Effects Of Language Contact Research Articles

MAGYARNYELV-HASZNÁLAT A VAJDASÁGI MAGYAR SZÓ NAPILAP ONLINE CIKKEIBEN ÉS A KAPCSOLÓDÓ OLVASÓI KOMMENTEKBEN

A tanulmány napjaink vajdasági magyarnyelv-használatát elemzi a magyart kétnyelvű környezetben beszélők nyelvhasználatában. A vizsgálat korpuszát a vajdasági Magyar Szó című napilap internetes változatában 2016. december 13. és december 19. között megjelent cikkek, illetve a cikkekhez fűzött online olvasói hozzászólások (kommentek) szövegei adják. Az elemzés célja a kontaktusnyelvi hatás következtében létrejövő jellemzők, mint például a morfológiai, szókészletbeli eltérések, feminizáló és analitizáló hatás kimutatása és illusztrálása releváns példákkal. Az elemzés egyfelől szerves folytatását képezi a témában 2011-ben és 2015-ben végzett és publikált vizsgálatoknak, másfelől továbblépést is jelent, mivel összefüggéseket, lehetséges egyezéseket és változásokat keres a korábbi években kapott, illetve a friss, online adatok között.

Uh, bueno, em… : Filled pauses as a site of contact-induced change in Boston Spanish

AbstractThere is mounting evidence that the filled pauses that pervade spontaneous speech constitute a rich site of linguistic inquiry. The present study uses a comparative variationist method to explore possible effects of language contact on pause behavior, examining 3810 filled pauses produced by 24 Spanish-speaking residents of Boston, Massachusetts. Interspeaker differences in pause behavior correlate with intensity of contact. Participants who have lived in the United States for a larger fraction of their lives, who use English more frequently, and who do so more proficiently fill pauses differently when speaking Spanish than do those who have spent less time in the contact setting and whose English skills and usage are more restricted. Results show that a greater degree of contact corresponds to increased use of centralized vowels in phonologically filled pauses (i.e., more frequent use of [a(m)] and [ə(m)] at the expense of [e(m)]). This pattern is interpreted as evidence of contact-induced change.

Looking at the Effects of Language Contact With Hakka as Reflected by the Characteristics of the Pingshan Zhanmi Dialect in Shenzhen

Looking at the Effects of Language Contact With Hakka as Reflected by the Characteristics of the Pingshan Zhanmi Dialect in Shenzhen

A reflection on constructionalization and constructional borrowing, inspired by an emerging Dutch replica of the ‘time’-away construction

While recent years have seen an increased interest for the potential effects of language contact on the formal and/or semantic properties of constructions, existing case studies of (potentially) contact-induced change in individual constructions (e.g. Pietsch 2010; Höder 2012, 2014; Van de Velde and Zenner 2010; Colleman and Noël 2014, etc.) have so far made little impact on the booming field of diachronic construction grammar at large, i.e. they have stayed largely under the radar of constructionist theorizing about language change. The present paper reflects on the theoretical significance of a recent innovation in Dutch, viz. the emergence of an argument structure construction that mirrors the form and semantics of the English ‘time’-awayconstruction first described in Jacken-doff (1997). While it is fairly uncontroversial that English influence hassomethingto do with this innovation, it is by no means easy to determine exactly what has happened. Even though an alternative scenario, in which the new Dutch pattern developed out of pre-existing Dutch pattern featuringweg‘away’, cannot be ruled out, I will argue that one plausible way of accounting for the observed facts is to assume that a ready-made English form-meaning unit was copied into Dutch. On this view, the observed change would count as an instance of instantaneous grammatical constructionalization.

Contact effects on voice-onset time in Patagonian Welsh

The effects of language contact extend well beyond lexical borrowings and can include morphosyntactic, phonetic, and phonological changes over time (Thomason & Kaufman 1998). One especially common outcome of long-term contact is phonetic transfer (Matras 2009:222). The Welsh spoken in Patagonia, in close contact with Spanish for the past 150 years, offers one potential example: Jones (1984) observes that younger Patagonian Welsh speakers may be developing unaspirated voiceless stops /p t k/ as a result of Spanish contact. This paper explores this hypothesis through a quantitative study of voice-onset time (VOT) of the Welsh voiceless stops /p t k/ in contemporary conversational speech data from Patagonia and Wales, from male and female speakers in three age groups (0-29, 30-59, and 60 + ). Results show that the tendencies reported by Jones (1984) have held true, and in fact have generalized to become a feature of Patagonian Welsh for speakers of all ages: Patagonian speakers produce the Welsh stops /p t k/ with significantly shorter VOT values than speakers from Wales. These results shed light on an important distinguishing phonetic feature of this understudied variety of Welsh, as well as the dynamics of language contact in action.

Syntax in Contact. Word Order in a Contact Variety of German Spoken in Eastern Siberia

A large number of local German language communities, language islands (Sprachinseln), were founded in different parts of Russia between 1765 and the second half of the nineteenth century. The continuity of development in the German-speaking communities was sharply interrupted by the Second World War. As a result, the specific variety of Russlanddeutsch ‘Russian German’ (rg) is in the process of dying out. This study investigates a sample of current spoken German in Eastern Siberia using the digitalized Siberian German Corpus (sgc) at the University of Gothenburg. The investigation attempts to establish (i) which word order variants are realized specifically in clauses with the German discourse marker nun ‘well’ and its Russian counterpart nu ‘well’, and (ii) what the effect of language contact could be. The results of the analysis show a large variety of word order phenomena in the examples containing Russian nu. Verb-first orders are common in the data investigated. These variants also contain subject pro-drop. Furthermore, it is shown that a high degree of language contact is involved in these word order variants with the Russian nu. Different types of borrowing (including lexical transference) are frequent features of this contact variety.

Social variables and Turkish subject pronoun use in New York City: The effect of language contact

AbstractOver recent years a great deal of attention has been paid to the influence of social variables on the usage of subject personal pronouns (SPP) in South and Central America as well as in immigrant communities in the USA (

Competing priorities: Student perceptions of helps and hindrances to language acquisition during study abroad

Multiple studies have investigated the effect of language contact on language proficiency, testing the assumption that the study abroad context means greater contact with the target language (L2). Other studies have examined the context of L2 interactions, considering host families, contact with community members, and interactions with non-native-speaking peers. While these studies are helpful, larger scales studies are needed to determine how students are interacting with native and non-native speakers during study abroad. The current study examines student perceptions of helps and hindrances to L2 gain during semester-long study abroad of more than 100 students studying Spanish in Spain, Honduras, and Peru. Participants completed surveys patterned after the Language Contact Profile of Freed, Dewey, Segalowitz, and Halter (2004) and took the Versant Language Test before and after their study abroad experience. They also participated in a post-program interview which was subsequently transcribed, encoded and analyzed. Results suggest that students experience competing priorities in decisions governing L1 vs L2 use and that student intentionality is key to successful language learning.

English in the Gaspé region of Quebec

This paper reports on the first-ever linguistic study of the variety of English spoken in the Gaspé region of eastern Quebec, which is 86 percent French-speaking. An on-line survey was used to gather data from 200 participants on 58 phonological, grammatical and lexical variables, drawn mostly, for comparative purposes, from earlier research on Canadian and Quebec English. The analysis, focusing on data from the 124 participants who still live in the Gaspé region, produces a complex linguistic portrait of the community. It displays a unique mixture of Canadian, Quebec, Maritime and rural features, reflecting its location near the boundary between Quebec and New Brunswick, with evidence of both convergence with and divergence from Quebec English as spoken in Montreal. It also shows more frequent use of several Gallicisms, or borrowings from French, suggesting that this effect of language contact is encouraged by its minority status.

Prosodic Rhythm in Ontario French

ABSTRACTThis article presents the results of a study of rhythm in Ontario French in local minority and majority contexts. To determine whether French in a minority situation shows a less syllabic rhythm due to English influence than it does in a majority situation, we used the following rhythm measurements: %V, ΔV, ΔC, VarcoV, VarcoC and nPVI-V. The results suggest no effect of language contact on the minority setting data where we find even more syllable-timed rhythm than in the majority variety. In addition, we observe that women and older speakers exhibit a more syllabic rhythm than men and younger speakers.

Syntactic and prosodic focus marking in contact varieties of South African English

The article presents results of an elicited-production study investigating syntactic and prosodic consequences of language contact on two varieties of multilingual Black speakers of South African English, namely Black South African English (BlSAfE) and a newly emerging variety by Black speakers (“crossing over variety”). The results indicate that contact varieties of South African English share syntactic traits of General South African English (GenSAfE) relating to focus marking. At the same time, BlSAfE also shows differences in the frequency of use of the syntactic structures. The differences cannot be accounted for solely by L1 influence. Also, in prosody, significant differences between the varieties emerge. For BlSAfE, the differences can be related to L1 influence. A language can exert its influence differently on different areas of another language’s grammar: With respect to syntax the “crossing over” variety groups with GenSAfE, with respect to prosody it is in-between GenSAfE and BlSAfE.

Language contact in Shetland Scots and Southern Irish English

English is a product of contact with other languages (Hickey, 2010a). This essay explains the major effects of language contact on the languages or dialects involved, using examples from Shetland Scots, which has been influenced by contact with Norn, and from Southern Irish English (S.I.E.), which has been influenced by contact with Irish Gaelic. The focus is on the borrowing of lexical items between Norn and Shetland Scots and of grammatical features between Irish Gaelic and S.I.E. The essay begins with a brief overview of language contact in general and then give examples of the effects of contact from each dialect. Throughout the essay the claim is made that language contact is an ongoing and fluid process and that the examples given merely illustrate the effects of contact necessitated by the particular situation in question, not universal effects of language contact.

What Motivates Morphological Copying?

Based on the papers included in the reviewed volume, this article puts forward a number of questions that are important for the theory of language change under contact. While there exist reliable methodologies to determine whether a given form represents the effect of language contact or not, and a slightly less reliable methodologies to establish whether a given function is a product of language contact, there is a relative paucity of studies discussing the motivation for language change under contact with respect to the functions encoded in the language.

Structural nativization, typology and complexity: noun phrase structures in British, Kenyan and Singaporean English

Two much-cited explanations for linguistic innovations in varieties of New Englishes are cross-linguistic influence (see Gut 2011) and simplification (see Schneider 2007: 82). Using these two notions as starting points, the present study seeks to detect effects of structural nativization in noun phrase (NP) modification in two varieties of English whose substrate languages differ strongly from a typological point of view: Singaporean and Kenyan English. The results yielded by the comparison of random samples extracted from the relevant components of theInternational Corpus of Englishin the first part of the study show striking correspondences between the preferred NP structures in the varieties at hand and NP structures in the local languages concerned, which, in the light of Mufwene's (2001, 2008) ecological theory of language change, can be interpreted as effects of language contact. The second part of the study shows that the NPs from the three varieties also differ in terms of variables which can be viewed as measures of NP complexity. What is more, the different degrees of complexity found in the samples correspond closely to predictions about the evolutionary status of the varieties at hand made by Schneider's (2007) Dynamic Model.

Relatedness as a Factor in Language Contact

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.

The geographical distribution of typologically diverse comparative constructions of superiority in Purepecha

Abstract This paper explores the relations between three domains dealing with linguistic variation: dialectology, typology, and contact linguistics. It aims to contribute to dialectal research that also considers syntactic questions, exploring the syntactic domain of comparative constructions of superiority in Purepecha (a language isolate spoken in Mexico). I demonstrate that the expression of the comparison of superiority can be mapped onto the language by means of ten constructions, which may be divided into four types, showing that language contact can lead to the emergence of new types. This study points out that the consequences of language contact are not homogeneous, but fall into various types of construction aligned with local specificities and geographical distribution. I argue that the integration of dialectology, typology, and contact linguistics results in a dynamic and multidimensional organization, which I characterize as a multi-layered perspective.

Exuberant Complexity: The Interplay of Morphology, Syntax, and Prosody in Central Alaskan Yup'ik

Exuberant Complexity: The Interplay of Morphology, Syntax, and Prosody in Central Alaskan Yup'ik

English as a Contact Language: Typology and Comparison

This article places English language contacts in a typological and comparative perspective. It begins with a review of the essentials of language contact terminology: concepts such as substrate, superstrate, and the various kinds of adstrate, as well as borrowing, importation, language shift, and interlanguage are defined and illustrated. Two sections describe substratal and superstratal contact influence in the history of English: language shift from Celtic to English and borrowing from Norman French into English. A process of the former kind, substratal language shifting toward English, is further described in a separate section with a recent and continuing parallel: the shifting in the direction of Standard Australian English by speakers of Aboriginal Australian languages, who have thereby created a widely used interlanguage, Aboriginal English. Next, change of language type by language contact is illustrated with word order transformations from VSO to SOV and conversely, and it is argued that English too has undergone its own and unique type change from the Germanic Verb-second/Verb-late type to the SVO type as a consequence of language contact. The final section (before the conclusion) addresses the question of how the non-Indo-European features which Celtic passed on to English arose in the Isles in the first place. The more than a century old theory that they developed on a pre-Indo-European substrate is paralleled by a reconstruction of the passing-on of SOV order in three linguistic layers at the Horn of Africa, namely from Nilo-Saharan to (originally VSO) Cushitic and further to (originally VSO) Amharic. The Concluding Remarks emphasize the singular importance of English for the developing general theory of language contact and the promise this theory holds for a better understanding of the history of this language.

Lessons from documented endangered languages (review)

Reviewed by: Lessons from documented endangered languages David Bradley Lessons from documented endangered languages. Ed. by K. David Harrison, David S. Rood, and Arienne Dwyer. (Typological studies in language 78.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2008. Pp. 375. ISBN 9789027229908. $173 (Hb). This valuable and interesting volume is one of many outputs of the Dokumentation bedrohter Sprachen (Documentation of endangered languages; DoBeS) project, funded by the Volkswagen Stiftung starting in 2000. It follows up on the Brenzinger 2007 volume, which was also supported by the same funding source and surveyed overall worldwide levels of language endangerment. The volume provides a very substantial contribution of case studies on linguistic and other implications of endangerment and various ways of documenting endangered languages. It is also of more general interest in covering a rich array of data that illustrate the effects of language contact on linguistic structure at all levels from phonology to discourse. After a brief introduction by the editors, eleven chapters range over methodological issues, ethical issues, and linguistic outcomes, as well as some sociolinguistic, anthropological, and historical factors. The three editors are US-based, and the twenty authors include scholars based in Europe, the US, and Latin America. [End Page 402] Areal and genetic coverage is very broad, representing thirteen languages from eleven language families in eight countries on five continents, as well as a historical reconstruction of a linguistic area with multiple languages in four families. There are four chapters on Latin America (including three on languages of Brazil and three including Tupi languages) and three on languages of various parts of Asia (Siberia, China, and Sri Lanka). This represents a desirable extension beyond the usual focus on North America and Europe in some similar collections (e.g. Hinton & Hale 2001, King et al. 2008). Focal areas include linguistic structure (nine chapters), sociolinguistics (four chapters), and methodology (two chapters), with the main structural focus on morphosyntax (five chapters), discourse (two chapters), and suprasegmentals (two chapters). After an introduction by the editors that sets the context of DoBeS and outlines the content and results of each chapter (1–11), the volume contains the following chapters: Ch. 1, 'Sri Lanka Malay revisited: Genesis and classification' by Umberto Ansaldo (13–42); Ch. 2, 'Working together: The interface between researchers and the native people—The Trumai case' by Aurore Monod Becquelin, Emmanuel de Vienne, and Raquel Guirardello-Damian (43–66) on an isolate language of Brazil; Ch. 3, 'Tense, aspect and mood in Aweti verb paradigms: Analytic and synthetic forms' by Sebastian Drude (67–109) on a Tupi language of Brazil; Ch. 4, 'Tonogenesis in Southeastern Monguor' by Arienne Dwyer (111–28) on a Mongolic language of China; Ch. 5, 'Language, ritual and historical reconstruction: Towards a linguistic, ethnographical and archaeological account of Upper Xingu society' by Carlos Fausto, Bruna Franchetto, and Michael Heckenberger (129–57) on the three language families in this area of Brazil; Ch. 6, 'Endangered Caucasian languages in Georgia: Linguistic parameters of language endangerment' by Jost Gippert (159–93) discussing three Caucasian languages in two families; Ch. 7, 'Contact, attrition and shift in two Chaco languages: The cases of Tapiete and Vilela' by Lucia A. Gollus-cio and Hebe GonzÁlez (195–242) on a Tupi language and an isolate; Ch. 8, 'Tofa language change and terminal generation speakers' by K. David Harrison and Gregory D. S. Anderson (243–70) on a Turkic language in Siberia; Ch. 9, 'Hočank's challenge to morphological theory' by Johannes Helmbrecht and Christian Lehmann (271–315) on a Siouan language of the US also known as Winnebago; Ch. 10, 'A preliminary study of same-turn self-repair initiation in Wichita conversation' by Armik Mirzayan (317–54) on a Caddoan language of the US; and Ch. 11, 'Multimedia analysis in documentation projects: Kinship, interrogatives and reciprocals in ǂAkhoe Hai∥om' by Thomas Widlok, Christian Rapold, and Gertie Hoymann (355–70) on a Khoisan language of Namibia. The authors approach their data from very...

Salient stages in contact-induced grammatical change: Evidence from synchronic vs. diachronic contact situations

Contact between languages often leads to linguistic changes. Although the social factors and the typological characteristics of the languages influence the change process, the interaction between these factors is not well-known. This is partially due to the fact that the long-term and short-term effects of language contact are rarely brought together and compared systematically. In this study, we will outline a model of contact-induced change that combines synchronic usage with diachronic development through employing a usage-based approach. In addition, we argue against the separation of grammar from meaning and claim that the meaning of a form is a natural part of the change process it is involved in.