Intense Language Contact Research Articles

What is the chin doing?: An analysis of interrogatives in Austrian sign language

The aim of this paper is to investigate the structure of polar (yes/no questions) and content questions (wh-questions) in Austrian Sign Language (ÖGS), analyzing the different nonmanual signals, the occurrence of question signs and their syntactic position. As I will show, the marking strategies used in ÖGS are no exception to the crosslinguistic observations that interrogative constructions in sign languages employ a variety of nonmanual signals and manual signs (Zeshan 2004). In ÖGS polar questions are marked with ‘chin down’, whereas content questions are indicated with ‘chin up’ or ‘head forward’ and content question signs. These same nonmanual markers are reported for Croatian sign language, indicating common foundation due to historical relations and intense language contact.

Long-term effects of CS: Clues to structural borrowing

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.

Resisting the grammatical change: Nominal groups in Turkish-Norwegian codeswitching

This article deals with a particular grammatical feature in the Turkish-Norwegian codeswitching data, namely the nominal groups, with the help of the Matrix Language Frame model Myers-Scotton, 1993a [1997]). The main point here is to focus on the issue of stability, rather than change, in Turkish when in contact with Norwegian in a bilingual immigrant context. The data present us with rich information about how the Turkish grammatical frame organizes the grammatical setting both for mixed Turkish + Norwegian constituents and for Norwegian compound nouns. In both cases the necessary Turkish genitive and/or possessive markers are employed according to the Turkish grammatical rules, instead of omitting especially the possessive suffix (or, as it is also called here, the compound marker). Normally a change in Turkish spoken in Norway is expected to occur due to intense language contact, however, in this case, morphosyntactic stability is observed.

Comparative Syntax of Balkan Languages (review)

Reviewed by: Comparative syntax of Balkan languages ed. by María Luisa Rivero, Angela Ralli Catherine Rudin Comparative syntax of Balkan languages. Ed. by María Luisa Rivero and Angela Ralli. (Oxford studies in comparative syntax.) New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Pp. 234. Cloth $55.00, paper $37.50. The languages of the Balkan peninsula (Modern Greek, Albanian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Romanian) have long interested linguists because of a set of characteristics shared by this areal group but not necessarily by their nearest genetic relatives, the other Slavic or Romance languages or earlier stages of Greek. These ‘Balkanisms’ include a number of syntactic features, among them replacement of the infinitive by a finite or quasifinite construction introduced by a subjunctive/modal particle; lack of morphological case; relatively ‘free’ constituent order (determined by topic/focus rather than grammatical relations); a suffixal definite article; clitic clusters within both clause and NP; and clitic doubling constructions similar but not identical to those in Western Romance languages. In the last fifteen years, an explosion of generative work on Balkan languages has led to significant results of interest beyond the narrow field of Balkan linguistics, including typological comparisons with non-Balkan languages. This collection presents a group of papers from a 1996 workshop on Balkan syntax held in conjunction with the Generative Linguistics in the Old World (GLOW) Colloquium in Athens. It is not a survey of Balkan syntax but a fascinating snapshot of several important issues, especially the properties of the infinitive-replacing ‘subjunctive’ construction and the proper treatment of various types of functional heads within the minimalist framework. The volume contains seven articles, an introduction, and two indexes. The editors’ useful introduction summarizes and lays groundwork for each of the articles, giving overviews of related earlier work, clarifying the theoretical issues involved, and drawing connections to similar phenomena outside the Balkans; for instance, a discussion of finiteness effects in Romance nicely leads into several papers on the Balkan infinitive-replacing construction, showing why the construction is problematic for finiteness-based accounts. This unusually meaty introduction will be especially appreciated by students, general linguists, typologists, and others who are not Balkan specialists. Following the introduction is a broadly philosophical article by Brian Joseph, ‘Is Balkan comparative syntax possible?’. This seems like an odd question, as he notes himself, in a collection of papers on Balkan comparative syntax. It turns out Joseph makes a distinction between ‘comparative Balkan syntax’ and ‘comparative syntax of the Balkan languages’, the former concerned with the evolution of unique syntactic features of the Balkan Sprachbund through intensive language contact, the latter with typological features of Balkan languages regardless of their history or geographical restriction. All the other papers in the volume (like most recent work in Balkan linguistics) are of the second, broadly comparative, type which Joseph appears to regard with some unease, repeatedly using terms like ‘problematic’ for studies of the syntax of Balkan languages not directly rooted in language contact and approving labels like ‘true comparative Balkan syntax’ for those which are so rooted. However, he does concede that both approaches are valid (though with different aims) and provides interesting case studies of Balkan negation from both points of view. A study of the parallel range of functions of negation markers with m-, with emphasis on how this parallelism arose through calquing in a context of widespread imperfect bilingualism, illustrates ‘comparative Balkan syntax’. A study of the fusing of negative particles with verbs, a process which occurs in several Balkan languages but also in many non-Balkan ones, illustrates ‘comparative syntax of the Balkan languages’. The remaining articles each deal with a specific issue or construction in at least two Balkan languages, often with reference to languages outside the Balkans as well. Three chapters form [End Page 423] a closely related group—Carmen Dobrovie-Sorin, ‘Head-to-head merge in Balkan subjunctives and locality’; Anna Roussou, ‘Control and raising in and out of subjunctive complements’; and Iliyana Krapova, ‘Subjunctives in Bulgarian and Modern Greek’—all taking a minimalist approach to the Balkan infinitive-replacing construction. I found this the most worthwhile part of the book, partly because the...

The Modal Elements mos and maskie in Cape Dutch

In historical linguistics one may confront a feature that could plausibly have either an endogenous or contact origin. Lass (1997. Historical Linguistics and Language Change, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, p. 209) argues that if “the (informal) probability weightings of both source-types converge for a given character, then the choice goes to endogeny.” However, intensive language contact may produce characteristics that cannot be adequately accounted for in terms of a binary opposition between endogeny and exogeny, as the history of two Cape Dutch modal adverbs illustrates.

CONVERGENCE AND THE FORMATION OF AFRIKAANS

As a phenomenon to be explained, convergence in historical linguistics is substantively no different than in creolistics. The general idea is that accommodation by speakers of “established” languages in contact and the formation of new language varieties both involve a process of leveling of different structures that achieve the same referential and nonreferential effects. The relatively short and well-documented history of Afrikaans presents an important case study in the competition and selection of linguistic features during intensive language contact.

In-Between Languages: Language Shift/Maintenance in Childhood Bilingualism

This paper examines structural consequences of intensive language contact on simultaneous L1 and L2 child language development in an L2-dominant environment. Based on the assumption that structural processes in language contact are operating at and determined by abstract complex lexical structure, various structural configurations in bilingual speech (e.g., codeswitching, convergence, and a Composite Matrix Language) are explained in terms of three levels of abstract lexical structure: the lexical-conceptual structure, predicate-argument structure, and morphological realization patterns. Empirical evidence from Hungarian/English bilingual speech demonstrates that as a result of a turnover in the Matrix Language abstract lexical structure can be “split” and “recombined” in such a way that surface structure is projected by an underlying grammatical system which is a composite. Prevalent changes and patterns of linguistic structure are interpreted in relation to ongoing language shift to L2, or L1 maintenance/attrition.

Spanish in Four Continents. Studies in Language Contact and Bilingualism

This collection is the first to examine the effects of bilingualism and multilingualism on the development of dialectal varieties of Spanish in Africa, America, Asia and Europe. Nineteen essays investigate a variety of complex situations of contact between Spanish and typologically different languages, including Basque, Bantu languages, English, and Quechua. The overall picture that evolves clearly indicates that although influence from the contact languages may lead to different dialects, the core grammar of Spanish remains intact. Silva-Corvalan's volume makes an important contribution both to sociolinguistics in general, and to Spanish linguistics in particular. The contributors address theoretical and empirical issues that advance our knowledge of what is a possible linguistic change, how languages change, and how changes spread in society in situations of intensive bilingualism and language contact, a situation that appears to be the norm rather than the exception in the world.

Purism vs. compromise in language revitalization and language revival

ABSTRACTConservative attitudes toward loanwords and toward change in grammar often hamper efforts to revitalize endangered languages (Tiwi, Australia); and incompatible conservatisms can separate educated revitalizers, interested in historicity, from remaining speakers interested in locally authentic idiomaticity (Irish). Native-speaker conservatism is likely to constitute a barrier to coinage (Gaelic, Scotland), and unrealistically severe older-speaker purism can discourage younger speakers where education in a minority language is unavailable (Nahuatl, Mexico). Even in the case of a once entirely extinct language, rival authenticities can prove a severe problem (the Cornish revival movement in Britain). Evidence from obsolescent Arvanitika (Greece), from Pennsylvania German (US), and from Irish in Northern Ireland (the successful Shaw's Road community in Belfast) suggests that structural compromise may enhance survival chances; and the case of English in the post-Norman period indicates that restructuring by intense language contact can leave a language both viable and versatile, with full potential for future expansion. (Revival, purism, attitudes, norms, endangered languages, minority languages, contact)