Chapter 12: Language Contact

Language Contact

• Language contact- when two or more distinct languages come into contact with each other either directly through social interaction of the speakers or indirectly through education or literature
  • Borrowing- the transfer of lexical items or structural properties from one language to another
  • Loans- individual words adopted into one language from another
  • Core vocabulary- words for basic items that most societies have words for (usually not borrowed)
  • Calques- phrases acquired through a word-for-word translation into native morphemes
  • Language convergence- languages in contact become more alike
  • Language death- a language has no more speakers left
• Intensity of contact- determined by the duration of the linguistic contact as well as the level of interaction among speakers
• Adstratal- speakers who are equally prestigious
  • Superstratum language- the language of the dominant or more prestige group
  • Substratum language- the language of the less dominant or less prestige group

Borrowings into English

• 38.3% of the 1,000 most frequently used words in English are lexical borrowings from a variety of other languages
  • Scandanavian
  • French
  • Latin
  • Greek
  • Native American languages
  • Spanish

Pidgin Languages

• Pidgin languages- develop in trading centers or in areas under industrialization
  • Prepidgin jargon- the initial stage of pidgin formation in which there is little or no consistent grammar and rampant variation among speakers
  • Crystallizing- establishing grammatical conventions
  • Prototypical pidgins- pidgins that emerged rather abruptly in situations where the contact is limited to certain social settings
  • Expanded pidgins- not limited to certain social settings
• Characteristics of pidgins
  • @@Consonant clusters ore often reduced@@
  • @@Absence of affixes@@
  • @@Use of reduplication@@
  • @@Comparatively small vocabularies@@
• Lexifier- the language that provides most of the vocabulary of a pidgin

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Creole Languages

• Creole languages- develop from a pidgin language or prepidgin jargon when it is adopted as the first, or native, language of a group of speakers
• Nativization- the process in which an initially non-native language to a group of speakers is adopted as first languages by children in some speech community

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Societal Multilingualism

• Societal multilingualism- when whole communities speak multiple languages in everyday life
  • Common among immigrant communities
• Code switching- the use of two or more languages or dialects within a single utterance or conversation
• Diglossia- the situation where different languages or dialects are used for different functions

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Language Endangerment and Language Death

• Causes of language endangerment:
  • Problems of access to @@mainstream economic opportunities@@
  • Potential for @@ridicule, overt discrimination, and prejudice@@
  • @@Lack of instruction@@ in their native language
  • @@Limited “scope”@@ for using the language
• Positive aspects of maintaining one’s native language
  • The potential to @@maintain one’s culture@@ and prevent a sense of rootlessness
  • Enhances @@pride and self-esteem@@
  • A @@well-developed self-identity@@ and @@group membership@@ that allows access to a different culture
  • @@Cognitive advantages@@ through bilingualism
• Language endangerment is a locally determined phenomenon

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Case Studies in Language Contact

• Possessive pronouns and Adjectives
  • Kupwar Kannada follows a Kupwar Marathi pattern. Kannada spoken outside Kupwar has a distinction that is not present in the Marathi pattern
• Verb formations
  • There are distinct occurences beterrn Kupwar Urdu and Kupwar Kannada

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