Long-term effects of CS: Clues to structural borrowing

Abstract

Contact phenomena such as codeswitching and linguistic borrowing occur quite normally in situations of intense language contact. Some researchers have proposed relationships between the two suggesting causal links, and that codeswitching, as an assumed mechanism of change (Myers-Scotton, 2002, p. 104; Thomason, 2001, p. 131), in some way causes or instigates the kinds of lexical and structural borrowing that lead to long-term language change. This paper attempts to make clear that, while the two phenomena may have links, they are not causal in nature. Both emanate from similar underlying social conditions that constitute predispositions to particular outcomes. Proximate causes for each must lie elsewhere, in mental responses to the triggering effects of particular environmental stimuli. They represent consequences of the dynamic interaction of underlying social conditions and consequent psychological states (Grosjean, 2001). One conclusion is that contact phenomena are behaviors produced by speakers as they interact with environmental factors such as linguistic input (e.g., mixed input from other speakers). Motivations for long-term change may be as simple as an unconscious desire of one community to copy the speech of another socially and, therefore, linguistically dominant group, the dwindling availability of viable alternatives (via shift), or a combination of the two.