Relatedness as a Factor in Language Contact

2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 411-432 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claire Bowern
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Geographical Proximity ◽  
Dialect Contact ◽  
Speech Communities ◽  
Contact Models ◽  
Theory Of Language

Contact-induced change among related languages has been considered problematic for language reconstruction. In this article, I consider several aspects of the theory of language change and ways in which contact might interact with language relatedness. I show that models of language change which extrapolate dialect-contact models to languages and subgroups are problematic, and fail to take into account the unevenness of degrees of difference between languages across families. That is, diffusability clines that apply to speech communities and dialects do not appear to be in evidence for languages and subgroups. I further show that many claims about relatedness as a factor in language contact are confounded by other factors that are distinct from language relatedness, such as geographical proximity. Claims about effects of language contact appear to reduce to the type of interaction that speakers participate in, rather than structural facts about their languages. I argue that our current toolkit for reconstruction is adequate to identify contact features. Finally, I provide a typology of cases where contact might be expected to be problematic for subgrouping.

scholarly journals “Carrefour Louisiane”

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 124-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ingrid Neumann-Holzschuh
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Evolutionary Dynamics ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
New Variety ◽  
Dialect Contact ◽  
Cajun French ◽  
Louisiana French ◽  
History Of ◽  
Linguistic Behavior

The history of Louisiana French (LF) is closely related to Louisiana’s particular societal and linguistic ecosystem, characterized by a mixed society where new forms of societal organization emerged and were reflected in new forms of linguistic patterns and linguistic behavior. From the beginning, language contact has been of crucial importance for the emergence, evolution and gradual decline of Louisiana French (“Cajun French”). In colonial times, contact between related French lects resulted in the formation of a new variety of regional French in North America with its own features and its own evolutionary dynamics. The continuing contact with English, however, which takes place in an entirely different ecological frame, results in the ongoing attrition of the minority language. The first part of the article deals with early stages of dialect contact in Louisiana; it will be shown that from a diachronic point of view Louisiana French has to be seen as a product of language mixing and dialect leveling. In the second part two specific aspects of current English-French language contact will be discussed. Both aspects serve to illustrate particularities of the linguistic situation in Louisiana now and then as well as the importance of certain universal mechanisms of contact-induced language change.

scholarly journals What Motivates Morphological Copying?

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 392-407
Author(s):  
Zygmunt Frajzyngier
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Relative Paucity ◽  
Theory Of Language

Based on the papers included in the reviewed volume, this article puts forward a number of questions that are important for the theory of language change under contact. While there exist reliable methodologies to determine whether a given form represents the effect of language contact or not, and a slightly less reliable methodologies to establish whether a given function is a product of language contact, there is a relative paucity of studies discussing the motivation for language change under contact with respect to the functions encoded in the language.

Code-Switching as a Reflection of Contact-Induced Change

2020 ◽  
pp. 192-214
Author(s):  
Ad Backus
Keyword(s):  
Structural Change ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Code Switching ◽  
The Other ◽  
Code Mixing ◽  
Language Mixing ◽  
Lexical Change ◽  
Theory Of Language

Code-switching is often studied in purely synchronic terms, as recorded speech is analyzed for patterns of language mixing. Though this has yielded numerous useful theoretical advances, it has also shielded the code-switching literature from serious engagement with the phenomenon of language change, even from the subtype of change caused by language contact. There is also the additional practice of limiting the study of code-mixing and code-switching to lexical mixing. On the other side of the fence, meanwhile, discussions of contact-induced language change tend to be limited to morphological and syntactic phenomena. This chapter breaks through this stalemate, and argues that a usage-based approach to language change actually demands integration of these perspectives. Code-switching should be seen as a reflection of lexical change. It is for this reason that a synchronic distinction between loanwords and code-switching makes no sense, since the terms refer to the diachronic and synchronic planes, respectively, of the same phenomenon. In the chapter, the author interprets the code-switching literature from this theoretical viewpoint, and explores what both the literature on code-switching and that on contact-induced change stand to gain from linking their empirical findings to a usage-based theory of language change that allocates proper attention to synchrony and diachrony, and unites lexical and structural change in the same framework.

Toward a Speech Communities Approach: A Review Article

2018 ◽  
Vol 78 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 193-202
Author(s):  
Luca D’Anna
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Review Article ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Arabic Linguistics ◽  
Speech Communities ◽  
Prolonged Contact ◽  
Dialectal Arabic ◽  
Arabic Speaking

Abstract The present paper offers a review of Stefano Manfredi’s Arabi Juba: un pidgin-créole du Soudan du Sud (2017), discussing the potential benefits of its methodological approach for the field of Arabic linguistics and dialectology. Manfredi’s volume represents the latest and most comprehensive description of Juba Arabic, a pidgin / creole spoken in South Sudan. It includes a socio-historical introduction describing the conditions from which the speech community that gave rise to Juba Arabic first emerged, followed by nine chapters that provide a detailed description of the language at the phonological, morphological and syntactical levels. The paper also discusses how Manfredi’s approach goes in the direction of a linguistics of speech communities invoked by Magidow (2017) and how it might represent a model for future grammars of dialectal Arabic. Manfredi (2017), in fact, provides a multidimensional description of Juba Arabic, in which the diverse nature of its speakers (monolinguals native speakers vs bilinguals L2 speakers with different L1s) and the prolonged contact with its lexifier language (Sudanese Arabic) give origin to acrolectal and basilectal varieties. Manfredi analyzes internal variation from both a synchronic and diachronic perspective, resorting to the concept of “dynamic synchrony” to describe ongoing processes of language change. The linguistic situation of the Arabic-speaking world after the end of the colonial period, on the other hand, witnesses a more and more intense contact between different Arabic dialects and an increased influence from MSA, through mass media and growing rates of literacy. The situation of language contact that results from these circumstances needs more refined conceptual tools in order to be effectively described. For this reason, and in light of Magidow (2017), this review article argues that the approach adopted by Manfredi might be successfully imported in the field of Arabic dialectology.

scholarly journals Social identity and sound change

2012 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-214
Author(s):  
Guo-Qiang Liu
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Sound Change ◽  
Social Motives ◽  
Dialect Contact ◽  
Related Information ◽  
Language Data ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Gender Groups

Research has shown that language change is driven on one hand by forces internal to language itself such as grammar-internal systematic pressure, and on the other hand by social motives such as social identity. Language contact presents new features, but why is it that some of them are incorporated as variation and evolving into language change, while others are not? This paper reports a study on a sound change in Shanghainese, a dialect of the Chinese language. Data were collected in natural contexts of conversation followed by a brief interview with informants to gain identity related information about them. It has found that previously negative perception of status attached to a new sound induced by language/dialect contact changed into a positive perception, and people started to identify positively with this new sound. Further, there were differences in various different age and gender groups in taking up the new sound. As a result, this sound has evolved from a nonnative alternative to a systematic variation and it is being established as a sound change. This study has thus further confirmed that social identity plays a pivotal role in driving language features into language variation and language change.

A note on language contact: Laz language in Turkey

2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 856-860
Author(s):  
Mehmet Akkuş
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Language Loss ◽  
Young Generation ◽  
Morphological Alterations ◽  
Lexical Categories ◽  
Endangered Language ◽  
Speech Communities ◽  
Induced Changes ◽  
Turkish Language

Classified as an endangered language, the Laz language is spoken in a restricted area by a small number of speakers. The contact between Turkish and Laz is intense and unidirectional in that the latter is only restrained to communication among family members in small speech communities. Contact-induced change, which is an inevitable outcome of Turkish-Laz contact, is investigated by placing special emphasis on loanwords. This paper, thus, addresses the contact between Turkish and the Laz language at lexical level and aims to examine whether the existence of Turkish nouns as loanwords in the Laz language is due to contact-induced language change with a culture-heavy loanword transmission or to gradual language loss. The data analysis reveals that these alterations can be divided into four major categories which are i) treatment of vowels, ii) treatment of consonants, iii) direct insertion, and iv) loanblends. The results show that nouns that are transmitted from Turkish into the Laz language undergo phonological and morphological alterations. The contact-induced change in the Laz language is probably due to historical process, lack of knowledge of the Laz language among the young generation and the dominance of Turkish language in social and educational setting. The study is original as it is the first attempt to examine the contact-induced change at lexical level in addition to studies by İmer (1997) and Kutcher (2008) investigating contact between Turkish and the Laz languages. The findings of the study are limited to contact-induced changes taking place in nouns transmitted from Turkish into the Laz language. Therefore, further research is needed to shed light on changes in other lexical categories like adjectives, adverbs, verbs, and so on.

scholarly journals Vergleichende Sprachinselforschung: Sprachwandel in deutschen Sprachinseln in Russland und Brasilien

2003 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Rosenberg
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Integrated Approach ◽  
The United States ◽  
External Pressure ◽  
Dialect Contact ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Vantage Points ◽  
Induced Changes

Dealing with convergence in German speech islands in Russia, Brazil and the United states the article discusses the linguistic phenomena related to the notion of convergence from different vantage points including intralinguistic convergence (due to dialect-dialect contact), interlinguistic convergence (due to language-language contact), typological "convergence" (or intralinguistic change), pidginization, and cognitive processes of simplification. Most of the German speech islands are considered to be contracting - if not dying - varieties with respect to the reduction of their grammatical systems. Evidently, for a long time language contact (and sometimes variety contact) have severely increased. Linguistic norms have been weakened in terms of both norm certainty and norm loyalty thus giving way to processes similar to those common to pidgin languages. External induced changes are highly remarkable in all German speech islands. But the susceptibility for change and the ways of change are structured by systematical and typological constraints which probably turn out to be cognitive processes underlying quite "normal" linguistic change. This change is discussed as a subsequent process of "regularization" (of irregular forms), simplification (of rules) and loss of grammatical distinctions (and their compensation). The linguistic description of these interrelated processes is based on an integrated approach providing methodology from sociolinguistics, dialectology and research on language change, including the attempt to highlight the cognitive structures which furrow the line for internal simplifications under external pressure. Comparative speech island research seems to be a promising field of application for the description of the intermesh of these processes.

Linguistic Selection: An Utterance-based Evolutionary Theory of Language Change

1996 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 99-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Croft
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Conceptual Change ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Biological Evolution ◽  
Selection Processes ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Theory Of Language ◽  
Evolutionary Taxonomy

Hull (1988) uses recent developments in the theory of biological evolution, in particular rigorous application of the population theory of species, a consistently phylogenetic approach to evolutionary taxonomy and a proposed resolution of the dispute over which levels natural selection operates, to propose a general analysis of selection processes which he then applies to conceptual change in science. Hull's model of selection is applied to language change. It is argued that the utterance plays the central role in linguistic selection, and causal mechanisms by which linguistic selection – language change – occurs are proposed. The final sections consider the possibility that selection occurs also at higher levels of linguistic organization, and suggest how language contact may be accounted for in terms of phylogenetic reticulation.

scholarly journals Structural nativization, typology and complexity: noun phrase structures in British, Kenyan and Singaporean English

2014 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
THOMAS BRUNNER
Keyword(s):  
Dynamic Model ◽  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Evolutionary Status ◽  
Random Samples ◽  
Theory Of Language ◽  
As Effects ◽  
Local Languages

Two much-cited explanations for linguistic innovations in varieties of New Englishes are cross-linguistic influence (see Gut 2011) and simplification (see Schneider 2007: 82). Using these two notions as starting points, the present study seeks to detect effects of structural nativization in noun phrase (NP) modification in two varieties of English whose substrate languages differ strongly from a typological point of view: Singaporean and Kenyan English. The results yielded by the comparison of random samples extracted from the relevant components of the International Corpus of English in the first part of the study show striking correspondences between the preferred NP structures in the varieties at hand and NP structures in the local languages concerned, which, in the light of Mufwene's (2001, 2008) ecological theory of language change, can be interpreted as effects of language contact. The second part of the study shows that the NPs from the three varieties also differ in terms of variables which can be viewed as measures of NP complexity. What is more, the different degrees of complexity found in the samples correspond closely to predictions about the evolutionary status of the varieties at hand made by Schneider's (2007) Dynamic Model.

[review of:] Vyacheslav Ivanov & Peter Arkadiev, eds. 2013. Studies in the Typology of Slavic, Baltic and Balkan Languages

2013 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 221-239
Author(s):  
Ilja Seržant
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
General Meeting ◽  
Scientific Work ◽  
Primary Reference ◽  
Theory Of Language ◽  
Vyacheslav Ivanov

Вячᴇᴄлᴀʙ Вᴄ. Иʙᴀнов (отв. ред.), Пᴇᴛᴘ М. Аᴘкᴀдьᴇв (сост.), Исследования по типологии славянских, балтийских и балканских языков (преимущественно в свете языковых контактов). Санкт-Петербург: Алетейя, 2013. / Vʏᴀᴄʜᴇsʟᴀv Ivᴀɴov & Pᴇᴛᴇʀ Aʀᴋᴀᴅɪᴇv, eds., Studies in the Typology of Slavic, Baltic and Balkan Languages (with primary reference to language contact). St Petersburg: Aletheia, 2013. ɪsʙɴ 978-5-91419-778-7. The main focus of the book is on various language contact situations as well as areal interpretations of particular phenomena against a wider typological background. The idea is to provide a broader overview of each phenomenon discussed, bringing in comparisons with the neighbouring languages. Two major linguistic areas are in the focus of the book: the Balkan and Eastern Circum-Baltic areas. The book is an important contribution to these fields as well as to areal typology and the theory of language contact in general, meeting all standards for a solid scientific work.

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