Grammatical Replication and Borrowability in Language Contact


Book Description

The volume presents new insights into two basic theoretical issues hotly debated in recent work on grammaticalization and language contact: grammatical replication and grammatical borrowability. The key issues are: How can grammatical replication be distinguished from other, superficially similar processes of contact-induced linguistic change, and under what conditions does it take place? Are there grammatical morphemes or constructions that are more easily borrowed than others, and how can language contact account for areal biases in the borrowing (vs. calquing) of grammatical formatives? The book is a major contribution to the ongoing theoretical discussion concerning the relationship between grammaticalization and language contact on a broad empirical basis.




Grammatical Borrowing in Cross-Linguistic Perspective


Book Description

The book contains 30 descriptive chapters dealing with a specific language contact situation. The chapters follow a uniform organisation format, being the narrative version of a standard comprehensive questionnaire previously distributed to all authors. The questionnaire targets systematically the possibility of contact influence / grammatical borrowing in a full range of categories. The uniform structure facilitates a comparison among the chapters and the languages covered. The introduction describes the setup of the questionnaire and the methodology of the approach, along with a survey of the difficulties of sampling in contact linguistics. Two evaluative chapters, each authored by one of the co-editors, draws general conclusions from the volume as a whole (one in relation to borrowed grammatical categories and meaningful hierarchies, the other in relation to the distribution of Matter and Pattern replication).




The Routledge Handbook of Language Contact


Book Description

The Routledge Handbook of Language Contact provides an overview of the state of the art of current research in contact linguistics. Presenting contact linguistics as an established field of investigation in its own right and featuring 26 chapters, this handbook brings together a broad range of approaches to contact linguistics, including: experimental and observational approaches and formal theories; a focus on social and cognitive factors that impact the outcome of language contact situations and bilingual language processing; the emergence of new languages and speech varieties in contact situations, and contact linguistic phenomena in urban speech and linguistic landscapes. With contributions from an international range of leading and emerging scholars in their fields, the four sections of this text deal with methodological and theoretical approaches, the factors that condition and shape language contact, the impact of language contact on individuals, and language change, repertoires and formation. This handbook is an essential reference for anyone with an interest in language contact in particular regions of the world, including Anatolia, Eastern Polynesia, the Balkans, Asia, Melanesia, North America, and West Africa.




Slavic on the Language Map of Europe


Book Description

Conceptually, the volume focuses on the relationship of the three key notions that essentially triggered the inception and subsequent realization of this project, to wit, language contact, grammaticalization, and areal grouping. Fully concentrated on the areal-typological and historical dimensions of Slavic, the volume offers new insights into a number of theoretical issues, including language contact, grammaticalization, mechanisms of borrowing, the relationship between areal, genetic, and typological sampling, conservative features versus innovation, and socio-linguistic aspects of linguistic alliances conceived of both synchronically and diachronically. The volume integrates new approaches towards the areal-typological profiling of Slavic as a member of several linguistic areas within Europe, including SAE, the Balkan Sprachbund and Central European groupings(s) like the Danubian or Carpathian areas, as well as the Carpathian-Balkan linguistic macroarea. Some of the chapters focus on structural affinities between Slavic and other European languages that arose as a result of either grammatical replication or borrowing. A special emphasis is placed on contact-induced grammaticalization in Slavic micro-languages




Congruence in Contact-Induced Language Change


Book Description

Modern contact linguistics has primarily focused on contact between languages that are genetically unrelated and structurally distant. This compendium of articles looks instead at the effects of pre–existing structural congruency between the affected languages at the time of their initial contact, using the Romance and Slavic languages as examples. In contact of this kind, both genetic and typological similarities play a part.




The Handbook of Historical Linguistics, Volume II


Book Description

An entirely new follow-up volume providing a detailed account of numerous additional issues, methods, and results that characterize current work in historical linguistics. This brand-new, second volume of The Handbook of Historical Linguistics is a complement to the well-established first volume first published in 2003. It includes extended content allowing uniquely comprehensive coverage of the study of language(s) over time. Though it adds fresh perspectives on several topics previously treated in the first volume, this Handbook focuses on extensions of diachronic linguistics beyond those key issues. This Handbook provides readers with studies of language change whose perspectives range from comparisons of large open vs. small closed corpora, via creolistics and linguistic contact in general, to obsolescence and endangerment of languages. Written by leading scholars in their respective fields, new chapters are offered on matters such as the origin of language, evidence from language for reconstructing human prehistory, invocations of language present in studies of language past, benefits of linguistic fieldwork for historical investigation, ways in which not only biological evolution but also field biology can serve as heuristics for research into the rise and spread of linguistic innovations, and more. Moreover, it: offers novel and broadened content complementing the earlier volume so as to provide the fullest available overview of a wholly engrossing field includes 23 all-new contributed chapters, treating some familiar themes from fresh perspectives but mostly covering entirely new topics features expanded discussion of material from language families other than Indo-European provides a multiplicity of views from numerous specialists in linguistic diachrony. The Handbook of Historical Linguistics, Volume II is an ideal book for undergraduate and graduate students in linguistics, researchers and professional linguists, as well as all those interested in the history of particular languages and the history of language more generally.




Diachronic Slavonic Syntax


Book Description

The book is dedicated to the study of the causes and mechanisms of syntactic change in Slavonic languages, including internally motivated syntactic change, syntactic change under contact conditions (structural convergence, pattern replication, shift-induced transfer etc.): It also explores metalinguistic factors such as ideologically driven selection and propagation of syntactic structures.




The Handbook of Language Contact


Book Description

The second edition of the definitive reference on contact studies and linguistic change—provides extensive new research and original case studies Language contact is a dynamic area of contemporary linguistic research that studies how language changes when speakers of different languages interact. Accessibly structured into three sections, The Handbook of Language Contact explores the role of contact studies within the field of linguistics, the value of contact studies for language change research, and the relevance of language contact for sociolinguistics. This authoritative volume presents original findings and fresh research directions from an international team of prominent experts. Thirty-seven specially-commissioned chapters cover a broad range of topics and case studies of contact from around the world. Now in its second edition, this valuable reference has been extensively updated with new chapters on topics including globalization, language acquisition, creolization, code-switching, and genetic classification. Fresh case studies examine Romance, Indo-European, African, Mayan, and many other languages in both the past and the present. Addressing the major issues in the field of language contact studies, this volume: Includes a representative sample of individual studies which re-evaluate the role of language contact in the broader context of language and society Offers 23 new chapters written by leading scholars Examines language contact in different societies, including many in Africa and Asia Provides a cross-section of case studies drawing on languages across the world The Handbook of Language Contact, Second Edition is an indispensable resource for researchers, scholars, and students involved in language contact, language variation and change, sociolinguistics, bilingualism, and language theory.




The Oxford Handbook of Language Contact


Book Description

Every language has been influenced in some way by other languages. In many cases, this influence is reflected in words which have been absorbed from other languages as the names for newer items or ideas, such as perestroika, manga, or intifada (from Russian, Japanese, and Arabic respectively). In other cases, the influence of other languages goes deeper, and includes the addition of new sounds, grammatical forms, and idioms to the pre-existing language. For example, English's structure has been shaped in such a way by the effects of Norse, French, Latin, and Celtic--though English is not alone in its openness to these influences. Any features can potentially be transferred from one language to another if the sociolinguistic and structural circumstances allow for it. Further, new languages--pidgins, creoles, and mixed languages--can come into being as the result of language contact. In thirty-three chapters, The Oxford Handbook of Language Contact examines the various forms of contact-induced linguistic change and the levels of language which have provided instances of these influences. In addition, it provides accounts of how language contact has affected some twenty languages, spoken and signed, from all parts of the world. Chapters are written by experts and native-speakers from years of research and fieldwork. Ultimately, this Handbook provides an authoritative account of the possibilities and products of contact-induced linguistic change.




Constructions in Contact 2


Book Description

The last few years have seen a steadily increasing interest in constructional approaches to language contact. This volume builds on previous constructionist work, in particular Diasystematic Construction Grammar (DCxG) and the volume Constructions in Contact (2018) and extends its methodology and insights in three major ways. First, it presents new constructional research on a wide range of language contact scenarios including Afrikaans, American Sign Language, English, French, Malayalam, Norwegian, Spanish, Welsh, as well as contact scenarios that involve typologically different languages. Second, it also addresses other types of scenarios that do not fall into the classic language contact category, such as multilingual practices and language acquisition as emerging multilingualism. Third, it aims to integrate constructionist views on language contact and multilingualism with other approaches that focus on structural, social, and cognitive aspects. The volume demonstrates that Construction Grammar is a framework particularly well suited for analyzing a wide variety of language contact phenomena from a usage-based perspective.