A note on language contact: Laz language in Turkey

2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 856-860
Author(s):  
Mehmet Akkuş

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.

Author(s):  
Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald

A major reason for language endangerment is intensive contact with another group whose language has gained, or is gaining, greater political, social and economic prestige and advantages. Speakers of an endangered language will gradually lose the capacity to fully communicate in the language, and fully understand it. As a consequence, an endangered language will gradually become obsolescent. The process of language obsolescence ultimately leads to language shift and language loss. The impact of the increasingly dominant language onto an endangered language tends to involve a massive influx of non-native forms from the dominant language; a high amount of structural diffusion; reinforcement of forms and patterns shared with the dominant language; and the loss of forms or patterns absent from the dominant language. Language endangerment and impending language shift may result in dialect leveling, and creating new mixed, or ‘blended’ languages. A major difference between contact-induced language change in ‘healthy’ and in endangered languages lies in the speed of change. A high degree of individual variation between speakers and disintegration of language communities result in the lack of continuity and stability of linguistic change.


2003 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 243-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Richard Tucker

Various facets of the general topic of multilingualism, including language contact, have been dealt with in previous ARAL volumes (e.g., under separate entries in volumes 1, 2, 4, 5, 10, 12, 13, and 15) and as a major substantive focus in volumes 6, 14 and 17. Nonetheless, it does not seem at all surprising that we return to the specific topic of language contact and change in volume 23 given the worldwide incidence of the phenomenon and the attention, and often controversy, which various aspects of language contact, language change or language loss arouses. Thus, I find it interesting that, within the past 12 months, issues related to language contact and derivative implications have surfaced as important factors in public discussions in such disparate settings as the November 2002 elections in several of the states in the United States, the admission of new members to the European Union, and immigration to Australia. Clearly, the topics of language contact and language change are salient and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future.


2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 411-432 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claire Bowern

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.


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 207
Author(s):  
Hesti Nurhidayati ◽  
Hanna Hanna ◽  
Lelly Suhartini

This research discussed the language extinction in Tolaki language for Tolakinese who lived in Punggaluku village. Language contact that has occurred at multilingual society in Punggaluku became an interesting phenomenon to be learnt because it had close relationship with the use of ethnic language of the residents in this village. This study focused on the endangered level of Tolaki language extinction and predicted the Tolaki language extinction at Punggaluku Village, Laeya Sub district. The main data of the research were taken in Punggaluku Village, Laeya Sub district, South Konawe Regency. Observation and interview were used by the researcher in collecting the data from informants in this area. The result of this research showed that Tolaki language was potentially threatened as a severely endangered language. It was indicated from the parents were not transmitted Tolaki language to their children and the low frequency in using Tolaki language among old generation. It caused the young generation could not speak Tolaki language and final effect of this phenomenon was language extinction. Futhermore, the researcher predicted 30 years ahead, Tolaki language will be extincted in Punggaluku village, Laeya Sub District, South Konawe Regency.


2018 ◽  
Vol 78 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 193-202
Author(s):  
Luca D’Anna

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.


Diachronica ◽  
1990 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory R. Guy

SUMMARY Many studies of linguistic change have drawn distinctions between contrasting types of change. Examples are the Neogrammarian distinction between regular sound change and borrowing, and Labov's contrast between 'change from above' and 'change from below'. A basic criterion for many such distinctions is whether or not language contact is involved in the genesis of a change. Recent works by Thomason & Kaufman (1988) and Van Coetsem (1988) suggest a further important distinction between contact-induced changes that arise through borrowing and those that arise from the imposition of native language habits on a second language. This paper attempts to summarize and critique some major proposals concerning change types, and provide a systematic synthesis that identifies three basic types: spontaneous change, borrowing, and imposition. Each is associated with a distinctive set of social, psychological, and linguistic characteristics, such as the social class distribution, whether speakers are consciously aware of the innovation, and the domains of language structure that are affected. Certain variable parameters that allow the further differentiation of subtypes are also explored, such as (in contact-induced change) the degree of bilingualism and the demographic balance between the languages, and (in spontaneous change) the possible coexistence of contrasting social interpretations of the innovation. RÉSUMÉ Dans les études consacrées au changement linguistique on trouve souvent un façon dichotomique lorsqu'on parle des différents types de changement. Les néogrammariens faisaient une distinction entre changement phonétique régulier et emprunt; Labov parle de l'opposition entre changement de 'en haut' et changement de 'en bas'. Le critère de base pour de telles dichotomies est si du contact linguistique est impliqué ou non dans la genèse d'un changement. Des travaux récents, notamment ceux de Thomason & Kaufman (1988) et Van Coetsem (1988), proposent une importante distinction supplémentaire, à savoir la distinction entre des changements provoqués par des contacts avec d'autres languages (qui prennent leur source dans l'emprunt) et des changements qui résultent d'une imposition des comportements linguistique d'un locuteur natif sur une langue seconde. Le présent article essaie un résumé critique de certains propositions majeures concernant les types de changement et présente un synthèse de ces ouvrages en identifiant trois types de base, à savoir le changement spontané, l'imprunt et l'imposition. Chaque type est associé avec en ensemble particulier de traits sociaux, psychologiques et linguistiques comme, par exemple, la stratification sociale, la question si les locuteurs sont conscients d'une innovation, et les domaines de la structure langagière atteints par un changement. L'article examine également certain paramètres variables qui permettent la différentiation supplémentaire en sous-types, comme le degré du bilingualis-me et la balance démographique entre les langues (au cas des changements provoqués par le contact) et la co-existence possible des interprétations sociales qui s'opposent d'une innovation donnée. ZUSAMMENFASSUNG Viele Untersuchungen zum Sprachwandel haben eine Reihe von sich scharf untereinander unterscheidenden Arten der Sprachver ä nderung aufgestellt. Die Junggrammatiker unterschieden zwischen regul ä rem Lautwandel und Entleh-nung; Labov unterscheidet zwischen einem Wandel 'von oben' und einem Wandel 'von unten'. Grundkriterium für viele solcher Unterscheidungen ist ob Sprachkontakt in der Genese eines Wandels eine Rolle spielt oder nicht. Jüngst erschienene Arbeiten von Thomason & Kaufman (1988) und von Van Coet-sem (1988) schlagen eine weitere Unterscheidung vor, nämlich zwischen kon-takt-induzierten Veränderungen, die durch Entlehnung entstehen, und solchen, die ihren Ursprung in der Imposition von spezifischen Sprachgewohnheiten auf eine zweite Sprache haben. Der vorliegende Aufsatz versucht, eine kritische Übersicht über die wichtigsten Vorschläge bezüglich Sprachverände-rungstypen zu bieten und eine Synthese, die drei Haupttypen herausstellt: spontaner Wandel, Entlehnung und Imposition. Jeder Typ wird mit bestimm-ten sozialen, psychologischen und linguistischen Kriterien in Verbindung gebracht, z.B. solchen der soziologischen Schichtung, ob Sprecher sich einer Neuerung bewußt sind und welche Teile der Sprachstruktur betroffen sind. Ebenfalls untersucht werden gewisse veränderliche Parameter, die eine weitere Untergruppierung der Typen ermöglicht, wie etwa der Grad von Zweispra-chigkeit und der demographische Ausgleich zwischen den jeweiligen Sprachen (im Falle von kontaktinduziertem Wandel) und die mögliche Koexistenz von sich widersprechenden gesellschaftlichen Auslegungen einer bestimmten Neuerung (im Falle spontanem Wandels).


2003 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Rosenberg

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.


Author(s):  
François Conrad

The merger of post-alveolar /ʃ/ and palatal /ç/ into alveolopalatal /ɕ/ has recently gained growing interest in sociophonetic research, especially in the Middle German dialect area. In Luxembourgish, a Continental West Germanic language, the sound change has been linked to age differences, while its origins remain unclear. Two studies with a regional focus are presented in this paper. The first study examines the merger in the Centre and the South of Luxembourg. The acoustic examination of both the spectral peak and the centre of gravity of a spoken data set of five minimal pairs embedded in read and orally translated sentences from 48 speakers (three generations (old generation, 65–91 years; middle generation, 40–64 years; young generation, 20–39 years; each generation, n = 16), men and women) reveals interesting results related to their regional background. In the old generation, the merger is further advanced in the speech of old men from the former mining region in the South compared to their peers in the Centre, the former leading this sound change. On the other hand, young speakers in both regions produce only alveolopalatal /ɕ/, the merger being complete in this generation. The second study presents exploratory data from the East and the North of the country. The analysis of this smaller sample (n = 6 speakers) reveals patterns similar to the central region. Pointing to language contact with Romance in the South as cradle and/or catalyser of the merger, these results not only give further clues as to the development in Luxembourg, but also add to a deeper understanding of sound changes in process in complex sibilant systems.


2012 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-211 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanne Mohr

The article analyses cross-modal language contact between signed and spoken languages with special reference to the Irish Deaf community. This is exemplified by an examination of the phenomenon of mouthings in Irish Sign Language including its origins, dynamics, forms and functions. Initially, the setup of language contact with respect to Deaf communities and the sociolinguistics of the Irish Deaf community are discussed, and in the main part the article analyses elicited data in the form of personal stories by twelve native signers from the Republic of Ireland. The major aim of the investigation is to determine whether mouthings are yet fully integrated into ISL and if so, whether this integration has ultimately caused language change. Finally, it is asked whether traditional sociolinguistic frameworks of language contact can actually tackle issues of cross-modal language contact occurring between signed and spoken languages.


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