Language contact LMVC

Lingua franca

a common language between speakers whose native languages are different

superstratum

higher prestige/power e.g norman french in england

substratum

lower prestige/power e.g. gaulish in roman empire

adstratum

e.g old english borrowing pronoun they from old norse, but not inferior/superior

sprachbund

Languages not necessarily related, but in close proximity e.g. balkan languages from more than one language family in contact- greek, romanian, serbo-croatian

Convergence

2 or more languages can become more and more similar, this can affect vocabulary, pronunciation, syntax, and grammar

Examples of convergence in the Balkan Sprachbund

Definite articles following nouns, prepositions in place of cases, collapse of the dative and possessive cases, double marking of animate objects, analytic comparatives, loss of the infinitive, teen numbers sharing similar structure

divergence

two or more language varieties can become more different from one another, affects vocabulary, pronunciation, syntax, and grammar

Types of transmission

borrowing, codeswitching, interference

core anglicisms

borrowings, codeswitchings, lexical/syntactic productivity

Borderline anglicism

interference, unobtrusive borrowing

Borrowings

the transfer of units of form and meaning from source language to receptor language

orthographical assimilation

capitalisation and germanised spellings e.g. stopp to stop and Streik to strike

phonological assimilation

words are adapted to german pronunciation conventions

morphological assimilation

changes in pre/suffixation i.e. derivation and use of inflections according to german language conventions. e.g. lobbyism to lobbyismus

coexistent phonemic system

one set of phonemes in native words and another set for loanwords e.g. j in job exclusive to loanwords in german

general principles of grammatical borrowing

grammatical morphemes tend not to be borrowed until after some lexical items have been borrowed.

bound morphemes are borrowed only as parts of complete words

inflectional morphemes cannot be borrowed until after some derivational morphemes have been borrowed.

codeswitching

when sentences or phrases are inserted into an utterance which began in another language and may switch back into it. The clauses are internally consistent with english morphological and syntactical rules.

hybrid compounds

a borrowed element is used to make a new hybrid compound containing one borrowed and one native word element.

language purism

some may regard loanwords as contamination sullying the purity of the language

complete language shift

when an entire community switches to another language

partial language shift

domain restriction /population reduction

pidgin

a makeshift language used in limited contexts- not a mother tongue. Typically short lived

creole

Language derived from a pidgin- relatively stable, becomes a mother tongue to some

decreolisation

losing creole feattures, thus becoming more similar to the lexifier language