AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLINGUISTICS 2015 CHAPTER IV LANGUAGE CONTACT Multilingualism and language contact has likely been common throughout much of human history, and today most people in the world are multilingual. In tribal hunter-gatherer societies, multilingualism was common, as tribes must communicate with neighboring peoples and there is often inter-marriage. In present-day areas such as Sub-Saharan Africa, where there is much variation in language over short distances, it is usual for anyone who has dealings outside their own town or village to know two or more languages. When speakers of different languages interact closely, it is typical for their languages to influence each other. Languages normally develop by gradually accumulating dialectal differences until two dialects cease to be mutually understandable, somewhat analogous to the species barrier in biology. Language contact can occur at language borders, between adstratum languages, or as the result of migration, with a “disturbing” language acting as either a super- stratum or a sub-stratum. Language contact occurs in a variety of phenomena, including language convergence and borrowing. The most common products are code-switching and mixed languages. Other hybrid languages, such as English, do not strictly fit into any of these categories. The most common way that languages influence each other is the exchange of words. Much is made about the contemporary borrowing of English words into other languages, but this phenomenon is not new, nor is it very large by historical standards. The large-scale importation of words from Latin, French and other languages into English in the 16th and 17th centuries was more significant. Some languages have borrowed so much that they have become scarcely recognizable. Armenian borrowed so many words from Iranian languages, for example, that it was at first considered a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages. It was not recognized as an independent branch of the Indo-European languages for many decades.
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AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLINGUISTICS 2015
CHAPTER IV
LANGUAGE CONTACT
Multilingualism and language contact has likely been common throughout much of human
history, and today most people in the world are multilingual. In tribal hunter-gatherer societies,
multilingualism was common, as tribes must communicate with neighboring peoples and there is
often inter-marriage. In present-day areas such as Sub-Saharan Africa, where there is much
variation in language over short distances, it is usual for anyone who has dealings outside their
own town or village to know two or more languages.
When speakers of different languages interact closely, it is typical for their languages to
influence each other. Languages normally develop by gradually accumulating dialectal
differences until two dialects cease to be mutually understandable, somewhat analogous to the
species barrier in biology. Language contact can occur at language borders, between adstratum
languages, or as the result of migration, with a “disturbing” language acting as either a super-
stratum or a sub-stratum.
Language contact occurs in a variety of phenomena, including language convergence and
borrowing. The most common products are code-switching and mixed languages. Other hybrid
languages, such as English, do not strictly fit into any of these categories.
The most common way that languages influence each other is the exchange of words.
Much is made about the contemporary borrowing of English words into other languages, but this
phenomenon is not new, nor is it very large by historical standards. The large-scale importation
of words from Latin, French and other languages into English in the 16th and 17th centuries was
more significant. Some languages have borrowed so much that they have become scarcely
recognizable. Armenian borrowed so many words from Iranian languages, for example, that it
was at first considered a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages. It was not recognized as an
independent branch of the Indo-European languages for many decades.
AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLINGUISTICS 2015
A. Adoption of Other Language Features
The influence can go deeper, extending to the exchange of even basic characteristics of a
language such as morphology and grammar. The language of Nepali, for example, spoken in
Nepal, is a Sino-Tibetan language distantly related to Chinese, but has had so many centuries of
contact with neighboring Indo-Iranian languages that it has even developed noun inflection, a
trait typical of the Indo-European family but rare in Sino-Tibetan. It has absorbed features of
grammar as well, such as verb tenses. Romanian was influenced by the Slavic languages spoken
by neighboring tribes in the centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire, not only in vocabulary
but also in phonology and morphology.
English has a few phrases, adapted from French, in which the adjective follows the noun:
court-martial, attorney-general, Lake Superior. It is easy to see how a word can diffuse from one
language to another, but not as obvious how more basic features can do the same; nevertheless,
this phenomenon is not rare.
B. Language Shift
The result of the contact of two languages can be the replacement of one by the other. This
is most common when one language has a higher social position. This sometimes leads to
language endangerment or extinction.
However, when language shift occurs, the language that is replaced (known as the
substratum) can leave a profound impression on the replacing language (known as the
superstratum), when people retain features of the substratum as they learn the new language and
pass these features on to their children, leading to the development of a new variety. For
example, the Latin that came to replace local languages in present-day France during Roman
times was influenced by Gaulish and Germanic. The distinct pronunciation of the dialect of
English spoken in Ireland comes partially from the influence of the substratum of Irish. Outside
the Indo-European phylum, Coptic, the last stage of ancient Egyptian, is a substratum of
Egyptian Arabic.
AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLINGUISTICS 2015
C. Creolization And Mixed Languages
Language contact can also lead to the development of new languages when people without
a common language interact closely, developing a pidgin, which may eventually become a full-
fledged creole language through the process of creolization. A prime example of this is
Saramaccan, spoken in Suriname, which has vocabulary mainly from Portuguese, English and
Dutch, but phonology and even tones which are closer to African languages.
A much rarer but still observed process is the formation of mixed languages. Whereas
creoles are formed by communities lacking a common language, mixed languages are formed by
communities fluent in both languages. They tend to inherit much more of the complexity
(grammatical, phonological, etc.) of their parent languages, whereas creoles begin as simple
languages and then develop in complexity more independently. It is sometimes explained as
bilingual communities that no longer identify with the cultures of either of the languages they
speak, and seek to develop their own language as an expression of their own cultural uniqueness.
D. Mutual and Non-Mutual Influence
Change as a result of contact is often one-sided. Chinese, for instance, has had a profound
effect on the development of Japanese, but the Chinese language remains relatively free of
Japanese influence, other than some modern terms that were re-borrowed after having been
coined in Japan based on Chinese precepts and using Chinese characters.
In India, Hindi and other native languages have been influenced by English up to the extent
that loan words from English are part of day to day vocabulary. In some cases, language contact
may lead to mutual exchange, although this exchange may be confined to a particular geographic
region. For example, in Switzerland, the local French has been influenced by German, and vice-
versa. In Scotland, the Scots language has been heavily influenced by English, and many Scots
terms have been adopted into the regional English dialect.
AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLINGUISTICS 2015
E. Linguistic Hegemony
Obviously, a language's influence widens as its speakers grow in power. Chinese, Greek,
Latin, Portuguese, French, Spanish, Arabic, Persian, Sanskrit, Russian, German and English have
each seen periods of widespread importance, and have had varying degrees of influence on the
native languages spoken in the areas over which they have held sway.
Some forms of language contact affect only a particular segment of a speech community.
Consequently, change may be manifested only in particular dialects, jargons, or registers. The
South African dialect of English has been significantly affected by Afrikaans, in terms of lexis
and pronunciation, but English as a whole has remained almost totally unaffected by Afrikaans.
In some cases, a language develops an acrolect which contains elements of a more prestigious
language. For example, in England during a large part of the Medieval period, upper-class
speech was dramatically influenced by French, to the point that it often resembled a French
dialect. A similar situation existed in Tsarist Russia, where the native Russian language was
widely disparaged as barbaric and uncultured.
F. Code Mixing
Code-mixing refers to the mixing of two or more languages or language varieties in
speech. Some scholars use the terms "code-mixing" and "code-switching" interchangeably,
especially in studies of syntax, morphology, and other formal aspects of language. Others assume
more specific definitions of code-mixing, but these specific definitions may be different in
different subfields of linguistics, education theory, communications etc.
Code-mixing is similar to the use or creation of pidgins; but while a pidgin is created
across groups that do not share a common language, code-mixing may occur within a
multilingual setting where speakers share more than one language.
Some linguists use the terms code-mixing and code-switching more or less
interchangeably. Especially in formal studies of syntax, morphology, etc., both terms are used to
refer to utterances that draw from elements of two or more grammatical systems. These studies
AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLINGUISTICS 2015
are often interested in the alignment of elements from distinct systems, or on constraints that
limit switching. While many linguists have worked to describe the difference between code-
switching and borrowing of words or phrases, the term code-mixing may be used to encompass
both types of language behavior.
While the term code-switching emphasizes a multilingual speaker's movement from one
grammatical system to another, the term code-mixing suggests a hybrid form, drawing from
distinct grammars. In other words, code-mixing emphasizes the formal aspects of language
structures or linguistic competence, while code-switching emphasizes linguistic performance.
While linguists who are primarily interested in the structure or form of code-mixing may
have relatively little interest to separate code-mixing from code-switching, some sociolinguists
have gone to great lengths to differentiate the two phenomena. For these scholars, code-
switching is associated with particular pragmatic effects, discourse functions, or associations
with group identity. In this tradition, the terms code-mixing or language alternation are used to
describe more stable situations in which multiple languages are used without such pragmatic
effects.
In studies of bilingual language acquisition, code-mixing refers to a developmental stage
during which children mix elements of more than one language. Nearly all bilingual children go
through a period in which they move from one language to another without apparent
discrimination. This differs from code-switching, which is understood as the socially and
grammatically appropriate use of multiple varieties.
Beginning at the babbling stage, young children in bilingual or multilingual environments
produce utterances that combine elements of both (or all) of their developing languages. Some
linguists suggest that this code-mixing reflects a lack of control or ability to differentiate the
languages. Others argue that it is a product of limited vocabulary; very young children may know
a word in one language but not in another. More recent studies argue that this early code-mixing
is a demonstration of a developing ability to code-switch in socially appropriate ways.
In psychology and in psycholinguistics the label code-mixing is used in theories that draw
on studies of language alternation or code-switching to describe the cognitive structures
AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLINGUISTICS 2015
underlying bilingualism. During the 1950s and 1960s, psychologists and linguists treated
bilingual speakers as, in Grosjean's term, "two monolinguals in one person.” This "fractional
view" supposed that a bilingual speaker carried two separate mental grammars that were more or
less identical to the mental grammars of monolinguals and that were ideally kept separate and
used separately. Studies since the 1970s, however, have shown that bilinguals regularly combine
elements from "separate" languages. These findings have led to studies of code-mixing in
psychology and psycholinguistics.
Sridhar and Sridhar define code-mixing as "the transition from using linguistic units
(words, phrases, clauses, etc.) of one language to using those of another within a single
sentence.". They note that this is distinct from code-switching in that it occurs in a single
sentence (sometimes known as intrasentential switching) and in that it does not fulfill the
pragmatic or discourse-oriented functions described by sociolinguists. (See Code-mixing in
sociolinguistics, above.) The practice of code-mixing, which draws from competence in two
languages at the same time suggests that these competences are not stored or processed
separately. Code-mixing among bilinguals is therefore studied in order to explore the mental
structures underlying language abilities.
A mixed language or a fused lect is a relatively stable mixture of two or more languages.
What some linguists have described as "code switching as unmarked choice" or "frequent code
switching" has more recently been described as "language mixing", or in the case of the most
strictly grammaticalized forms as "fused lects". In areas where code-switching among two or
more languages is very common, it may become normal for words from both languages to be
used together in everyday speech. Unlike code-switching, where a switch tends to occur at
semantically or sociolinguistically meaningful junctures, this code-mixing has no specific
meaning in the local context. A fused lect is identical to a mixed language in terms of semantics
and pragmatics, but fused lects allow less variation since they are fully grammaticalized. In other
words, there are grammatical structures of the fused lect that determine which source-language
elements may occur.
A mixed language is different from a creole language. Creoles are thought to develop from
pidgins as they become nativized. Mixed languages develop from situations of code-switching.
AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLINGUISTICS 2015
There are many names for specific mixed languages or fused lects. These names are often used
facetiously or carry a pejorative sense. Named varieties include the following, among others: