scholarly journals Language exposure predicts children’s phonetic patterning: Evidence from language shift

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meg Cychosz
Keyword(s):  
Speech Production ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Expressive Language ◽  
Language Shift ◽  
Motor Planning ◽  
Linguistic Knowledge ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Language Experience ◽  
Language Exposure

Although understanding the role of the environment is central to language acquisition theory, rarely has this been studied for children’s phonetic development; and receptive and expressive language experiences in the environment are not distinguished. This last distinction may be crucial for child speech production in particular because production requires coordination of low-level speech-motor planning with high-level linguistic knowledge. In this study, the role of the environment is evaluated in a novel way—by studying phonetic development in a bilingual community undergoing rapid language shift. This sociolinguistic context provides a naturalistic gradient of the amount of children’s exposure to two languages and the ratio of expressive to receptive experiences. A largescale child language corpus encompassing over 500 hours of naturalistic South Bolivian Quechua and Spanish speech was efficiently annotated for children’s and their caregivers’ bilingual language use. These estimates were correlated with children’s patterns in a series of speech production tasks. The role of the environment varied by outcome: children’s expressive language experience best predicted their performance on a coarticulation-morphology measure while their receptive experience predicted performance on a lower-level measure of vowel variability. Overall these bilingual exposure effects suggest a pathway for children’s role in language change whereby language shift can result in different learning outcomes within a single speech community. Appropriate ways to model language exposure in development are discussed.

Cognition in construction grammar: Connecting individual and community grammars

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 309-337
Author(s):  
Lynn Anthonissen
Keyword(s):  
Language Change ◽  
Linguistic Knowledge ◽  
Small Individual ◽  
Age Cohorts ◽  
Term Change ◽  
Language User ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Linguistic Behavior

AbstractThis paper examines, on the basis of a longitudinal corpus of 50 early modern authors, how change at the aggregate level of the community interacts with variation and change at the micro-level of the individual language user. In doing so, this study aims to address the methodological gap between collective change and entrenchment, that is, the gap between language as a social phenomenon and the cognitive processes responsible for the continuous reorganization of linguistic knowledge in individual speakers. Taking up the case of the prepositional passive, this study documents a strong community-wide increase in use that is accompanied by increasing schematicity. A comparison of the 50 authors reveals that regularities arising at the macro-level conceal highly complex and variable individual behavior, aspects of which may be explained by studying the larger (social) context in which these individuals operate (e. g., age cohorts, community of practice, biographical insights). Further analysis, focusing on how authors use the prepositional passive in unique and similar ways, elucidates the role of small individual biases in long-term change. Overall, it is demonstrated that language change is an emergent phenomenon that results from the complex interaction between individual speakers, who themselves may change their linguistic behavior to varying degrees.

Linguistic and Cultural Shifts of the Aranadan Tribe in Kerala

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sam Robert ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Change ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Language Shift ◽  
Value Systems ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Tribal Community ◽  
Cultural Shift ◽  
Cultural Shifts

Language and cultural shifts are the major causes of endangerment of any community, which begins from minor switching of practices and verbal repertoires and ends with a whole change of community, and finally culminates in the community losing its own identity.  Language shift usually takes place in a bilingual or multilingual speech community. It is a social phenomenon, whereby one language replaces another in a given society due to underlying changes in the composition and aspirations of the society. This process transitions from speaking the old to the new language. This is not fully a structural change caused by the dynamics of the old language as a system. The new language is adopted as a result of contact with another language community. The term language shift excludes language change which can be seen as an evolution, and hence the transition from older to newer forms of the same language. Contact between two or more cultures often leads to different sociological processes such as acculturation, cultural change, cultural genocide, and cultural shift. Cultural shift occurs when a community gives up its own socio-cultural practices like customs, rituals and traditional beliefs, and is characterized by changes in cultural symbols, rules of behavior, social organizations, or value systems. It differs from the process of cultural change in which a community’s culture can evolve independently. Shifts may take place at the level of an individual speaker who gradually forgets or shifts to another language and consequently this language spreads to an entire community. This phenomenon can be seen among the Aranadans, a primitive tribal community found mainly in the Malappuram district and in other Northern districts such as Kasargode and Kannur of Kerala, owing to their irreverence towards the preservation of their own language and culture. The socio-ecological, psychological and educational factors impact their language and cultural shifts. This paper illustrates and clarifies the reasons for the language and cultural shifts of the Aranadan tribal community.

scholarly journals Special issue on mechanisms of French contact influence in Middle English: diffusion and maintenance

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-205
Author(s):  
OLGA TIMOFEEVA ◽  
RICHARD INGHAM
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Language Shift ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
The World ◽  
Contact Language ◽  
History Of

Recent years have seen a spate of publications that attempt to recontextualise the history of English in contact-linguistic (Miller 2012; Lutz 2013; Durkin 2014) and sociolinguistic terms (Millar 2012), and conversely to confront previous descriptions of contact phenomena with new data and theoretical insights available from situations of language shift and substratum influence (Filppula, Klemola & Paulasto 2008; Vennemann 2011), extensive bilingualism (Schendl & Wright 2011), language acquisition (Ingham 2012) and contact-induced grammaticalisation (Timofeeva 2010). Coupled with advances in our understanding of contact- and acquisition-induced language change (Heine & Kuteva 2005; Jarvis & Pavlenko 2008), and of the role of contact in the varieties of English around the world (Schreier & Hundt 2013), there is a clear need in this area of historical research for scholars to reinvestigate earlier stages of English as a contact language.

PROCESSES OF LANGUAGE CONTACT: STUDIES FROM AUSTRALIA AND THE SOUTH PACIFIC. Jeff Siegel (Ed.). Saint-Laurent, Canada: Fides, 2000. Pp. xvi + 320. $34.95 paper.

2003 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 461-462
Author(s):  
J. Clancy Clements
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Solomon Islands ◽  
Language Shift ◽  
Australian Aboriginal ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Transitive Verbs ◽  
Kinship Terminology ◽  
Substrate Influence

The present volume highlights studies of languages created by contact-induced language change in Australia and the Pacific. Editor Jeff Siegel identifies six processes involved in the formation of pidgins, creoles, and other such language contact varieties: reanalysis, simplification, leveling, diffusion, language shift, and depidginization/decreolization. The process of reanalysis is the focus of four chapters: “The Role of Australian Aboriginal Language in the Formation of Australian Pidgin Grammar: Transitive Verbs and Adjectives” by Koch; “‘Predicate Marking' in Bislama” by Crowley; “Predicting Substrate Influence: Tense-Modality-Aspect Marking in Tayo” by Siegel, Sandeman, and Corne; “My Nephew Is My Aunt: Features and Transformation of Kinship Terminology in Solomon Islands Pijin” by Jourdan; and “Na pa kekan, na person: The Evolution of Tayo Negatives” by Corne.

Könyvismertetések

2007 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 253-265
Author(s):  
István Fekete ◽  
Mária Gósy ◽  
Rozália Eszter Ivády ◽  
Péter Kardos
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Speech Production ◽  
Perception And Action

DianePecherés RolfA. Zwaan(szerk.): Grounding cognition: The role of perception and action in memory, language, and thinking (Fekete István)     253 CsépeValéria: Az olvasó agy (Gósy Mária) 256 Kormos, Judit: Speech production and second language acquisition (Ivády Rozália Eszter)      260 MarosánGyörgy: Hogyan készül a történelem? (Kardos Péter) 263

Language Use and Sustainable Development: Opportunities and Challenges for Policy-Makers and Educators in Northeast Vietnamese Areas

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 122-130
Author(s):  
Ha Ngan Ngo ◽  
Maya Khemlani David
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Language Shift ◽  
Minority Languages ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Positive Attitudes ◽  
The Status ◽  
Wedding Songs

Vietnam represents a country with 54 ethnic groups; however, the majority (88%) of the population are of Vietnamese heritage. Some of the other ethnic groups such as Tay, Thai, Muong, Hoa, Khmer, and Nung have a population of around 1 million each, while the Brau, Roman, and Odu consist only of a hundred people each. Living in northern Vietnam, close to the Chinese border (see Figure 1), the Tay people speak a language of the    Central    Tai language group called Though, T'o, Tai Tho, Ngan, Phen, Thu Lao, or Pa Di. Tay remains one of 10 ethnic languages used by 1 million speakers (Buoi, 2003). The Tày ethnic group has a rich culture of wedding songs, poems, dance, and music and celebrate various festivals. Wet rice cultivation, canal digging and grain threshing on wooden racks are part of the Tày traditions. Their villages situated near the foothills often bear the names of nearby mountains, rivers, or fields. This study discusses the status and role of the Tày language in Northeast Vietnam. It discusses factors, which have affected the habitual use of the Tay language, the connection between language shift and development and provides a model for the sustainability and promotion of minority languages. It remains fundamentally imperative to strengthen and to foster positive attitudes of the community towards the Tày language. Tày’s young people must be enlightened to the reality their Tày non-usage could render their mother tongue defunct, which means their history stands to be lost.

scholarly journals Redefining Forro as a marker of identity: Language contact as a driving force for language maintenance among Santomeans in Portugal

Multilingua ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie-Eve Bouchard
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Language Maintenance ◽  
Attitudes And Beliefs ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Group Code ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Sao Tome And Principe ◽  
Semistructured Interviews ◽  
Changing Attitudes

AbstractIn São Tomé and Príncipe, the language shift toward Portuguese is resulting in the endangerment of the native creoles of the island. These languages have been considered of low value in Santomean society since the mid-twentieth century. But when Santomeans are members of a diaspora, their perceptions of these languages, especially Forro, change in terms of value and identity-marking. It is possible to observe such changes among the Santomeans who learn Forro when they are abroad, who use it as an in-group code, and start to value it more. In this article, I address the role of language contact in the maintenance and expansion of Forro. I investigate the mechanisms of language maintenance by focusing on the shifts in community members’ attitudes and beliefs regarding their languages, as a result of contact. The changing attitudes and beliefs have led to a redefinition of the role of Forro in the speech community. This qualitative study is based on semistructured interviews conducted on São Tomé Island and in Portugal. Findings suggest that the change in value attributed to Forro by Santomeans as a result of contact contribute to the valorization of the language.

Language as a phenomenon of the third kind

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-229
Author(s):  
Ewa Dąbrowska
Keyword(s):  
Language Change ◽  
Invisible Hand ◽  
Social Phenomenon ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Communicative Interaction ◽  
Levels Of Abstraction ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
The Third ◽  
Dual Perspective ◽  
Micro Level

AbstractWhile many linguists view language as either a cognitive or a social phenomenon, it is clearly both: a language can live only in individual minds, but it is learned from examples of utterances produced by speakers engaged in communicative interaction. In other words, language is what (Keller 1994. On language change: The invisible hand in language. London: Taylor & Francis) calls a “phenomenon of the third kind”, emerging from the interaction of a micro-level and a macro-level. Such a dual perspective helps us understand some otherwise puzzling phenomena, including “non-psychological” generalizations, or situations where a pattern which is arguably present in a language is not explicitly represented in most speakers’ minds. This paper discusses two very different examples of such generalizations, genitive marking on masculine nouns in Polish and some restrictions on questions with long-distance dependencies in English. It is argued that such situations are possible because speakers may represent “the same” knowledge at different levels of abstraction: while a few may have extracted an abstract generalization, others approximate their behaviour by relying on memorised exemplars or lexically specific patterns. Thus, a cognitively realistic usage-based construction grammar needs to distinguish between patterns in the usage of a particular speech community (a social phenomenon) and patterns in speakers’ minds (a cognitive phenomenon).

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