SPACE DISCOURSE IN A LANGUAGE CONTACT SITUATION: “US” VS. “THEM”

Multilingual practices inevitably lead to language contact phenomena. This phenomenon occurs in Estonia, where the Russian speaking minority, often defined as a Russian diaspora, differs from the socially and linguistically dominant Estonian group with respect to their language and language practices. We suggest that the analysis of one of the languages in contact, in this case Russian, allows for a deeper understanding of the role of the other, i.e. Estonian, in the multilingual practices of the Estonian population as a whole. In this paper, we will focus on “spatial indicators” (i.e. toponyms, ergonyms, linguistic landscape objects, etc.) in the discourse on space provided by participants from the Russian-speaking population living in Estonia. These sociolinguistic foci have been partially described in several existing works which underscore the influence of Estonian on the speech of the local Russian speakers. Previous research gives insights into the peculiarities that the influence of Estonian generates: in the use of toponyms, in the naming of different language landscape objects, in the everyday language practices, and in the description and evaluation of the surrounding space (i.e. in the “spatial awareness”) of the local Russian speaking population. However, little attention has been paid to the fact that the aforementioned phenomena represent a whole that reflects the development of the speakers’ apprehension of the surrounding physical, sociocultural and sociolinguistic space. This process is put into focus in this paper and is shown to be characterized by the (re)definition of space(s) as “ours” vs “theirs”. Such processes will be revealed here by giving an overview of the “spatial components” in the speech of the Russian speaking population of Estonia in several spheres of communication (newspapers, TV shows, advertisements, web forums, etc.) and by analysing interviews involving three Estonian residents, each with a different sociolinguistic background. We attempt to demonstrate how these “spatial components” reflect the interaction of Russian and Estonian speakers, with an emphasis on their affinities across certain language practices. In the analysis of the interviews, we focus in particular on the participants’ (re)definitions of “us” vs “them” in their discourse on space. Special attention is also given to the use of Estonian insertions as a tool for evaluation and the creation of the opposition between “us” and “them” in the internet communication of Russian speakers living in Estonia.

The Role of Prosody and Morphology in the Mapping of Information Structure onto Syntax

The mapping of information structure onto morphology or intonation varies greatly crosslinguistically. Agglutinative languages, like Inuktitut or Quechua, have a rich morphological layer onto which discourse-level features are mapped but a limited use of intonation. Instead, English or Spanish lack grammaticalized morphemes that convey discourse-level information but use intonation to a relatively large extent. We propose that the difference found in these two pairs of languages follows from a division of labor across language modules, such that two extreme values of the continuum of possible interactions across modules are available as well as combinations of morphological and intonational markers. At one extreme, in languages such as Inuktitut and Quechua, a rich set of morphemes with scope over constituents convey sentence-level and discourse-level distinctions, making the alignment of intonational patterns and information structure apparently redundant. At the other extreme, as in English and to some extent Spanish, a series of consistent alignments of PF and syntactic structure are required to distinguish sentence types and to determine the information value of a constituent. This results in a complementary distribution of morphology and intonation in these languages. In contact situations, overlap between patterns of module interaction are attested. Evidence from Quechua–Spanish and Inuktitut–English bilinguals supports a bidirectionality of crosslinguistic influence; intonational patterns emerge in non-intonational languages to distinguish sentence types, whereas morphemes or discourse particles emerge in intonational languages to mark discourse-level features.

Studying the Role of Media in the Diffusion of English Words Into the Kashmiri Language: A Linguistic Overview

Studying the predominant occurrence and existence of English lexicon in other languages in contact with English has emerged out to be of immense interest among the researchers of sociolinguistics and theoretical linguistics. The present study is devoted to demonstrate various English-Kashmiri language contact situations and the subsequent diffusion/ flow of English words into the Kashmiri language. The study attempts to explore the significant role of media in its different forms in enhancing and determining the transport of English words into the speech of Kashmiri speakers. The study seeks to address the motivation and inspiration of Kashmiri speakers behind the English-Kashmiri linguistic shift, and the influence of the prevailing circumstances on this English-Kashmiri linguistic diffusion. The liberality of the English language in handing over such an enormously huge amount of word treasure to the Kashmiri language, and the receptivity of the Kashmiri language in accepting this vocabulary treasure from English at a very large scale has been thrown light on in the study. In the present study, an attempt has been made to display a comprehensive list of English words used in various domains of social life of the Kashmiri speech community.

Asymmetric representations of languages in contact: uses and translations of French and Spanish in Frasier

In recent years, several authors have underlined the need for a critical approach to Translation Studies in order to explore power struggles in both source and target languages and cultures. Norman Fairclough ’s model of discourse analysis offers textual and interpretative procedures for the analy-sis of linguistic features of texts and their societal implications that can be successfully applied for this purpose. In this article we shall study the representations of languages and cultures in contact in the American situation comedy Frasier, one of the world’s greatest television successes of the 1990s. We shall cover two distinct uses of languages in contact. In our first section, we shall examine the use of other languages in the primary English discourse of the protagonists, notably French and Spanish, and their different representational and ideational implications, before proceeding to analyse the Spanish and French target versions to ascertain whether the ideological components are maintained or transformed. In the second sec-tion, we shall analyse the scenes where two or more languages are involved and the transformative acts performed by the characters. As in the first sec-tion, the target versions in French and Spanish will then be examined in order to identify the translational strategies used to maintain or tone down the ideological components. The final section will discuss the last dimension of Fairclough’s model, that is, sociocultural practice or explanation.

Uriel Weinreich’s “Languages in Contact” in the Soviet Union: Treading a Dangerous Ground

In a democratic society with a market economy, editorial policy is often a matter of financial feasibility rather than anything else. Meanwhile, totalitarian societies approach it from a different angle, frequently putting political considerations in the centre. Living behind the Iron Curtain, Soviet scholars had very limited access to Western publications – very few of them were translated into the languages of Soviet republics. What is more, research shows that they were subject to censorship, just like literary works. Besides, the work of a translator, being invisible to the majority of readers, could be quite dangerous and ruin one’s scholarly career. Thus, a scholar embarking on a translation journey to acquaint their colleagues with the best samples of world research had to be very considerate. Such was the case of the Russian translation of Uriel Weinreich’s seminal book Languages in Contact done by the Ukrainian linguist, translator, lexicographer, and educator Yuriy Zhluktenko. The present paper explores the matter of censorship and self-censorship in this translation and its paratexts.

Linguistic multi-competence in the community: the case of a Japanese plural suffix -tachi for individuation

Applied linguists have investigated the nature of linguistic multi-competence (LMC) as a consequence of languages in contact in the minds of individuals and have observed that our first language is more amenable to change than once thought. However, LMC can manifest itself in not only an individual language user but also a linguistic community. This study explores the manifestation of LMC at the community level from historical and socio-cognitive perspectives with special focus on the use of a Japanese plural marker -tachi. It is a suffix usually attached to humans, but is frequently observed with animals and even inanimate nouns such as hon-tachi ‘books,’ which is conventionally considered unacceptable. This study analyzes over 100 -tachi cases collected from narrations and commentaries in public broadcasts. The analysis investigates the type of nouns to which -tachi is attached and the contexts where -tachi is used. The findings suggest that while retaining its original plural system, Japanese has accomplished the integration of a certain grammatical feature of English into Japanese. We argue that this innovative expressive means embedded in LMC as an integrated system in the community enables Japanese users, when necessary, to realize discrete objects, irrespective of whether they are living things or not, as individuated entities in the cognitive foreground with conceptually characteristic profiles.

The Influence of the Dagbani Imperfective Verb Form on Dagomba‟s Use of the English Tense

This paper analyses the influence of the imperfective verb form of Dagbani a Mabia (Gur) language, spoken in Northern Ghana- on the English tense. Dagbani and English have been in contact for decades; they exhibit differences grammatically and phonologically. Scholars have discussed the grammar of Dagbani. However, no scholar addressed the influence of Dagbani imperfective on the use of English. Considering the fact that there is a strong interplay between English, as the official language of Ghana, and Ghanaian languages in the socio-economic, political and educational sectors of the country, teachers and curriculum developers need to pay attention to how these languages influence each other with specific focus on how to cater for these influences during classroom interactions. This paper, therefore, analyses the influence of the Dagbani imperfective form on English tense, taking into consideration the progressive aspect and the habitual present tense of Dagbani. The study sets to find out if educational levels of people affect the influence of the Dagbani imperfective on English tense. Data for the study were collected through sentence translation and picture description from (89) students in Tamale and Yendi. The data were analysed within the framework of grammatical replication theory by Heine and Kuteva, based on Weinreich languages in contact. The data are analysed based on the respondents’ levels of education (Basic, Secondary, and Tertiary). Findings indicated that the progressive aspect of Dagbani imperfective verb form overshadows the habitual present, as Dagomba(s) speak English. Irrespective of Dagomba’s educational level, they replicate the Dagbani imperfective use in English; however, the influence minimally reduces as speakers climb the academic hierarchy.