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

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

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

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

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