

Development of a Single-Code/Default Coding Strategy in Pigeons

2000 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 261-264 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tricia S. Clement ◽  
Thomas R. Zentall
Keyword(s):  
Conditional Discrimination ◽  
The Other ◽  
Matching Accuracy ◽  
Efficient Coding ◽  
Coding Strategy ◽  
One To One ◽  
Retention Intervals ◽  
The Many ◽  
The One ◽  
Better Than

We tested the hypothesis that pigeons could use a cognitively efficient coding strategy by training them on a conditional discrimination (delayed symbolic matching) in which one alternative was correct following the presentation of one sample (one-to-one), whereas the other alternative was correct following the presentation of any one of four other samples (many-to-one). When retention intervals of different durations were inserted between the offset of the sample and the onset of the choice stimuli, divergent retention functions were found. With increasing retention interval, matching accuracy on trials involving any of the many-to-one samples was increasingly better than matching accuracy on trials involving the one-to-one sample. Furthermore, following this test, pigeons treated a novel sample as if it had been one of the many-to-one samples. The data suggest that rather than learning each of the five sample-comparison associations independently, the pigeons developed a cognitively efficient single-code/default coding strategy.

Forty years of language contact and change in Kupwar: A critical assessment of the intertranslatability model

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonal Kulkarni-Joshi
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Historical Data ◽  
Original Study ◽  
Critical Assessment ◽  
Syntactic Variation ◽  
Border Town ◽  
Data Point ◽  
State Boundaries ◽  
Contact Situation ◽  
Local Languages

AbstractThis paper revisits the language contact situation in the Indian border town-village of Kupwar originally reported by Gumperz and Wilson (1971. Convergence and creolization: A case from the Indo-Aryan/Dravidian border. In D. Hymes (ed.), Pidgnization and creolization of languages, 151–168. Cambridge: CUP). The study presents evidence for morpho-syntactic variation and complexification in the contact varieties of the local languages, Marathi and Kannada. Similar patterns of variation are adduced from contact varieties of Marathi and Kannada from historical data as well as present-day border villages which, like Kupwar, have been traditionally bilingual. The synchronic and historical data point out methodological and theoretical limitations of the original study. The variation and complexity observed in the Kupwar varieties allow for a reconsideration of the notion of intertranslatability or isomorphism in convergence areas. While suggesting a possible geographically defined micro-linguistic area at the Marathi-Kannada frontier, the paper indicates that the recent re-drawing of state boundaries along linguistic lines may have initiated divergence in this convergence area.

Language and Art in Senegal: The Crossbreeding of Identities in Music

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-69
Author(s):  
Ibrahima Sarr
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Arab World ◽  
The Other ◽  
Foreign Languages ◽  
The West ◽  
Melting Pot ◽  
Classical Form ◽  
Language And Culture ◽  
African Languages ◽  
Contact Situation

Senegal is a melting pot of several civilizations mainly originated from the West (Europe) and the East (the Arab world). Assuming that language and culture are intrinsically related, the settlement of those people and their status as dominant minority sparked and strengthened the use of their languages in formal domains. In the long ran, as they became domesticated, thus now considered African languages because they have contributed to mold the cultural identity of younger generation, they involve in all linguistic interaction. Arab, in its classical form, remains a symbol of Islam which earns it a certain degree of sacredness. Nevertheless the contact situation with the other languages forced it to crossbreed in special ways like borrowings and interferences. As for the other foreign languages, namely French, English, Spanish, and German at a least extent, they are made to carry the weight of local cultures.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document