3. Language contact and areal linguistics in Africa

2018 ◽  
pp. 445-545 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Areal Linguistics

scholarly journals Linguistic Areas

Linguistics ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rik van Gijn ◽  
Pieter Muysken
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Strict Sense ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
The Past ◽  
Linguistic Patterns ◽  
Areal Linguistics ◽  
Theoretical Issues

“Linguistic areas” are defined as social spaces (regions, countries, (sub-)continents) in which languages from different families have influenced each other significantly, leading to striking or remarkable structural resemblances across genealogical boundaries. Since the early work of Trubetskoj and his contemporaries, work on other parts of the world, for example the Indian subcontinent, has unveiled a number of other regions where contact between languages has led to convergence, and thus the general field of areal linguistics has developed. This article surveys the different proposals for linguistic areas roughly continent by continent, and then lists a number of general overviews and contributions in textbooks and handbooks. As the notion of “linguistic area” was further developed, a number of definitional and theoretical issues came up. During most of the past century, linguistic areas were thought of as something special, out of the ordinary. In addition, the view arose that there were regions which qualified as linguistic areas and others which did not. At the beginning of the 1990s awareness grew that many linguistic patterns and features, both typological and historical, could and should be studied in an areal perspective. This areal turn led to a reconceptualization of many of the issues involved in areal linguistic studies, many of them involving problems of scale and operationalization. Even though the notion of “linguistic area” has been much criticized in the strict sense, the areal perspective keeps gaining ground in the study of the distribution of linguistic features. A final section of this survey will be devoted to psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic mechanisms and scenarios leading to linguistic areas. While earlier approaches had been mostly structural and historical, recent work in areal linguistics tries to bridge the gap with meso-level language contact studies: how do languages actually converge and what are the mechanisms promoting or blocking this type of convergence? Languages do not converge by themselves; rather, it is the agency or unconscious behavior of speakers that has this effect.

Language Contact

2020 ◽  
pp. 857-870
Author(s):  
Klaus Beyer
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Contact Linguistics ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Social Network Approach ◽  
Areal Linguistics ◽  
French Tradition

The chapter starts with a short history of contact studies related to Africa. It briefly looks at early works from Heine (pidgins in the Bantu area) and the French tradition exemplified in the LACITO series on language contact. Considerable space is given to the developments of the last ten years or so when areal linguistics (Aikhenvald and Dixon), linguistic geography (Heine and Nurse), and contact linguistics (Childs, Mesthrie) were put center stage in the African linguistic context. The second part of the chapter looks at methodological issues. Substantial space is given to social contexts in the description of contact-induced language change. The social network approach and other sociolinguistic tools are demonstrated by means of a brief case study from a West African rural contact zone.

scholarly journals An empirical perspective on the contact between English and French: a case study on substitutive complex prepositions

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (s2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christophe Béchet
Keyword(s):  
Pilot Study ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Experimental Procedure ◽  
Frequency Effects ◽  
Contact Linguistics ◽  
Learner Corpus ◽  
Potential Contact ◽  
Empirical Perspective ◽  
Areal Linguistics

AbstractHistorical language contact has generally been approached qualitatively through the examination of different linguistic and extralinguistic factors. By contrast, frequency patterns, although widely acknowledged in other linguistic fields, have not received a great deal of attention in the contact linguistics literature. This paper attempts to bridge this methodological gap through the application of an experimental procedure borrowed from the field of learner corpus research and areal linguistics. In a pilot study on the well-known case of language contact between English and French, the potential contact effects of French on English with regard to the use of substitutive complex prepositions of the PNP type are investigated, using probabilistic multifactorial modeling. The goal is to show in what ways and to what extent English conforms to French in the use of in lieu of and in place of, but also the extent to which it deviates from the Romance language, assuming from the outset that French served as the model language. This approach to historical language contact methodologically enriches an ever-growing paradigm and also illustrates empirically what has been conceptualized as frequency effects in usage-based Construction Grammar.

[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.

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.

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