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Language Contact

What is Contact Linguistics?

● Studies situations where speakers of two (or more) different languages or different varieties of a language interact

Common issues in contact situations

● Bilingualism / multilingualism ● Language birth (Creolization) ● Language death

Directions of influence

● In a language contact situation, usually one language is more dominant than the other

● The more dominant language tends to have more influence on the less dominant language than the reverse

Linguistic influence

● Borrowing (or loanwords) ● Sharing of lexical items between different linguistic

groups ● The dominant language tends to give more than it

takes ● Extremely common

Borrowing

● In contact situations with little bilingualism, borrowings are often heavily nativized ● Early Spanish borrowings into English

– Vamoose (Vamos) – Buckaroo (Vaquero)

● Compare recent borrowings (notably food) ● Languages with very different sound structures can

result in less obvious borrowings – Japanese besuboru (Eng. baseball) – Hawaiian meli kalikimaka (Eng. merry christmas)

Types of borrowing

● Importation – take the whole word ● Foreignism – not assimilated, e.g. café ● Loan word – wholly or partially assimilated, music <

fr. musíque ● Calque / translation

● Here words are borrowed but in translated form – fr. gratte-ciel from eng. sky-scraper – Days of the week

Linguistic influence

● Structural features ● Phonological

– English acquiring zh from French ● Morphological

– English borrowing more/most + adj. from French ● Syntactic

– English borrowing from Yiddish ● Semantic

– Borrowing concepts from another language

Language shift

● Speakers switch from one linguistic variety to another

● Usually one has more prestige than another ● Shift from lesser prestige language to greater

prestige language ● Usually happens over the course of several

generations ● Can result in the death of the variety shifted

away from

Stratal influence

● Often when one linguistic variety is lost in place of a new one, the original variety leaves a trace

● This is called substratum influence ● Irish/Celtic influence on Irish (Hibernian) English ● Scandinavian influence on Minnesota English ● Polish influence on Chicago English

Stratal influence

● Sometimes the introduction of a higher prestige language doesn't result in language shift

● Influence of the higher prestige language is called superstratal influence ● Norman French influence on English ● Latin influence on English ● English influence on modern Irish ● Biblical Hebrew on modern Hebrew

Prestige?

● Describes the level of respect accorded to a language or dialect as compared to that of other languages or dialects in a speech community

● A prestigious variety often has the following characteristics ● Used in education ● Used by the racial/ethnic majority ● Used by the upper classes ● Used for government purposes

Linguistic prestige

● What makes a linguistic variety more prestigious than another?

● The answer is almost always that the speakers of that variety are more prestigious for ● cultural reasons ● economic reasons ● military reasons ● numerical reasons ● etc.

Linguistic prestige

● Prestige is subjective and relative ● Usually, if speakers of a variety are viewed as

being more or less prestigious then that will reflect on what variety they speak

Pervasive Bilingualism

● Two linguistic varieties are in common use ● Implies that both have some prestige and utility

for the community – though they may not be equal

Types of bilingualism

● Fluent bilingualism ● Children grow up using both and commanding them

fluently ● Functional bilingualism

● Native language + high proficiency in a second language

Community Bilingualism

● Often unstable across generations ● Usually one language “wins out”

● Shifts can happen within a few generations (e.g. Spanish in California) ● Gen 1: Speak Language A natively and Language B

is acquired as a second language ● Gen 2: Children of Gen 1 learn Language A and

Language B natively and use both extensively ● Gen 3: Children of Gen 2 learn only Language B

natively – passive or little to no command of Lang. A

Types of bilingual communities

● Diglossia ● Two varieties – one is high prestige and one low ● Low variety is used at home, the other for

education, gov't, etc. ● Ambilingualism

● Both commonly used ● Can't predict the situation in which one or the other

language is used ● Rarer in modern societies, but likely more common

in earlier ones (i.e. pre-state)

Diglossia Types

● Different languages ● Spanish in SW USA ● Basque and Spanish in N Spain

● Same language, different varieties ● Arabic speaking countries: most have a local variety

(Cairene, Iraqi, Moroccan) that contrasts with Std. Arabic

● African Am. English and Std. American English

Language birth through contact

● Speakers of different languages spontaneously create a new variety

● Pidgins and creoles

Pidgin

● A restricted linguistic variety created due to contact among groups who speak different, mutually unintelligible languages

● Originate from a jargon – common lexical items used by these groups

● Eventually a basic grammar is appended to the jargon and a pidgin forms

Pidgin

● Restricted: a simplified language ● Incomplete or reduced, grammar ● No native speakers ● Limited to certain situations / contexts

● Commonly form in situations where two or more groups must communicate with each other... ● but have no common language ● but don't have consistent contact with each other

Creole

● Language formed from (at least) two other languages ● Complete grammar ● Usable in a wide variety of contexts (but may be

restricted due to social bias)

Creole formation

● Several possible paths

Jargon → Creole (Hawaiian Creole English)

Jargon → Stable Pidgin → Creole (Torres Straits Creole English, Tok Pisin)

Home signs → Creole (Nicaraguan Sign Language)

Creole Formation—Sign Language

● A very unique case of language formation can be found studying certain sign languages

● Nicaraguan Sign Language is the most famous example, but there are a few others with similar backgrounds

Nicaraguan Sign Language

● The Sandanistas took control of the government of Nicaragua in the 1979 revolution

● Two schools for the deaf were created in Managua and hundreds of children enrolled ● Initially mostly adolescents, but children as young

as 5 enrolled later ● 400 students by 1984

● Previous to this, there was no deaf community —individuals were scattered throughout the country

Nicaraguan Sign Langauge

● The teachers were somewhat inexperienced and were not fluent in a sign language

● They taught reading/writing in Spanish and lip reading in Spanish

● The only signing was fingerspelling

Nicaraguan Sign Language

● The children at these schools had rudimentary signs called “home signs” or mimicas

● These were not very systematic and each child had learned different ones to communicate with their parents / family / caregivers

Nicaraguan Sign Language

● Over a period of years, the students created a kind of sign language pidgin

● A common set of signs that everyone used ● A primitive syntax for these signs

Nicaraguan Sign Language

● The teachers were confused—they couldn’t understand the students and their attempts at teaching Spanish were failing

● They asked a sign language expert to come and consult about the situation

Nicaraguan Sign Language

● The linguist, Judy Kegl, realized that the younger children had taken this pidgin and created a full fledged language

● This language, now known as Idioma de Señas de Nicaragua (Nicaraguan Sign Language)

● It is now taught in schools ● There’s about 3000 native speakers

Language death

● A dead language has no native speakers and no children learning the language

● Two kinds ● A language gradually changes and its older variety

is no longer used (Latin, Old English) ● A language ceases to be spoken and has no

descendents ● The latter is the usually what we mean by

“language death”

Language death - types

● Gradual shift to a different language over generations (most common)

● Radical death – sudden loss of a language due to natural disaster, war, genocide, etc.

Language death – common way

● Speakers gradually shift to a higher prestige language - diglossia ● usually for economic, social, or related reasons ● sometimes by fiat (banning of a language)

● Eventually children are no longer learning the language fluently ● Moribund language: small community of older

speakers, no children learning it ● As the older speakers die, the language dies with

them

In happier news

● Language revitalization ● Stopping and/or reversing language death ● Languages near death that are (somewhat)

more stable now ● Irish ● Hawaiian ● Welsh

● Hebrew ● A rare case of a language that did die, but was

brought back