English as a contact language (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Contribution of Language Contact to the Emergence of World Englishes
The Cambridge Handbook on World Englishes,, 2020
A contemplation of the emergence of World Englishes is essentially a contemplation of the phenomenon of contact between communities and languages. This chapter outlines the evolution of Englishes outside the British Isles, with particular attention to non-settler, exploitation colonies, in many ways viewed as the epitome of language contact dynamics. It takes into account not only contact between the English-speaking and indigenous language communities during Britain’s trade and colonisation ventures from the 17th through 19th centuries, but also highlights other circumstances pre-dating British colonisation often overlooked in the field, comprising a larger group of players, in a chain of contact, such as that amongst various Asian communities, and with the Portuguese. Features such as tone, particles, and mixed codes are discussed: although traditionally regarded as the outcome of imperfect learning, such restructuring illustrates how, with diverse ecologies and typologies, there are no constraints on the typology of the emergent World English varieties. Also underscored is the fact that the dynamics and outcomes of contact in World Englishes are not distinct from those observed in other contact scenarios in which creole languages evolve. This chapter concludes by evaluating the current and future evolution of English as a result of contemporary contact ecologies, including computer-mediated communication, the language teaching industry, and trade.
On historical language contact in English and its types: state of the art and new directions
Linguistics Vanguard, 2020
This article presents the state of the art of current research on the different types of language contact in early English. The article’s main aim is to show what kinds of phenomena have been investigated until now as possible areas of transfer/borrowing from other languages. We examine the main contact scenarios in Old and Middle English, which involve Latin, Celtic, French and Old Norse. We locate unanswered questions and underexamined hypotheses of historical language contact. We argue that the articles of the Special Collection on Language Contact in the History of English open new directions in the way we can investigate the role of early language contact in the development of English. New methodologies of research, the role of bilingualism in language change but also of the written types of contact, and the various domains of change in grammar, lexicon, and pragmatics offer insights into old and new hypotheses on scenarios of language contact.
Language in Society, 2012
The handbook of language contact is the latest addition to the impressive set of "Blackwell handbooks in linguistics." The volume is divided into four parts with forty articles in total. Part 1, "Contact and linguistics" (six chapters), locates the study of language contact vis à vis central topics in general linguistics: language change and historical linguistics (including quantitative and computational approaches), language classification, typology, grammaticalization, and grammatical theory. Part 2, "Contact and change" (six chapters), looks at a range of possible outcomes and consequences of language contact: language shift, borrowing, codeswitching, dialect contact and change, the emergence of new varieties, and pidgin/creole languages. Part 3, "Contact and society" (five chapters), includes diverse topics such as fieldwork issues, ethnicity, "scenarios" and "typologies," as well as a chapter on language death (see below for a more detailed disscussion of the chapters in Part 3). The largest section is Part 4, which provides the reader with a range of case studies of language contact (twenty-three chapters). The first chapter, by Johanna Nichols, provides a useful overview of language contact with respect to macrofamilies and macroareas. It is followed by chapters on contact in the prehistory of Indoeuropean (Theo Vennemann), and the Germanic languages (Paul Roberge). Moving from macrofamilies to individual languages, the following five chapters focus on the history of English in various localities (United Kingdom/early history, United States, Caribbean, Asia, and Africa). While English thus receives quite detailed coverage, the same cannot be said for the remaining 6,000 or so languages of the world, which are discussed mainly in terms of macrofamilies (Celtic, Slavic, Finno-Ugric, Turkic, North American languages, Siberian languages, Chinese languages, and Australian indigenous languages). Spanish and Portuguese share one article (John Lipski); Arabic has its own entry (Kees Versteegh). In terms of geographical areas there are individual chapters on the Balkans, Africa, South Asia, New Guinea, and the Pacific. The relative overrepresentation of English among the case studies is a reflection of the very real inequalities between languages and their study (Hymes 1973
Severed Language Contacts: Two Examples from the History of English
Studia Anglica Resoviensia, 2019
The phenomenon of language contact is generally viewed as establishing or maintaining relationship by speakers of different languages. As far as the English language is concerned, especially its contemporary status, it is its global reach and influence that is discussed, as well as the influence it exerts on other languages. The present text deals with a reverse phenomenon, that is the cessation of contact, which results in a change of the linguistic situation. This is exemplified with the 16th-century English Reformation, to be more precise: the establishment of the Anglican Church, and the independence of the United States in the 18 th century. With these two events, the author attempts to present how the breaking of contact influenced the further development of the linguistic situation in the external history of the English language.
Middle English: Language contact
In: Bergs, Alex and Laurel Brinton (eds.) 2012, Historical Linguistics of English (HSK 34.1). Berlin: de Gruyter, pp. 505-519
The complex linguistic situation in the ME period, with widespread multilingualism and initial diglossia, has led to frequent contact-induced changes on all linguistic levels of English. The present chapter starts with a brief discussion of the relation between language contact and change and of the changing nature of ME multilingualism; then some specific research questions are introduced, such as the controversial issue of ME creolization, the frequent use of code-switching in medieval texts, and the possible Celtic influence on English. The remaining sections deal in some detail with contact-induced change on the various linguistic levels: while foreign lexical influence is well established, contactinduced structural changes are more controversial, since here a native origin is often equally possible. In many cases, especially of syntactic change, a polygenetic origin seems more plausible than a monocausal explanation. In any case, the extensive restructuring of Middle English cannot be explained without close linguistic contact.
Language contact in space and time: Perspectives and pitfalls in diachronic contact linguistics
While the classical hard core of historical linguistics has its well-established and proven tools for analysing the relatedness and internal development of languages, language contact research lacks a “general theory” with predictive force. This has often (mis)led linguists to believe that the Comparative Method (the family-tree model) and language contact are irreconcilable. However, both comparative historical linguistics and language contact research can be shown to be ontologically based on realistic processes. This insight might help in avoiding some pitfalls of diachronic language contact research: misunderstanding the metaphorical character of both family-tree and alternative models; confusing language transmission with contact-induced change; resorting to “deficient” languages (pidgins) as an explanation where the traditional methods of reconstruction seem to fail. Incorporating language contact into the theory of language change remains a challenge; however, this challenge is an empirical, not an ontological one.