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

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.

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.


English Today ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 20-26
Author(s):  
Vincent Chanethom

For many centuries, the United States has opened its doors to a variety of immigrants throughout the globe, engendering situations that Fishman (2004: 406) characterizes as ‘pluralistic societal impact.’ Upon coming to America, twentieth century immigrants found themselves immersed in a context in which not only their cultures clashed with that of the U.S., but also their mother tongues interacted with American English. The language patterns resulting from such interactions between immigrants' native languages and American English has been of great interest to the linguistic research community for the past several decades. For instance, research in the field of language contact has been particularly marked by the influential work undertaken by Thomason and Kaufman (1988) in which they developed a model to predict the nature of these contact-induced changes and to examine the mechanism by which these changes emerge.


2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 124-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ingrid Neumann-Holzschuh

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.


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.


2012 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-214
Author(s):  
Guo-Qiang Liu

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.


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.


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).


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (10) ◽  
pp. 101
Author(s):  
Emad Wakaa Ajil

Iraq is one of the most Arab countries where the system of government has undergone major political transformations and violent events since the emergence of the modern Iraqi state in 1921 and up to the present. It began with the monarchy and the transformation of the regime into the republican system in 1958. In the republican system, Continued until 2003, and after the US occupation of Iraq in 2003, the regime changed from presidential to parliamentary system, and the parliamentary experience is a modern experience for Iraq, as he lived for a long time without parliamentary experience, what existed before 2003, can not be a parliamentary experience , The experience righteousness The study of the parliamentary system in particular and the political process in general has not been easy, because it is a complex and complex process that concerns the political system and its internal and external environment, both of which are influential in the political system and thus on the political process as a whole, After the US occupation of Iraq, the United States intervened to establish a permanent constitution for the country. Despite all the circumstances accompanying the drafting of the constitution, it is the first constitution to be drafted by an elected Constituent Assembly. The Iraqi Constitution adopted the parliamentary system of government and approved the principle of flexible separation of powers in order to achieve cooperation and balance between the authorities.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (7) ◽  
pp. 3943
Author(s):  
Aurelija Burinskienė ◽  
Edita Leonavičienė ◽  
Virginija Grybaitė ◽  
Olga Lingaitienė ◽  
Juozas Merkevičius

The new phenomenon called sharing or collaborative consumption emerged a decade ago and is continuously growing. It creates new possibilities for society, and especially for business, is beneficial for the environment, makes more efficient use of resources, and presents a new competitive business model. The scientific literature lacks a more in-depth analysis of the factors influencing sharing activity growth; therefore, the paper’s authors attempt to fill this gap. The authors aim to identify the factors affecting the use of sharing platforms. To reach the goal, the authors developed a regression model and constructed a list of 71 variables. The study used monthly United States data from January 2017 to June 2020 from the publicly available Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED)and Google trends databases. The comparison to other indexes proves that the proposed index, representing the number of visits to sharing platforms (SEP), is a unique one. The first index allowed us to revise the sharing activity monthly. The authors identified that variables such as wage level, social network users, import level, and personal consumption are critical in affecting the number of visits to sharing platforms. The presented framework could be helpful for practitioners and policymakers analysing the stimulation of sharing or collaborative consumption. It includes indicators representing different areas, such as society, technology, and country, and allows for monthly investigations. Such activity was evident for a long time when online platforms contributed to its wider accessibility. The results help to forecast the number of visits monthly. Sharing is still an emerging area for research; thus, the authors tried to explore the phenomenon of sharing to expand the conceptual level of knowledge.


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