http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 21 Oct 2011 IP address: 130.88.56.124 Mixed languages: a functional–communicative approach YARON MATRAS University of Manchester It has been suggested that the structural composition of mixed languages and the linguistic processes through which they emerge are to some extent predictable, and that they therefore constitute a language ‘‘type’’ (e.g. Bakker and Mous, 1994b; Bakker and Muysken, 1995). This view is challenged here. Instead, it is argued that the compartmentalisation of structures observed in mixed languages (i.e. the fact that certain structural categories are derived from one ‘‘parent’’ language, others from another) is the result of the cumulative effect of different contact mechanisms. These mechanisms are defined in terms of the cognitive and communicative motivations that lead speakers to model certain functions of language on an alternative linguistic system; each mechanism will typically affect particular functional categories. Four relevant processes are identified: lexical re-orientation, selective replication, convergence, and categorial fusion. Different combinations of processes will render different outcomes, hence the diversity of mixed languages as regards their structure, function, and development. Introduction Recent collections by Bakker and Mous (1994a) and by Thomason (1997a) highlight growing interest in what have been termed ‘‘mixed languages’’ or ‘‘bilin- gual mixtures’’. Examples of mixed languages that have received considerable attention in recent litera- ture are Michif, the Cree–French mixture spoken by the Me ´tis, descendants of buffalo hunters in the Canadian Plains and North Dakota; Ma’a, a Bantu language in Tanzania that includes material from Cushitic languages; Copper Island Aleut, an Aleut– Russian admixture spoken by a mixed population off the coast of Kamchatka; Media Lengua, a Quechua– Spanish mixture of Ecuador; Angloromani and other so-called Para-Romani languages, which are Romani-derived vocabularies used by ethnic Gypsies within non-standard varieties of various European languages; and others. Most languages are to some extent at least ‘‘mixed’’, in the sense that they have components that can be traced back to more than one source language as a result of a situation of contact in the language’s earlier history. So when languages are referred to in the literature explicitly as ‘‘mixed’’ (as for example in Bakker and Mous, 1994b; or Bakker and Muysken, 1995), it is presumably in order to highlight that they go beyond the commonly attested patterns of mixture. Mixed languages are thus understood impli- citly at least to breach conventional constraints on contact-induced language change. The point of in- terest for a theory of grammar is therefore in defining and explaining qualitative and quantitative differ- ences between the effects of contact in mixed lan- guages, as opposed to more conventional linguistic systems. It appears however that few structural properties are shared by a majority of the languages classified as mixed in the literature. The split between lexicon and grammar, each derived from a different source lan- guage, is often highlighted as prototypical or even as intrinsically constitutive of mixed languages (see e.g. Bakker, 1994 and elsewhere), but such splits are rarely if ever consistent. The difficulty in finding clear structural criteria for mixed languages suggests that the contact phenomena that give rise to them are not uniform but varied. The question I wish to pursue here is whether there is any functional significance to the structural compartmentalisation in a given mixed system, one that can be accounted for in terms of the motivations to create or maintain such a mixture. My suggestion is that mixed languages differ from con- ventional cases of contact in the density of different contact phenomena and their cumulative effect on the overall structure of the system. The present paper is structured as follows: first I survey current definitions of mixed languages and models explaining their emergence; next I identify four function-based mechanisms of contact. I then proceed to examine the discourse relevance of mixed utterances in non-self-contained mixed systems, I present the Functional Turnover hypothesis that ex- Address for correspondence Department of Linguistics, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, UK E-mail: [email protected]Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 3 (2), 2000, 79 – 99 # 2000 Cambridge University Press 79
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It has been suggested that the structural composition of mixed languages and the linguistic processes through which they
emerge are to some extent predictable, and that they therefore constitute a language ``type'' (e.g. Bakker and Mous,
1994b; Bakker and Muysken, 1995). This view is challenged here. Instead, it is argued that the compartmentalisation of
structures observed in mixed languages (i.e. the fact that certain structural categories are derived from one ``parent''
language, others from another) is the result of the cumulative effect of different contact mechanisms. These mechanisms
are de®ned in terms of the cognitive and communicative motivations that lead speakers to model certain functions of
language on an alternative linguistic system; each mechanism will typically affect particular functional categories. Four
relevant processes are identi®ed: lexical re-orientation, selective replication, convergence, and categorial fusion. Different
combinations of processes will render different outcomes, hence the diversity of mixed languages as regards their
structure, function, and development.
Introduction
Recent collections by Bakker and Mous (1994a) andby Thomason (1997a) highlight growing interest inwhat have been termed ``mixed languages'' or ``bilin-gual mixtures''. Examples of mixed languages thathave received considerable attention in recent litera-ture are Michif, the Cree±French mixture spoken bythe MeÂtis, descendants of buffalo hunters in theCanadian Plains and North Dakota; Ma'a, a Bantulanguage in Tanzania that includes material fromCushitic languages; Copper Island Aleut, an Aleut±Russian admixture spoken by a mixed population offthe coast of Kamchatka; Media Lengua, a Quechua±Spanish mixture of Ecuador; Angloromani and otherso-called Para-Romani languages, which areRomani-derived vocabularies used by ethnic Gypsieswithin non-standard varieties of various Europeanlanguages; and others.
Most languages are to some extent at least``mixed'', in the sense that they have components thatcan be traced back to more than one source languageas a result of a situation of contact in the language'searlier history. So when languages are referred to inthe literature explicitly as ``mixed'' (as for example inBakker and Mous, 1994b; or Bakker and Muysken,1995), it is presumably in order to highlight that theygo beyond the commonly attested patterns ofmixture. Mixed languages are thus understood impli-citly at least to breach conventional constraints oncontact-induced language change. The point of in-
terest for a theory of grammar is therefore in de®ningand explaining qualitative and quantitative differ-ences between the effects of contact in mixed lan-guages, as opposed to more conventional linguisticsystems.
It appears however that few structural propertiesare shared by a majority of the languages classi®ed asmixed in the literature. The split between lexicon andgrammar, each derived from a different source lan-guage, is often highlighted as prototypical or even asintrinsically constitutive of mixed languages (see e.g.Bakker, 1994 and elsewhere), but such splits arerarely if ever consistent. The dif®culty in ®nding clearstructural criteria for mixed languages suggests thatthe contact phenomena that give rise to them are notuniform but varied. The question I wish to pursuehere is whether there is any functional signi®cance tothe structural compartmentalisation in a given mixedsystem, one that can be accounted for in terms of themotivations to create or maintain such a mixture. Mysuggestion is that mixed languages differ from con-ventional cases of contact in the density of differentcontact phenomena and their cumulative effect on theoverall structure of the system.
The present paper is structured as follows: ®rst Isurvey current de®nitions of mixed languages andmodels explaining their emergence; next I identifyfour function-based mechanisms of contact. I thenproceed to examine the discourse relevance of mixedutterances in non-self-contained mixed systems, Ipresent the Functional Turnover hypothesis that ex-
Address for correspondence
Department of Linguistics, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, UK
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plains selective copying of grammatical features froman ancestral language, and ®nally I discuss the cumu-lative effect of different contact mechanisms in so-called plain or self-contained mixed systems. In con-clusion I argue that mixed languages are anythingbut a coherent or uniform language type, but thatthey offer opportunities to identify a complexity ofprocesses of contact-induced change, and so cande®nitely help revise our overall notion of structural``borrowing''.
Typologies of mixed languages
De®nitions
Genetic af®liation and historical reconstruction playa crucial role in attempts to de®ne mixed languages.Thomason and Kaufman (1988) consider a languageas mixed if it does not offer opportunities for histor-ical reconstruction of its parent language (see alsoBakker and Mous, 1994b; Bakker and Muysken,1995; Thomason, 1995, 1997b, e). Bakker (1994, 27)puts this in more positive terms, de®ning mixedlanguages as idioms that evoke identi®cation on thepart of speakers of two separate source languages.Contrasting with pidgins and creoles, mixed lan-guages are assumed to be products of full bilingu-alism (cf. Thomason, 1997b, e). This is not entirelyunproblematic, however, if one takes into accountthe role of language attrition and language loss inproducing mixed systems (see e.g. Sasse, 1992, onKrekonika, a Greek±Albanian mixture; and Ma'a;Boretzky and Igla, 1994, on Para-Romani). Para-doxically, what distinguishes mixed languages frompidgins and creoles is the fact that they show con-tinuity of signi®cant portions of the grammar fromthe grammaticiser parent language (or from bothparent languages), yet it is precisely the interruptedtransmission or non-continuity of a signi®cantportion of structural material that identi®es mixedlanguages as opposed to cases of ``normal'' languagedevelopment.
Mixed languages have been argued to be theoutcome of mixed marriages giving rise to newethno-cultural identities (Bakker, 1994, 1996, 1997;for case studies see also Hancock, 1970, 1992;Golovko, 1994; de Gruiter, 1994; Thomason, 1997c).Indeed some approaches view the emergence of anew ethnic group as the chief setting for the develop-ment of a mixed language (see especially Bakker,1997, as well as Thomason and Kaufman, 1988, andThomason, 1995, 1997b, e). There are, however,cases of acculturation leading to the emergence ofmixed languages in situations where no populationmixture is attested (cf. Muysken's (1997), account of
Media Lengua). In fact, as pointed out by Smith(1995; cf. also Thomason, 1995), the cultural motiva-tion behind the emergence of mixed varieties can justas well be retention, re-gaining, or re-de®nition ofethnic identity, defying pressure to change or assim-ilate. This is the case with a series of languagestreated as mixed in the literature, such as Para-Romani (Boretzky and Igla, 1994), Shelta (also calledGammon, the secret language of Irish Travellers, cf.Grant, 1994), or Ma'a (Mous, 1994; cf. also Sasse,1992). As regards the overall social context of emer-gence, an expression of cultural de®ance might there-fore seem a more accurate indicator.
Smith (1995) has suggested a distinction between``plain'' mixed languages, which serve as everydaycommunity languages, and ``symbiotic'' varieties,which are specialised varieties of a non-mixed lan-guage used in the same community, typically secretlanguages. Like pidgins, secret languages are notnative languages and have a restricted functionalscope. Like creoles, so-called ``plain'' mixed lan-guages are full-¯edged native community languagesthat re¯ect a newly emerged ethnic identity (cf.Thomason, 1997e). One must, however, take intoaccount that the great majority of mixed languagesattested so far are spoken in communities alongsideat least one of their parent or source languages, andwe only rarely ®nd them in isolation. This may addto their controversial status as mixed registers (cf.e.g. Mous, 1994 on Ma'a) rather than full-¯edgedlanguages. As far as the ``languageness'' (Thomason,1997b) is concerned, then, varieties discussed in theliterature as ``mixed'' are obviously spread along arather wide continuum.
Models of emergence
Explanatory models of mixed languages can begrouped along three main points of focus: (1) Lan-guage maintenance and language shift, (2) uniqueand pre-determined processes (``intertwining''), and(3) conventionalisation of language mixing patterns.The ®rst approach highlights the substitution of majorcomponents of a given language ± for example entiremorphological paradigms or typological features ±through material (alternative structures) from a dif-ferent source language. According to Thomason andKaufman (1988) mixed languages arise in situationswhere language shift is partly resisted, and so parts ofthe original language are retained while signi®cantportions are replaced by the pressure-exerting lan-guage. Sasse (1992) assumes re-lexi®cation of thetarget language after a shift has taken place, withyounger speakers having only partial access to thevocabulary of their ancestral language. Such cases
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are considered by Sasse not as re-vitalisation (asproposed for Para-Romani by Boretzky and Igla,1994; see also Boretzky, 1998), but as processes oflanguage renewal through which new languagesemerge. A variation is offered by Muysken (1981,1997) under the heading of ``relexi®cation'': MediaLengua lexical entries show Spanish phonologicalforms, but are argued to continue to conform func-tionally to the original Quechua entry.
A radically different approach is taken by Bakker(1997, 192±213) with his model of language inter-twining (see also Bakker and Muysken, 1995, andBakker and Mous, 1994b). Bakker questions thesubstitution of either lexical or grammatical compo-nents of a language. Instead he attributes the emer-gence of mixed varieties to one single and pre-determined process involving mixed populations,1 bywhich the ``grammar'' (sometimes speci®ed as mor-phosyntax, or just as bound morphemes) of onelanguage, typically that spoken by native women,combines with the ``lexicon'' of another, usually acolonial language spoken by men. Deviations fromthe lexicon/grammar split are explained by Bakker(1997) as the result of language-speci®c typologicalconstraints. Bakker insists on the equal status of thetwo participating source languages,2 but stressesnevertheless that women provide the grammaticalinput due to their in¯uence on children as well astheir native status. Bakker and Muysken (1995, 50)even argue that the grammar of a mixed language isderived from the language which its ®rst generationof speakers know best. Thus, even the intertwiningmodel recognises a functional hierarchy of some sortamong the contributing languages.
Overlapping with both notions ± of substitutionand of a merger of components ± is the view thatattributes mixed languages to deliberate or consciouscreations. This is more easily arguable in cases ofregisters that still function as secret languages anddisplay various manipulative constructions such ascamou¯aging af®xes or phoneme substitution (cf. forinstance Grant, 1994 on Shelta, and see Bakker,1998), though a conscious and deliberate creation isoften assumed for other mixed languages as well. ForCopper Island Aleut, Golovko (1994, 117) hypothe-sises that language mixture began as a game amongadult Aleuts learning Russian, was then used as asecret code, and later conventionalised. A similaridea is expressed by Thomason (1995, 29) with regardto the general phenomenon of abruptly emerging
mixed languages, and Bakker (1997, 213) similarlyadmits that intertwined languages are created ``moreor less consciously''. Mous (1994) assumes deliberatecreation of Ma'a as a register of Mbugu by speakersaiming to set themselves apart from Bantu speakers.
The third type of approach to the emergence ofmixed languages views them as cases of a conventio-nalisation of codeswitching patterns. This view hasmost recently found a supporter in Auer (1998a, b),who assumes a gradual loss of the conversationalfunction of language alternation as a means ofexpressing contrast.3 Drawing on observations ofnon-meaningful or unmarked language alternation ±classi®ed as ``monolectal codeswitching'' by Meeuwisand Blommaert (1998) ± Auer de®nes an intermediatestage on a continuum (Language Mixing). For the®nal stage (Fused Lects), Auer is inspired mainly bythe attestation of an emergence of mixed styles asmarkers of group identity (cf. de Rooij, 1996;Maschler, 1997, 1998; Oesch Serra, 1998).4 Anothersupporter of the view that mixed languages representfossilised patterns of mixing is Myers-Scotton (1992,1998), who traces the emergence of languages likeMa'a (Cushitic ``lexicon'', Bantu ``grammar'') to achange in the social roles and status of the partici-pating languages, resulting in a ``¯ipping'' of matrixand embedded language; this is referred to as the``Matrix Language Turnover'' model. Recent workwithin Myers-Scotton's ``Matrix Language Frame''model, notably by Bolonyai (1998) and by Jake(1998), postulates the emergence of a ``compositematrix language'' in more conventional situations oflanguage contact (language acquisition and shift).Unlike mixed languages, however, the compositematrix language consists here of surface materialfrom just one language, combined only with abstractmapping rules from another. The striking feature ofmixed languages is that they neither follow this latterpattern, nor always behave consistently as regardsthe separation, by source language, of content andsystem morphemes.
While it is evident that mixed languages are the
1 Cf. Bakker and Muysken (1995, 50): ``The way in which inter-
twined languages are formed appears to be highly uniform''.2 Cf. Bakker (1997, 210): ``Neither component is more important
than the other; they both have the same weight''.
3 Such gradual transition from code switching to mixed languages
is disputed by Muysken (1997) and by Bakker (1997), whose
comparisons of mixed languages with code mixing involving the
same source languages fail to show a continuum of mixing
ranging from ``average'' to extreme. On similar grounds, Bakker
and Mous (1994b, 5) argue against a continuum of lexical
borrowing that leads to mixed languages. Borrowing is said to
affect roughly 45% of lexical material, most of it peripheral,
while in mixed languages up to 90% is affected, including the
basic lexicon (see also Muysken, 1997, 378).4 It is not insigni®cant however that these mixed styles typically
involve a conventionalisation of the use of borrowed discourse
markers, an issue to which I shall return when discussing the
notion of ``fusion'' below (see also Matras 1998).
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product of social motivations to maintain a uniquelinguistic system in a community, no concentratedattempt has so far been made to relate the purposebehind the creation of a mixed variety to the actualcompartmentalisation of structures that it displays.My concern here is to investigate the relationbetween social motivation and communicative needs,and the functional properties of linguistic categoriesthat are affected by language admixture.
Structures as mental processing instructions
In attributing processing functions to linguistic ele-ments, I am partly inspired by the work of theBuÈhlerians in the tradition of Functional Pragmatics(see Ehlich, 1986; BruÈnner and Graefen, 1994; BuÈhrigand Matras, 1999; Redder and Rehbein, 1999).Already BuÈhler's (1934) view of language recognisesa compartmentalisation of the linguistic system, as-signing mental activities that are triggered by lin-guistic signals to a ``symbolic ®eld'' where meaning isencoded, and a ``deictic ®eld'' that encodes gesturesof reference to components of the situation or byanalogy to a mental map based on verbalised repre-sentations. BuÈhler's general approach has been ex-tended in Functional Pragmatics to include suchdomains as the operative, expeditive, relational, andexpressive ®elds, activation of which allows, respec-tively, the processing of elements of speech (in thecase of in¯ection and conjunctions), to direct thelistener's attention (interjections and particles), toconvey internal categorisations performed on otherlinguistic elements (adpositions and local relations),or to portray real-world occurrences (onomatopoeicrepresentation). While I will not follow this model indetail, I shall nevertheless assume that linguisticsystems display such natural compartmentalisationof functions: structural categories are intrinsicallyresponsible for triggering linguistic±mental proceduresor processing instructions, i.e. they represent distinctcognitive±mental activities in which speaker andhearer engage during linguistic interaction. Compart-mentalisation within a mixed language might consti-tute, then, a way of designating separate processingfunctions to each of the source languages.
A consistent grammar/lexicon split, for example,might be interpreted as a transposition of the sym-bolic ®eld of language, where meaning and referenceto real-world experience is conveyed, into the domainof an intruding language (in the case of colonialsettings for mixed languages such as Michif or MediaLengua). Such partial transposition is well attested inconventional cases of languages in contact ± considerfor instance the wholesale import of names for main-stream institutions into minority or immigrant lan-
guages, the import of technical vocabulary, and soon. What this means for active bilinguals is not onlythat gaps in the native language are ®lled, which ishow structure-based analyses regard the phenom-enon of ``cultural loans'' (cf. Myers-Scotton, 1992),but that certain classes of meaning are negotiatedoutside the native language system, or rather that acompartmentalisation of meaning is achieved, withcertain domains merging with representations fromthe contact language. The wholesale adoption oflexical entries, as assumed for the ``ideal'' mixedlanguage, is a tendency to shift conceptual represen-tation per se into the sphere of the contact language.Such a move will be motivated not by a sense of``equal contribution'' from each language (cf. Bakker1997), but rather by an unbalanced distribution offunctions, speakers taking the ``point of view'' thatnegotiation of meaning in L2 is more attractive oradvantageous than that in L1. There are two mainreasons why such a grammar/lexicon split might arisein a speech community. The ®rst is strategic, andpertains to the deliberate attempt to concealmeaning. The second is connected to a more perma-nent cultural adaptation, and has to do with adoptingthe L2-culture's realm of experience and representa-tion of collective knowledge.
Contact mechanisms in functional perspective
In the following sections I wish to explore theconnection between the motivation to mix and con-ventionalise patterns of mixing, the structural com-partmentalisations that appear in some mixedlanguages, and the natural compartmentalisation oflinguistic functions. I distinguish four contact me-chanisms that appear to be involved, separately or incombination, in the creation of mixed languages:lexical re-orientation, selective replication, conver-gence, and categorial fusion.
Lexical re-orientation is the conscious shiftingof the linguistic ®eld that is responsible for encodingmeaning or conceptual representations away fromthe language in which linguistic interaction is nor-mally managed, organised, and processed: speakersadopt in a sense one linguistic system to expresslexical meaning (or symbols, in the BuÈhlerian sense ofthe term) and another to organise the relationsamong lexical symbols, as well as within sentences,utterances, and interaction. The result is a split, bysource language, between lexicon and grammar.Re-orientation usually assumes that an underlyingrepresentation of similar value already exists inL1 (the underlying or receiving language). Thus re-orientation does not refer to the import of so-calledcultural loans (new words for new objects or con-
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cepts), but rather to the substitution of existing labelsor symbols (cf. also Muysken, 1997, on re-lexi®ca-tion). In this, lexical re-orientation differs fromprototypical cases of lexical borrowing. A furthermajor difference is that, where lexical borrowingtargets vocabulary for which counterpart expressionsalready do exist in a language, it does so onlyselectively and partially. Lexical re-orientation, onthe other hand, is wholesale. The most obviousexample of lexical re-orientation are secret languages.Here, lexical material is inserted into mixed utter-ances in order to conceal meaning. Consider the caseof Lekoudesch, the secret language of Jewish cattle-traders in southwest Germany (and other German-speaking regions):
(1) D'r guj veroumelt lou.``The man doesn't understand.''
The italicised items indicate lexical elements that arerecruited from a ®xed inventory of secret lexicalmaterial, mainly of Ashkenazic Hebrew origin. Thegrammatical framework is dialectal German. Fromthe purpose of such mixed utterances ± to concealmeaning from outsiders ± it is rather obvious whichelements are natural candidates for lexical re-orienta-tion: those, namely, that encode meaning ± lexicalroots of nouns, verbs, sentence adverbs and adjec-tives, numerals (especially in secret trade languages),as well as negation markers and existential verbs. Thelatter are ``grammatical'' in a sense; but unlike othergrammatical devices ± passive constructions, tensemarkers, complementisers, and others ± existentialexpressions and negation markers can form the back-bone of propositions, signi®ying all the differencebetween being and not being, or a state of affairs andits absence. The notion of lexical re-orientation isintended to capture the inherent link between themotivation to mix ± the marking out of propositionalmeaning on a consistent and wholesale basis, and thestructures that are targeted ± those elements, namely,that convey meaning. I return to discussing lexicalre-orientation in more detail below.
Selective replication is a process which accountsfor the continuous presence of structures from anearlier community language. In discussing inter-rupted language transmission across generations,Thomason and Kaufman (1988, 101) emphasise therelevance of hearing a structure in context to itsacquisition by the younger generation. Selective repli-cation assumes a motivation to reproduce salientelements of a language, without relying on gramma-tical operations ± i.e. on language-internal processinginstructions ± in this language. The process differsfrom lexical re-orientation in that it does not, eitherspeci®cally or exclusively, target conceptual represen-
tations (meaning), but aims rather at reproducingcontextually relevant actions of speech as speakerstry and re-activate impressions of an ancestral lan-guage. In addition to lexical vocabulary, deicticelements and interjections that are high on the scaleof situative saliency are likely candidates for replica-tion. Frozen or fossilised operative items (e.g. in¯ec-tion) may accompany reproduced material but willusually remain non-productive. The main motivationfor selective replication involves a turnover of thefunctions assigned to a linguistic system ± from thatof an everyday community language, to a specialisedvariety or register. The idea is that an older genera-tion of speakers still uses the ancestral language as anall-purpose language, but also as an in-group secretlanguage. The younger generation shifts to a differentlanguage for all-purpose communication, but has aninterest in maintaining a secret in-group language. Itreduces the ancestral language to a secret language,with far-reaching structural consequences. A fullelaboration of the functional turnover hypothesis isgiven below.
Convergence: it is often impossible to assigncertain portions of the ``grammar'' component ofmixed languages to either one or the other contri-buting language, as they appear to be a hybridproduct of the two. We might ®nd material from onelanguage taking over syntactic and semantic featuresof partly corresponding elements in another. Suchprocesses are not con®ned to mixed languages, butcan be observed in a variety of language contactsituations where speakers synchronise operationsthat are responsible for the organisation of an utter-ance in two or more languages, while at the sametime maintaining the material±structural autonomyof the linguistic systems.
I de®ne convergence as the adaptation of aninternal element in Language A to match the scopeand distribution of an element in Language B that isperceived as its functional counterpart. Convergencethus assigns a particular structure or item in Lan-guage A the function of trigger for the same gram-matical operation that is activated by a semantic orstructural counterpart in Language B. The distinc-tion between languages A and B is, however, forde®nition purposes only; the process is often mutual,triggering changes in both languages. Such harmoni-sation of grammatical operations may typicallyaffect the layout of propositional content at thesentence level (i.e. word order and patterns of clausecombining); an exemplary case is the loss of thein®nitive in the Balkan languages and the use of®nite complements, same-subject modal construc-tions, and purpose clauses. Convergence may alsoaffect lexical semantics, as well as in¯ectional mor-
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phology. Thus, in Turoyo, a NeoAramaic (north-west Semitic) language of southeastern Anatolia, theKurmanji (northwest Iranian) ergative constructionis imitated using inherited morphological material.A distinction is introduced between past-tense in-transitives, where subject concord is marked throughthe set of af®xes also employed for the presenttenses of all verbs (azzi-no ``I went''; Kurmanji ezcËuÃ-m), and transitives, where the subject concordmarkers derive from indirect object markers (mãÅd-li``I took''; Kurmanji min girt).
Convergence may be seen as a compromisebetween merging patterns and retention of structuralautonomy. In this regard it may be indicative of thesocial positions and functions associated with theparticipating languages in a multilingual community.In eastern Anatolia, convergence also appears in thelayout for present-tense verbs (cf. Chyet, 1995, 240):in the indicative, a pre®x expressing progressivityprecedes the verb stem, while person af®xes follow(Turoyo ko-¨oz-eno, Kurmanji di-bãÃn-im, WesternArmenian g7-desn-em; ``I see''). The pattern evenappears in a larger area, which includes Persian (mãÅ-bãÅn-ñm) and Arabic (although here person markingalso precedes the verb stem: b-a-sÏuÅf-ù). In all theselanguages, the subjunctive is expressed by a zero-pre®x, or in some languages (namely Kurmanji, andother Kurdish varieties, and Persian) through varia-tion between a zero-pre®x and a subjunctive pre®x(Turoyo ¨oz-eno, Kurmanji bi-/bãÃn-im, Persian be-/bãÅnñm, Western Armenian desn-em, Arabic a-sÏuÅf-ù).
Categorial fusion: contrary to convergence,where mapping rules merge but the materialautonomy of the systems is retained, fusion impliesthat speakers do not differentiate systems while car-rying out certain linguistic processing operations, butinstead draw on the resources of just one singlesystem for a particular class of functions. Fusion isthus the wholesale non-separation of languages inboth forms and functions of a given category or classof expressions. The typical cases of fusion are dis-course-regulating elements ± discourse particles, con-junctions, interjections, and hesitation markers ± aswell as phasal adverbs and focus particles. Cases oflanguages in contact that have replaced this class ofitems on a wholesale basis are widely attested. InMatras (1998) I discussed the predictability of theprocess of fusion. In terms of semantics, there isdiachronic evidence that fusion tends to follow thehierarchy ``contrast, change, restriction > addition,continuation, elaboration''. In structural terms, ele-ments that are lexically less analysable and moregesture-like, such as hesitation markers, are morelikely to undergo fusion at a relatively early stage ofcontact than items that are lexical, or overlap with
cognate lexical or deictic items, e.g. discoursemarkers such as ``you know'' or ``then''.
How can one use such data to construct anexplanatory model of fusion? From a discourse-inter-actional viewpoint, ``contrast'' can be interpreted as alinguistic±mental gesture that aims at an intensi®edcapturing of the listener's attention, indeed at directintervention with hearer-sided processing of proposi-tional content amid potential interactional dishar-mony (e.g. disbelief, as a result of the breaking ofcausal chains; cf. Rudolph, 1996). The high rankingof contrast and gesture-like expressions on thecontact-susceptibility hierarchy suggests a cognitivemotivation for fusion: it is triggered by cognitivepressure to reduce the mental processing load and soeliminate the choice between two competing systemswhile carrying out highly automaticised, gesture-likeoperations that may result in high conversationaltension (monitoring-and-directing operations). Next-ranking positions on the fusion-susceptibility hier-archy show non-factuality and epistemic quali®cationof propositions, where the speaker's authority ispotentially at stake and the task of ``selling'' anassertion to the listener entails a high ``risk factor''.
This interpretation of fusion as a cognitive processis supported by evidence from spontaneous speechproduction errors by bilinguals, which frequentlytarget similar grammatical elements (see Matras,1998, forthcoming). Further evidence comes from myown observations on early child bilingualism. In asituation where each parent consistently speaks theirown language, and the parents live apart, languageseparation at the age of 1:11±2:7 is consistent.Mixing only takes place (a) where new vocabularyhas been acquired in a speci®c context, and thematching expression in the other language is not yetknown; or (b) in the few hours following a change insetting from the care of one parent to that of theother, where function words of the monitoring-and-directing class (interjections, presentatives, phasaladverbs, focus particles) from the foregoing situationare carried forward into the language of the ``new''setting. (A detailed discussion of the data is beyondthe scope of this paper.)
The orientation target for fusion is the pragmati-cally dominant language: the language which, in agiven moment of discourse interaction, is grantedmaximum mental effort by speakers. This may be thespeaker's ®rst language, or one that is dominant for aparticular domain of linguistic interaction, or onethat exerts pressure due to its overall role as themajority language that is culturally prestigious oreconomically powerful (for a more detailed discus-sion of the notion of a pragmatically dominantlanguage, and evidence from speech production, see
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Matras, 1998, forthcoming). Fusion differs fromlexical re-orientation and selective replication in thatit is not a deliberate or conscious process, and that ittargets items that are high on the scale of automati-cised processing functions, rather than on the scale ofreferential or situative saliency.5 Crucial to the rele-vance of fusion to the present discussion is the factthat, given what I would call ``sociolinguistic admissi-bility'' ± no constraints on intelligibility and no lossof prestige ± fusion as an occasional process thatoccurs with individual speakers in some situations,may give rise to long-term language change, by whichthe entire system of monitoring-and-directing opera-tions, and possibly other functional categories inlanguage too, are replaced on a wholesale basis.Again I refer to earlier work for a more elaboratediscussion (Matras, 1998, forthcoming; and see alsoSalmons, 1990).
Lexical re-orientation in non-self-contained mixtures
Motivations
I return to Smith's (1995) sub-categorisation ofmixed languages, and in particular to his use of theterm ``symbiotic'' to designate those mixed varietiesthat are spoken alongside a related non-mixed lan-guage. Structural approaches tend to view symbioticvarieties as genuine mixed languages, or at least asrepresenting underlying mixed languages (for some-what con¯icting views on Para-Romani varieties cf.Bakker and Van der Voort, 1991; Bakker, 1994; andBakker, 1998; and see discussion below). A greatproportion of so-called symbiotic mixed languages infact involve rules and conventions that are not usedfor the actual production of ¯uent conversation, butmerely for the production of single mixed utterances.I therefore prefer to call them ``non-self-containedmixtures''.
A possible motivation for the creation of non-self-contained mixtures may be, in the case of secretlanguages at least, to by-pass the norms of main-stream communicative interaction in a communitywhile avoiding the sanctions normally associatedwith such a breach of social conventions. Mixing isintended to make the offence against the rules ofcommunicative interaction as unapparent as pos-sible.6 The targeting of content words here is due tothe trivial yet crucial fact that content words convey
meaning. It is meaning that reveals thoughts andintentions, and so meaning that is sanctionable, andis therefore sought to be concealed. Once established,the in-group habit of disguising meaning might ofcourse also function as a token in its own right,stressing or even serving to ascertain membership inthe group. Some examples follow below.
The discourse position of mixed utterances
Lekoudesch was the secret language used until theearly 1930s by Jewish cattle-traders in southwestGermany. It is closely related to other varieties withcognate designations ± derived form the euphemisticlosÏn-koudesÏ (Ashkenazic Hebrew for ``sacral lan-guage'', and the term used to refer to writtenHebrew) ± which are attested in Germany and theNetherlands (cf. Meisinger, 1902; Moormann, 1920,1922; Matras, 1991; Klepsch, 1996). Lekoudeschsurvived until the late 1980s among non-Jewishfarmers in a number of communities that had had asigni®cant pre-war Jewish population of cattletraders.7 The examples presented here are taken frominterviews with non-Jewish informants in theSwabian villages Rexingen and Buttenhausen, as wellas with Jewish cattle traders originating from thesame area who emigrated to Palestine in 1938.
Lekoudesch is listed by Smith (1995, 367) as asymbiotic mixed language, and indeed a formal in-spection of isolated sentences renders the impressionof a mixed system:
(2) Lou dibra, d'r guj schaÈfft!``Don't speak, the man is (there)!'' [=a stranger islistening]
(3) Alle gimmel doff.``All three (are) good.'' [=about cattle]
(4) Die goja isch haggel doff, dia kennt-m'r lekaÈcha.``The woman is very pretty, one could take her.''
If we were to follow the conventions that arecommon in descriptive accounts of mixed languages(cf. Bakker and Mous, 1994a; Thomason, 1997a), wewould derive from (1)±(4) the following characterisa-tion of features by source language for Lekoudesch:
(5) Structural compartmentalisation by source lan-guage in Lekoudesch:Ashkenazic Hebrew: nouns, verbs, adjectives,adverbs, numerals, negation markers, copulaschaÈff- (< Hebrew ``to sit'').
5 That fusion may act as a separate process is supported by
Muysken's (1997, 402) observation that Spanish-derived co-
ordinating conjunctions in Media Lengua are exceptions to his
re-lexi®cation hypothesis, as they are not modelled in any way on
the underlying Quechua system of semantic±functional categories.6 The use of speci®c structures to exclude outsiders from the
interaction has therefore been termed ``bystander deixis'' by
Rijkhoff (1998).7 For surveys of the traces left by Jewish traders' jargon in
German dialects see Meisinger (1901), Althaus (1963), Weinberg
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German (Swabian/Franconian): articles and de-terminers, verb in¯ection, copula, pronouns,word order.
In addition, the lack of a copula in (2) could beinterpreted (again, if we were to adopt a strictlydescriptive viewpoint) as either simpli®cation of theGerman sentence model, or perhaps as a replicationof the Hebrew nominal clause structure, which lacksa present-tense copula. Further structural featuresencountered in Lekoudesch are listed in (6):
(6) a. Creation of new lexical items by adding aGerman agentive suf®x to Hebrew roots: duh-gemmer ``®sherman''
b. Creation of new lexical items based onGerman rules for lexical composition, andpartly as loan translations from Germansecret languages (Rotwelsch and Jenisch vari-eties): schochamajim ``coffee'' (< ``blackwater'), seifelbajis ``toilet'' (< ``shit-house''),kassirrosch ``pig-head''
c. Generalisation of lou as an all-purposenegator
d. Integration of a number of verbs of Romanceorigin: disemma ``whisper'', dormena ``sleep''
Lekoudesch thus constitutes not an arbitrary inser-tion of lexical items into a German framework butrather a rule-governed, consistent, and conventiona-lised system. Yet its composition already revealsmuch about the purpose for its creation: it is essen-tially a lexical reservoir used to conceal meaning bymanipulating key propositional items in key utter-ances. Basic vocabulary from Hebrew sources servesas the basis for this lexical reservoir. It is enrichedthrough productive lexical composition as well asthrough borrowings from other neighbouring secretlanguages such as Jenisch ± as seen with Romance-derived items (cf. discussion in Wexler, 1988, 139ff.).
The function of Lekoudesch is nicely illustrated bythe following two examples from Jewish speakers. Inthe ®rst, (7), a woman characterises the use ofHebrew-derived items ± referred to here signi®cantly®rst as ``the Hebrew language'', then as ``the counting[=trade] language'' ± as strictly a secret trade jargonthat was understood by members of the communitybut not actively used outside the domain of cattletrade:8
(7) Die hebraÈische Sprache, die/ die/ die Zahlasprachees is nur gewesa wenn m'r ainem zwaita net wissalassa wollt wie hoch der Preis isch, aber sonscht
kaine/ oder se hawwe saga kenne ``was schuckt dieKuh?'', ``wieviel kostet die Kuh?'' Des/ des kannich mich erinnern.``The Hebrew language, the/ the/ the trade lan-guage it was only when you didn't want the otherperson to know what the price is, but otherwisenone/ or they could say `how much is the cowworth?' That/ that I can remember.''
In example (8), the use of Lekoudesch to concealmeaning (and its ironic outcome, as the bystanderturns out to have been familiar with the secret code)is reconstructed in an anecdote:
(8) Es is zu ihm gekommen eine alte Kundin, [. . .]Und . . . als die Frau gekauft hat, sagt er zumainer Groûmutter: ``HaÊt die Goja auch ebbesmeschullemt am Bajiss?'' [. . .] NaÊ hat die aber dasverschtaaÄnda, naÊ haÊt sie zu mainer Groûmuttergesagt: ``Kenn, kenn, aber nur a Mattle'' [. . .] Undie Christin hat das gekannt, von fruÈher, von deViehhaÈndler her.``An old customer came to him [. . .] And . . . asthe woman was buying something he says to mygrandmother: `Has the woman paid anything[before] in the house [=shop]?' [. . .] But she under-stood, so she said to my grandmother: `Yes, yes,but only a little' [. . .] And this Christian womanknew it, from earlier times, from the cattletraders.''
A further example of a non-self-contained mixedvariety comes from roughly the same region. Jenischis used by populations of peripatetics or commercialnomads (showpeople, traders, craftsmen) in south-west Germany to designate a variety of secret lexi-cons. They typically draw on a pool of lexical itemsthat contains elements of older Rotwelsch (camou-¯aged derivations of German lexical roots) and morerecent loans mostly from Romance, AshkenazicHebrew, and Romani. My examples derive fromUnterdeufstetten, an itinerant base-community in theFranconian district of SchwaÈbisch Hall.9 It is one ofseveral communities in the immediate vicinity inwhich itinerants began to settle in the second half ofthe 18th century (for a historical and ethnographicdescription, see DuÈrr, 1961). The term Jenisch, whichspeakers use to refer to their secret language, alsoappears as an adjective denoting culural particulari-ties, as in a ``Rudel'' isch a jenischer WaÊche `` `Rudel'means a Jenisch cart'', as well as an ethnonym:Manische send Zigeuner, mir send Jenische ``Manischpeople are Gypsies, we are Jenisch people''. This self-designation is shared with similar groups within the
8 Cf. also the statement of a non-Jewish farmer: Dia haÊand
lekoudesch dibra daû dia andra's it v'rschtaÄnda haÊand ``They
spoke ledkoudesch so that the others would not understand''.
9 Fieldwork was conducted together with Thomas Jauch, in
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region but also in more remote areas, and the Jenischpeople of Unterdeufstetten are conscious of linguisticdiferences and af®nities among the various Jenischvarieties. They are also aware of historical links withRomani settlers in their community, and indeed thereare plenty of traces of Romani material and spiritualculture, including for example the belief in thereturning spirits of the dead (see DuÈrr, 1961,105±106), referred to in the local Jenisch as mulo(Romani mulo ``dead'', but also ``ghost, spirit'').
Jenisch satis®es a series of criteria for mixedlanguages: it appears to have arisen in a situation ofpopulation mixture and is used to mark groupidentity in de®ance of mainstream cultural norms. Alook at single isolated utterances will tempt descrip-tivists into concluding that non-German lexicon iscombined here with German (Franconian)grammar:
(9) I nasch in Gatschemm un schwaÈch ein Blamm.``I go to the pub and drink a beer.''
(10) Als Generaldirektor muscht du au scheneglasonscht schiwsch tschi Lowe``As general director you need to work toootherwise you get no money.''
However, looking at a brief conversation whereJenisch elements are employed, our impression of anactual ``language'' gives way to the observation thatspecial lexicon is inserted only sporadically, con-sciously, and deliberately in order to shift meaning,and so settings, from a serious, straightforward, orfactual interaction to one that challenges social andconversational taboos, and so might be less commit-ting or even humorous:
(11) A: Wenn man muÈed isch?B: Nasch ins Tschiben. Aber muscht spanna,
daû a schuggere Tschai haÊscht, naÊ kaÊsch/ daûneidurma kaÊsch.
A: A schuggere Tschai, zum durma?B: Kenn. Bisch miad, etzt nascht ins Tschiben,
nemmsch a schuggere Tschai mit, und deiMoss dia guftet dann an de Ohra na.
A: ``If you're tired?''B: ``Go to bed. But you need to see that you
have a pretty girl, so you can/ so you cansleep.''
A: ``A pretty girl, to sleep?''B: ``Yes. You're tired, so you go to bed, you
take a pretty girl with you, and then yourwife will slap your ears.''
Lexical re-orientation thus aims at manipulating con-ceptual representation with the intention of disguisingkey slots in discourse that are likely to cause friction,since they fail to conform to communicative norms
and constraints on content regulation. The product ofthe process consists of scattered mixed utterances anddoes not constitute a self-contained communicativesystem. Hence there is no re-lexi®cation, and strictlyspeaking no intertwining of grammar and lexicon toproduce a ``language''. What exists are rather conven-tions that allow speakers to shift meaning or contentaway from the domain of common everyday speech,motivated by the need to sustain and express aseparate system of values beyond the control reach ofmainstream society norms. This implies a consciousorientation towards alternative sources of conceptualrepresentation, including creative production oflexical items.
The Functional Turnover Hypothesis
Lexical re-orientation accounts for the consciousreplacement of elements that carry key propositionalrepresentations: content words, negation, copula.But non-self-contained mixed languages may showadditional structural categories as well. These typi-cally enter a mixed system through selective replica-tion, as part of what I call Functional Turnover: alanguage is used by an older generation of speakersas an everyday community language, though it isalso kept secret from outsiders, thus also enabling akind of ``conspiratory'' communication amongmembers of the community in the presence of stran-gers. As linguistic assimilation proceeds in the com-munity, the younger generation shifts largely to theoutside or mainstream language for the purposes ofeveryday communication even within the commu-nity. The ancestral community language is thenreduced to its function as a secret language, a func-tion which, due to the nature of social relationsbetween the minority community and majoritysociety, is still required. The shift in the balance ofthe overall communicative functions assigned to theancestral language ± from an all-purpose languagewith secretive usages, to an exclusively secret lan-guage ± explains the motivation to maintain portionsof it (those that allow it to serve its purpose byconcealing meaning), while gradually neglectingother components, notably the bulk of grammaticalstructures. The process is indeed reminiscent of thedevelopment of secret languages through Lexical Re-orientation, the difference being that the FunctionalTurnover Hypothesis assumes the gradual decline ofa language once spoken in the community as an all-purpose language, rather than deliberate recruitmentof lexical material to substitute for key lexical itemsin the everyday language. I call the attempt to keepan ancestral language alive for the purposes of secretin-group communication selective replication. I
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devote this section to a discussion of Para-Romanivarieties as examples of selective replication.
``Leftover'' grammar
Contrary to the impression conveyed in the literatureon mixed languages, there exists no authentic or atleast no reliable documentation of a Para-Romanilanguage. Existing texts primarily testify to the abilityof authors ± or rather their informants ± to constructmixed sentences drawing on Romani vocabularywhen asked to do so.10 But there is little indication ofthe extent to which such mixing strategies are or werein use in actual conversation beyond the productionof occasional mixed utterances.
Two exceptional sources that provide transcriptsof tape-recorded interviews with Gypsies whereRomani-derived items were used, are Acton (1971)on Angloromani (Romani ``lexicon'', English``grammar''), and Leigh (1998) on Calo (Romani``lexicon'', Spanish ``grammar''). Acton (1971, 121),however, reports that the presence of a tape-recordermade the Gypsies' conversation ``slightly moreformal in tone'', and that ``except in utterances whichI was usually unable to catch, they stopped usingRomani phrases''. The transcript still shows frequentuse of the word Gaujo, Gauji ``non-Gypsy'', which isalso a common Romani loan into non-Romani basedsecret jargons and slang, as well as the tag mush``man, mate''. Another frequently occurring Romaniitem was moxadi ``polluted'', a cultural term closelyassociated with the topic of the conversation, whichwas norms of hygiene and ritual purity amongGypsies and non-Gypsies. Thus there is attestation ofboth a symbolic and an emblematic usage ofRomani-derived items, but not one that justi®es thelabel of a mixed language. Of special interest to ourdiscussion is the following interaction between Actonand several Gypsy men (Acton, 1971, 124±125):
(12) T: . . . you go up to our caravans, you don't seebig old dogs round about up there, all hairs allover everywhere. You go in these houses, thedoor, an' the fust thing that comes up to thedoor is a great ol' dog run an' jump at the door,claw the door. [. . .]Acton: I must confess we do that, we've got adog at home.T: Now you've got to speak as you ®nd it, knowwhat I mean.M (embarrassed): I mean you got to speak asyou ®nd it, haven't you?Acton: Yes.
T: Now I've been in . . .W (very quickly): Don't ker agen, mush. D'mando-knows 'is piyamengri.Acton: Sorry . . . er . . .M: Now I used to be mates with a Gaujo fellow. . .
In the excerpt, T is comparing Gypsy cleanlinessattitudes with those of the non-Gypsies, exemplifyingthem through the presence of hair-shedding dogs innon-Gypsy houses. Acton's confession of guilt em-barrasses T and M, who try to elicit from the guestreassurance of not being offended. As T then wishesto continue, W intervenes, evidently in an attempt toavoid further offence. His words are directed at Tand intended to by-pass Acton's conversational scru-tiny. They are spoken very quickly, and key items areencoded in Romani: ker ``do'', piyamengri ``tea'' (anominal derivation from ``drink'', and so most likelya conscious though perhaps not spontaneous crea-tion). To use Rijkhof's (1998) terms (cf. also Clarkand Carlson, 1982), Romani serves here as a negativebystander deixis, aiming at excluding the bystander ±Acton ± from accessing meaning and communicativeintention.
In (12), then, the Romani component is func-tionally equivalent to the non-German componentsof Lekoudesch and Jenisch discussed above. Theextraordinary feature of Para-Romani varieties,however, is the preservation of frozen and somesemi-productive in¯ectional features, as well as ofstructural categories such as pronouns and demon-stratives (cf. Bakker, 1998; Boretzky, 1998). Leigh(1998, 275) cites Spanish Gypsies using the phrasemansa camelo tuque ``I love you'', where mansare¯ects the underlying Romani sociative case of the®rst-person pronoun, cam-el-o combines Romanithird-person singular present-tense in¯ection with theSpanish conjugation ending, and tuque represents theRomani dative case of the second-person pronoun.Such frozen grammatical elements testify to earlieraccess to an in¯ected variety.
The question of how in¯ected Romani may havegiven way to the Para-Romani mixed varieties (at-tested mainly in Britain, Iberia, and Scandinavia) hasbeen the subject of controversy in Romani linguistics.Hancock (1970, 1984, 1992) attributes the creation ofRomani-based mixed varieties to population mix-tures drawing deliberately on Romani lexicon forsecretive purposes at the initial stage, then preservingthe new mixed in-group variety to re-inforce Gypsyethnic identity while abandoning in¯ected Romani.An alternative scenario proposed by Kenrick (1979)sees the decline of Romani proper as a processleading to the emergence of an in-group Gypsy mixed
10 For a discussion of the authenticity of Para-Romani texts see
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ethnolect, rather than resulting from it. Boretzky(1998) maintains on the basis of the lexical resourcesavailable in Para-Romani, that the ``creators'' ofthese varieties will have had direct access to a produc-tive, full-¯edged in¯ected Romani proper, but werenot themselves active speakers of in¯ected Romani(see also Boretzky and Igla, 1994).
A case to be considered is a secret language usedin the Hessean town of Giessen in central Germany,referred to by its speakers as Jenisch but by outsidersas Manisch or ``Gypsy''11 (Lerch, 1976). GiessenJenisch or Manisch shares a core lexicon of diverseorigins with other Jenisch varieties, such as Unter-deufstetten Jenisch considered above. In addition, itshows several hundred Romani-derived roots thatare not shared with other secret vocabularies, ren-dering the impression of an underlying Jenischvariety that has more recently incorporated a signi®-cant structural layer from Romani. AlongsideRomani-derived content words and negationmarkers, Manisch has some semi-productive nounderivational morphology from Romani (agentive suf-®xes and abstract nominalisation markers) as well asunbound grammatical morphemes, mainly expres-sions of time and location, quanti®ers, interjections,and deictics. Signi®cantly, the third-person pronounsjob, joi appear in deictic±situational usages only(Lerch, 1976, 245):
(13) Wer isÏ mado, d7 tsÏabo od7r di tsÏaÅij? job isÏ mado``Who is drunk, the man or the woman? He isdrunk.''
The possessive pronouns miro ``my'' and tiro ``your''are, according to Lerch, familiar to speakers, but arerarely used. Manisch also appears to be the onlyGerman-based secret language that employs Romaninumerals. All this suggests a stage in which a popula-tion of German speakers had contact with activespeakers of Romani, and copied elements of theirspeech without actually being able to process sen-tences in Romani, i.e. with no grammatical compe-tence in the language. This stage is now transmittedin a fossilised form, and so we have in essence areplication of a copy. The selective copying of in-¯ected Romani structures is best seen in lexical itemstypical of Manisch which are not found in theRomani compoent of other German secret languages,such as the verb ``to come''. Its in®nitive aben inManisch is derived from the Romani root av-, whilethe present-tense form wild ``he/she comes'' derivesfrom the Romani present veÅla ``he/she comes''. This
``suppletivoid'' usage indicates we are not dealingwith an actual structural system of a language, butwith the selective replication of single linguisticforms, based on the situation-speci®c contexts oftheir original usage by speakers of Romani. Appar-ently, members of the speech community came totreat Romani and Jenisch as functionally equivalent,and consequently allowed the two to merge. AsRomani lost its role as an everyday communitynative language and a marker of ethnicity, its replica-tion became subordinated to the communicaive pur-poses of Jenisch as a non-self-contained secretvariety.
Transition and the functional continuum
One might de®ne the breaking point away fromRomani proper as a turnover of functions, where theneed to retain a special variety is stronger than theability to transmit a coherent linguistic±grammaticalsystem. Normal language transmission then gradu-ally gives way to selective replication of linguisticmaterial. The Functional Turnover Hypothesisallows us to account for why, as Boretzky (1998,98±99) points out, lexicon is retained, while innormal situations of language attrition lexicon iseasily compromised: since the motivation for selec-tive replication is, as with lexical re-orientation,primarily to by-pass mainstream communicativenorms, priority is given to material that is pragmati-cally most salient for this purpose, namely to itemsthat encode meaning. Speakers of Romani varietieswith diminishing grammatical competence will havehad a functional±communicative interest in preser-ving vocabulary, an interest that overrides the con-straints of structural development patterns observedin normal situations of language attrition. Unlikelexical re-orientation, however, selective replicationalso allows for a partial retention of frozen gramma-tical components.
The Functional Turnover Hypothesis accountsfor such retention without needing to postulate agradual borrowing of L2 grammar into Romani, orre-grammaticisation. Consider the following datafrom Smart (1862±1863, 80) on a now extinct varietyof English Romani, widely accepted in the literatureas being the forerunner of (mixed) Angloromani.The examples illustrate how the Romani and Englishcopula forms may be used interchangeably withinthe same corpus:
(14) Dik, savo see? A gorgio?``Look, who is [that]? A stranger?''
(15) Covvo Moosh is a gryengro``This man is a horse-dealer''
11 Derived from manusÏ, an internal ethnonym in some Romani
dialects of the German-speaking area, and a general term for
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In the same or a closely related variety, the in¯ectionof lexical verbs appears to have been variable too.Consider the following data, taken from notes onEnglish Romani collected by T. W. Norwood inCheltenham, Gloucestershire in April 1863:12
(16) Kanna shummus tarno, I used to jivwhen was.1SG young live.ékerrastyhouse.LOC``When I was young, I used to live in a house''
(17) We shall jassa kallakogo.1PL.FUT tomorrow
``We shall go tomorrow''
These examples show Romani in¯ection (person andtense on verbs; locative case on a noun) and indepen-dent clause and phrase syntax (Pro-drop in the ®rstclause of (16), and lack of inde®nite article). At thesame time, some tense±aspect forms are English,carrying with them English personal pronouns. Thisin turn results in a hybrid construction in (16), where,by analogy with English, the Romani root jiv ``tolive'' is employed as an in®nitive; and in the doublingin (17) of tense and person marking, which appearboth in English and as in¯ections on the Romanilexical verb.
The inevitable conclusion from (14)±(17) is thatthe notion of a ``grammaticiser'' language is ambig-uous here, while the ``lexi®er language'' is clearlyRomani. This means that, in transitional stages, it isdif®cult to argue eiher for a complete substitution ofRomani grammar through the grammar of the con-tiguous language, or for a plain insertion of Romanilexical items into the strict framework of the contig-uous language. It is, however, plausible that thespeakers who produced these sentences were makinga conscious choice in favour of Romani lexicalvocabulary. On this basis, so-called Para-Romanimight be de®ned as a process of diminishing gramma-tical competence coinciding with a deliberate effort tomaintain lexical competence. The partial retention ofgrammar is a by-product of the effort to maintain aseparate code, or selective replication. This in turn ismotivated by the turnover of functions, the processby which the language becomes restricted to speci®cfunctions and discourse positions.
In the case of Para-Romani, there is room toconsider the background for functional turnoveralready within underlying, western dialects ofRomani proper that gave rise to mixed varieties(Iberian, British, German, and Scandinavian
Romani). To begin with, we ®nd among speakers ofthese dialects a reluctance to share the language andits structures with outsiders. This view of the lan-guage as secretive suggests of course that a form ofnegative accommodation or bystander deixis belongsto its primary functions. This is also supported bystructural evidence. Where central and eastern Eur-opean Romani generally adopt loanwords ratherfreely, western dialects show a preference for internalcompositions and derivations, as well as euphemisticand cryptolectal formations. Liebich (1863, 90±92)has already noted the creation of numerous cryptic±interpretative placenames in German Romani (Sinti)that are strongly reminiscent of compositions inRotwelsch, Jewish cattle traders jargon, and othersecret varieties, such as xamaskero foro literally ``theeating-town'' for ``Breslau'', based on bres- > freû-German ``to eat''. GuÈnther (1915, 16±19) points outsimilarities between German Romani and Jenisch indrawing on existing lexical±semantic resources forcreative, euphemistic lexical compositions, as inRomani muleskro kher lit. ``dead man's house'',Jenisch Begerkittle of the same composition, for``cof®n'' (see also Wagner, 1937). Typical of westerndialects is also the use of Romani genitive derivationsespecially for the creation of words relating to humanbeings, professions, and economic resources such asanimals, food, or agricultural terms ± all reminiscentof lexical re-orientation strategies observed in non-self-contained secret languages. The same cluster ofdialects also show a preference for group-speci®cautononyms ± kale ``blacks'', manusÏ ``persons'', orthe names romanicÏel, sinte ± over the general eth-nonym rom (which survives in the word ``husband/wife'' as well as in the name of the language,romanes), a sign of social and ethnic isolation, whichwill have brought speakers of these dialects closer toitinerants of non-Romani origin. All this suggests agradual shift of balance between the everyday, by-stander-neutral communicative function of Romani,and the in-group secretive function it shares witharti®cial secret languages, thus strengthening the im-pression of a process that may ultimately result infunctional turnover.
The case for selective replication in Ma'a
This brings me to another controversial case of amixed language, that of Ma'a. Mous (1994) considersMa'a an in-group register of (Bantu) Mbugu, andeven labels it ``Inner Mbugu'' as opposed to ``NormalMbugu''. Inner Mbugu or Ma'a is characterised byoccasional lexical insertions into a frame that is onthe whole compatible with Normal Mbugu (Mous,1994, 177):
12 Source: Scott Mac®e Collection 4.1±5, University of Liverpool
Special Archives (Gypsy Collections). See also Grosvenor (1910,
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(18) anã nã mbora niteÂte jangu jaÂ
1sg cop girl 1sg:say:sbj 10:mine 10:conubora [. . .]14.2:girl``I was a girl, should I talk about my childhood[. . .]
halã ya kuyoÂ?other 9:con 15:speak[Is there] more to say?''
Mous suggests that Ma'a never had a different func-tion (in our terms, it was never self-contained), butwas a deliberate creation motivated by the need tohighlight social±economic and ethnic separateness.While it seems that his synchronic characterisation ofthe language and its functions has not at all beenchallenged, alternative suggestions have been madewith respect to the process of emergence. Thomasonand Kaufman (1988, 223±228) and Thomason(1997c) view Ma'a as a Cushitic language that hasborrowed Bantu grammar. Among the argumentsput forth by Thomason are syntactic features ± Ma'ahas a Cushitic copula and possessive transitive verb ±as well as the existence of non-Bantu vocabulary thatis not Cushitic (a sizeable number can apparently betraced back to Maasai; see Mous, 1994), which, it isargued, contradicts the assumption of an underlyingBantu language (Mbugu or Pare) that has borrowedfrom Cushitic. Sasse's (1992) approach seems tointegrate the two points of view, arguing in favour ofa Cushitic language that borrowed from Bantu, wasthen abandoned in favour of Bantu, and ®nallyserved as a source of re-lexi®cation material on thebasis of which a new language emerged.
Let us consider the categories that are speci®callyreserved for Inner Mbugu or Ma'a. With the excep-tion of lexical items, most features are said to derivefrom Cushitic, although no single Cushitic ancestorhas so far been identi®ed. The overview in (19) isbased mainly on Mous (1994):
(19) Non-Bantu components in Ma'a:Lexical items (also non-Cushitic), non-produc-tive causative af®xes, non-productive and op-tional nominal suf®x, numerals between 1±5and 10, demonstratives and possessives accom-panying non-Bantu lexical items, copula andpossessive verb, personal pronouns, adaptationpattern for the in¯ection of some verbs, partialexemption from Bantu noun class agreement.
Selective replication allows us to account for theretention, alongside Cushitic vocabulary, of frozenderivational features, and of deictic noun phrasemodi®ers (pronouns, demonstratives, possessives), aswell as of the most basic and frequently occurring
numerals and the copula and possessive verb. Thusthe bulk of Cushitic material ®ts the pro®le of prag-matic, situative saliency typical of the retention offeatures following a functional turnover. This is alsoconsistent with what is known about the history ofMa'a and the gradual loss of Cushitic-derivedgrammar over the past generations. The retention ofa separate identity motivates selective replication ofCushitic material from the original Ma'a, whichundergoes a turnover of functions from a full-¯edgedcommunity language into a lexical register. It is stillde®ned by speakers as a ``language'' because it stillconstitutes a form of speech that identi®es them asmembers of the community and allows in-group aswell as ritual communication (in much the same waythat users of Romani-derived lexicon in varieties ofEnglish and Swedish continue to call these registersRomany or Rommani ).
This historical scenario for the emergence of Ma'adoes not differ signi®cantly from some of thoseproposed elsewhere in the literature (especially Mous,1994 and Thomason, 1997c); indeed I do not pretendto offer any new historical evidence to explain thestate of affairs in Ma'a. The contribution I wish tomake pertains rather to identifying selective replica-tion as a contact mechanism in its own right, one thatis tightly connected to the process of a turnover ofthe functions assigned to the language of a commu-nity. The motivation to retain a register in order to¯ag ethnic distinctness amid linguistic assimilationwill target components of the ancestral language in away that is not arbitrary. In this sense, Ma'a cannotbe viewed simply as a case where Bantu (Mbugu orPare) grammar has simply been borrowed, graduallyreplacing the original Cushitic structure, but ratheras a case of language shift with subsequent deliberate(albeit diminishing) replication of Cushitic material.
The cumulative effect of contact mechanisms
So far we have identi®ed lexical re-orientation inLekoudesch and Jenisch, selective replication inPara-Romani and Ma'a, and lexical re-orientationsupplemented by selective replication in Manisch.Our small sample already shows how diverse mixedlanguages are as regards their structural compositionand compartmentalisation. In this ®nal section Iexamine some of the more challenging cases of mixedlanguages reported on in the literature.
Functional compartmentalisation
The discussion will presuppose a natural function-based compartmentalisation of linguistic structures,the following domains being of immediate relevance:
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(1) meaning is encoded through content elements(lexical items) that constitute symbols for conceptualrepresentations, and which in turn may evoke asso-ciations of mental images that are culture-speci®c.13
(2) Alongside content elements, there exists a series ofgrammatical structures that are crucial to meaning inthe sense that they are, at the most elementary level,constitutive of propositions. These include at leastnegation and existential verbs (possession possiblybeing a derived existential relation). (3) Operativeprocedures14 carry out the processing of proposi-tional contents including the relations among themand those among their constituents (representedthrough in¯ection, subordinating conjunctions, wordorder, and more). (4) Certain grammatical items areinvolved in monitoring and directing interaction,which includes assessing the listener's involvement,and anticipating and processing the listener's re-sponse to propositions (represented through dis-course markers, interjections, focus particles, andmore). (5) Finally, some classes of grammatical itemsare inherently situative, as they are involved inpointing out components of the speech action orspeech situation. They are often formative of stereo-typical situation-bound actions of speech, and can ingeneral be characterised as communicativelysalient and, from a language learner's perspective,easily retrievable. Typical grammatical items inthis domain are deictics, anaphora, possessors, quan-ti®ers such as basic numerals, and in¯ected forms ofsemantically salient verbs of motion.
It was suggested above that a natural function-based compartmentalisation of linguistic structures isre¯ected in distinct mechanisms of language changetriggered by contact, and I will very brie¯y review theargument. In doing so, I refer to the 5 categoriesoutlined in the preceding paragraph. Lexical re-orien-tation aims at shifting meaning into a separatesystem, and so it targets categories 1 and 2, which areformative of conceptual±propositional representa-tion. Selective replication seeks to reproduce actionsof speech in a language without actually needing torely on processing or directing operations in thislanguage, and so it targets, alongside meaning,salient components that are easily retrievable (cate-gories 1 and 5). Convergence allows harmonisationof systems while maintaining their surface-level ormaterial autonomy. It targets the more abstract
components involved in processing propositionalcontent (category 3), but may similarly affect thearrangement of symbolic representations or lexicalsemantics (category 1). Finally, fusion is the whole-sale merger of processing operations by functionalcategory. Since it is motivated by the attempt toreduce the ``cost of production'' of speech in favourof a pragmatically dominant language, fusion willtypically begin with the more complex and interac-tively intensive mental tasks outlined as category 4,and will only then in®ltrate the more proposition-internal processing functions, under 3, beginningwith those that are listener-oriented.15
Extreme convergence and fusion
Extreme convergence pertains to cases where conver-gent structures dominate a language's grammaticaloperations. To argue from the point of view ofhistorical reconstruction, only a small portion ofoperative procedures can be accounted for throughdirect and straightforward descent or ``inheritance''.The Dutch interlanguages Javindo, documented byde Gruiter (1994), and Petjo, as discussed by vanRheeden (1994) ± I risk some simpli®cation and dealwith both together, and the reader is referred to thesources for a detailed discussion ± display on thewhole structures that are derived from Dutch, thoughthe mapping rules (or the rules for grammaticalorganisation, as it were) are still Malay. For example,there is a shift toward a purely analytical tense andaspect system. This is clearly an outcome of con-tinuing abstract processing in Malay, which was notabandoned but reinforced through a language acqui-sition process. Interestingly, a number of operationsshow fusion with the underlying blueprint language,Javanese and Malay respectively, notably the use ofrelativisers and of passive and causative morphology;here is a Petjo example (van Rheeden, 1994, 226):
(20) kleren njang di-wassen door die frouwclothes rel pass-wash by that woman``the clothes that were washed by that woman''
To judge by the information that is available, fusionin these cases does not actually follow its normalcourse, but targets selected operations without thewholesale incorporation of utterance modi®ers, con-junctions, etc. Indeed, it is not entirely clear thatMalay in fact has the role of the pragmaticallydominant language which would constitute the targetfor fusion. Some evidence, however, might be sought
13 I use ``Meaning'' here in the narrow sense to refer to the speci®c
type of symbolic±conceptual meaning represented by lexical
entities.14 I use the term coined in the Functional Pragmatics tradition
(Ehlich, 1986), which adopts BuÈhler's (1934) communicative±
psychological approach to linguistic ®elds as re¯ections of
mental processing tasks. See above.
15 The historical evidence for the hierarchisation of structures that
are susceptible to fusion is reviewed in Matras (1998) and
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in the fact that Malay provides expeditive elements ±interjections and terms of address.
A further case for convergence and fusion ± thistime fusion being the ``extreme'' mechanism at work± can be made for Copper Island Aleut. My source ofinformation on the language is mainly Golovko(1994), and partly Thomason and Kaufman (1988),Thomason (1997d) and Vakhtin (1998). Aleut pro-vides (1) content words, (2) noun and verb deriva-tion, (3) noun in¯ection, and (4) converbs. From thisit is already clear that no grammar/lexicon split canbe claimed for Copper Island Aleut. Russian supplies(5) a selection of content words, most of whichappear to be common in all non-mixed Aleut dialectsas well and so may be considered a case for conven-tional borrowing, (6) conjunctions and connectiveparticles, (7) subjunctive and conditional markers, (8)word order, (9) the ®nite verb in¯ection, (10) nega-tion markers, (11) personal pronouns, when used inconjunction with past-tense verbs and the impersonalfuture auxiliary, and (12) possessive and object pro-nouns. An illustration is provided by the following,from Golovko (1994,115):
(21) yesli by oni ukaala-ag'aa-li huzu-um byif subj they here-move-pst.pl all-re¯ subjtxichi qala-chaa-lre¯.pl be-glad-caus-pst``If they came, everybody would be glad''
Though it is clear that Copper Island Aleut came intobeing in a setting of mixed households (Aleutwomen, Russian men), there is some dispute whetherit is the product of imperfect acquisition of Aleut byRussians (Thomason and Kaufman, 1988), or ofRussian in¯uence on the speech of Aleuts (Golovko,1994). Vakhtin (1998) proposes a scenario accordingto which Aleuts had shifted to Russian, then re-acquired Aleut into a Russian framework. However,the fact that Aleut converbs and the complexnominal in¯ection are retained tends to point in thedirection of continuation of processing operations inAleut and so against selective replication, in the sensede®ned above; the failure to restructure the lexiconon a Russian model shows that Russian impact,however substantial, does not qualify as lexical re-orientation, either.
Components 1±4 can therefore safely be assumedto be inherited, representing continuation of Aleut,and we can devote our attention to the Russianimpact, items 5±11. The ®rst of those, 5, as men-tioned, can be dismissed as common to all Aleutdialects and so as not characteristic of a mixedvariety. Item 6 is explainable as the usual scenario forfusion with a pragmatically dominant language. Tothis I also attribute item 7: fusion extends to cover the
subjective evaluation of propositional content or thedomain of modality and non-factuality. From a con-versation-interactional and language-processing pointof view, subjunctive and conditional markers can besaid to occupy a position in between monitoring anddirecting operations, and proposition-internal proces-sing operations: they process the hearer's potentialattitudes and anticipated reactions to what is said.This position is re¯ected in their place on the con-tinuum for fusion. Item 8 ± word order ± re¯ectspartial convergence with Russian in the domain of theorganisational display of propositional content. Thispertains especially to the loss of Aleut SOV structureand so to the position of the verb, which leads us tothe most puzzling feature of Copper Island Aleut ±the adoption of Russian ®nite verb in¯ection.
Speakers of Copper Island Aleut have made asigni®cant step toward a shift to Russian in mergingthose processing operations that are the essence ofmessage structure: the initiation of the predicationand so the anchoring of propositional content isachieved in Russian. It is therefore not a coincidencethat word order rules conform to the language thatprovides ®nite verb in¯ection. Moreover, once wehave established the principle of predication organi-sation in Russian as a case of fusion of operativeprocedures, it is easier to explain the remainingRussian features: negation markers serve as essentialsof the predication, being part of the overall proposi-tional representation. Personal pronouns, ®nally,appear with past-tense verbs where Russian in¯ectiondoes not distinguish person, as well as with the futureauxiliary bud which apparently has been stripped ofits Russian conjugation and assumes instead animpersonal form (cf. Vakhtin, 1998, 320), and so theycan be considered an integral part of verb in¯ection,allowing differentiation of person consistentlythroughout the tense paradigm.
In conclusion for these two cases, then, one mightargue that once we have identi®ed the type of contactmechanism at work, a signi®cant portion, though byno means all of the actual structural composition ofthe mixed language becomes predictable. Conver-gence is unilateral in Javindo and Petjo, using aMalay blueprint with Dutch material. Fusion inCopper Island Aleut encompasses classes of itemsthat are universal candidates for fusion in languagecontact situations. Unpredictable and perhaps evenunique are the cases of fusion involving Malay passivemorphology, and Russian ®nite verb in¯ection.
Lexical re-orientation, fusion, and convergence
The combination of these three mechanisms ofcontact ± lexical re-orientation, fusion, and conver-
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gence ± characterises two languages that have re-ceived much attention in recent discussion contextson mixed languages: Media Lengua and Michif. It isthese two that conform most closely to the image of agrammar/lexicon split. Muysken (1997) offers anelaborate discussion of the grammatical compositionof Media Lengua, which I follow and interpret here.Quechua, the so-called ``grammaticiser'' language,supplies the following categories: (1) word order, (2)noun and verb in¯ection, and (3) sentential comple-mentation and connective structures (clitics).Spanish, the ``lexi®er'' language, contributes (4)lexical roots, (5) interrogatives, (6) frozen mor-phology imported with Spanish content morphemes,such as the past participle ending -do in adjectives, (7)Spanish af®xes that are also borrowed into Quechua:diminutive -itu, present participle -ndu, clitic -tanfrom Spanish -tambieÂn, (8) the forms for deictics andpersonal pronouns, (9) coordinating conjunctionsand discourse particles, (10) complementisers and thestructure of embedded wh-questions, and (11) theforms for comparative and re¯exive markers. Anillustration is provided by the following examplefrom Muysken (1997, 377):
(22) Isi-ga asi nustru barrio-ga asithis-top thus our community-top thuskostumbri-n abla-naaccustomed-3 talk-nom``In our community we are accustomed totalking this way''
The historical evidence ± there is no attestation of apopulation mixture, and all speakers appear to be¯uent in Quechua as well as, more recently perhaps,in Spanish ± allows us to assume continuation of aform of Quechua that has absorbed a signi®cantSpanish component, or, to use Muysken's term, hasbeen re-lexi®ed. There are two challenges posed bythe nature of the compartmentalisation in MediaLengua: ®rst, to explain the wholesale adoption ofcontent words from Spanish, and second, to accountfor the split in processing operations.
The answer to the ®rst question was hinted atabove: Media Lengua represents a case of lexical re-orientation in a system that has become self-contained. The motivation of speakers to mark theirstatus in-between the two communities ± ruralQuechua and urban Spanish (Muysken, 1997) ± hasled them to shift the system of meaning representa-tions, and thereby adopt the socio-cultural associa-tions triggered by the use of Spanish lexicon. Lexicalre-orientation in this case is therefore both symbolicand expressive.
The split in processing operations may be ex-plained ®rstly by the postulation of a process of
fusion of directing operations with those of thepragmatically dominant language, accounting foritems 9±11, with wh-complementisers and compara-tives representing relations between propositions andactors respectively and so ®guring at lower levels, yetstill on the continuum of epistemic quali®cation thatis potentially sensitive to fusion. Items 6 and 7 requirelittle attention, as they fall within the domain of well-attested and conventional borrowing, and are notdistinctive features of the mixed variety of Quechuaunder discussion. There remains therefore theproblem of Spanish interrogatives, deictics, and pro-nouns. All three group together as representing actorconstituents, and so it is tempting to view them asextensions of the lexical domain, which is indeed theapproach which Muysken (1997) takes. It is possiblethat speakers' grammatical system-awareness ± akind of abstraction from ``grammatical intuition'' ±marks out the inconsistency in noun phrase represen-tation and leads them to try and extend lexical re-orientation to cover lexical placeholders, therebytriggering a process similar to selective replication, bywhich forms are copied but the operational systemthat governs their usage is lost. This means that theactual functions of the Spanish deictic system are notreproduced in Media Lengua. To compensate for thebreakdown in the operation of deictics, this portionof the linguistic system undergoes a process of con-vergence through which Spanish forms are taken torepresent the underlying Quechua functional para-digms, and partly merge with Quechua markers tocreate a hybrid system.
Our ®nal case-study, Michif, has been consideredby Thomason and Kaufman (1988, 228±233) as aform of Cree with wholesale replacement of nativeCree nominal structures by French noun phrases. Ifollow Bakker (1997) and Bakker and Papen (1997)in listing the contribution by category from the twosource languages. Cree contributes to Michif (1)verbs, including verb in¯ection and converbs, (2)word order, (3) interrogatives, pronouns, and deic-tics, (4) the majority of adverbial particles, (5) theobviative suf®x on nouns, (6) some conjunctions andconnectives. The French component comprises (7)nouns, (8) articles, numerals, inde®nites, possessives,(9) most negation markers, (10) some adjectives, (11)some conjunctions and connectives, and (12) formsfor adverbial conjunctions, relativisers, and imper-sonal modality markers. The category of adpositionsis mixed, drawing frequently on combinations ofFrench prepositions and Cree postpositions.
The core of the Michif predication is clearly basedon Cree input, and again we see that the languagethat contributed verb in¯ection also provides wordorder rules. Unlike Media Lengua, the substitution
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of lexical material does not affect placeholders andcategory 3 remains intact. That Cree-derived proces-sing of propositional content is productive is seen inthe extension of the obviative af®x to French nouns(item 5). It is the French component that appearscontradictory. We see a move toward fusion ofoperative procedures in the domain of clause com-bining, represented by item 12, which, however,appears to have come to a halt half-way, and resultedinstead in internal grammaticalisation processesbased on French-derived material. Item 11 is some-what puzzling, for if we are to assume that Frenchconstituted the pragmatically dominant language,then a much clearer effect of fusion might be expectedat the level of discourse management. Consider thefollowing example, adapted from Bakker (1997,5±6):
(23) un vieux ana ayi/ un vieux opahikeÃtan old this uh an old trappereÃ-noÃhcihcikeÃt, you see, eÃkwatrapped andayi/ un matin eÃkwaniskaÃt ahkosiw, butuh one morning woke-up be-sickkeÃyapit anastill this-onewãÃ-nitawi-waÃpahtam ses pieÁges.want-go-see his traps``An old this uh/ an old trapper was trapping,you see, and uh/ one morning he woke up sick,but he still wanted to go and see to his traps.''
French connectives appear alongside both Cree-derived and English forms. The impact of French asa pragmatically dominant language appears to havebeen rather short-lived, an observation which seemsconsistent with the overall history of the languageand its rather abrupt emergence during a shortperiod of intense French±Cree contacts (see Bakker,1997 for details). French was later replaced altogetherby English as the pragmatically dominant language,which is re¯ected in (23) by its in®ltration intodirecting or discourse-managing operations ± theseeds of fusion.
The short period of French in¯uence might be thekey to understanding the present composition ofMichif. What may have started out as a process oflexical re-orientation similar to the one observed inMedia Lengua, encompassed in Michif only nouns.Bakker (1997) offers a structural explanation for this,suggesting that the bound nature of the Cree verband the non-availability of isolated verbal rootsexcluded substitution of Cree verbal entities throughFrench counterparts. In addition, though, the Frenchinput might also have been subjected to a naturalhierarchy of functional prominence, with nouns ±
being the most stable conceptual representations intime and space ± ®guring at the very top, followed byadjectives and ®nally by verbs. This correspondsexactly to the state of affairs in Michif as regards theFrench element in lexical classes. The striking featureof Michif is that lexical re-orientation ± howeverconstrained by these structural and perhaps alsofunctional factors ± is accompanied by fusion of thenoun phrase grammar.
A key to understanding both Media Lengua andMichif is therefore the motivation toward lexical re-orientation and the shift it entails of meaning repre-sentation into a second language. The process iscoupled in both cases (albeit to different degrees) withother contact mechanisms, namely fusion (repre-sented along its natural continuum from interactionmanagement to epistemic quali®cation) and conver-gence (as a compromise strategy). In both cases, keyprocessing operations pertaining to the predicationremain in the native language ± represented fore-mostly by verb in¯ection and clause-level word orderrules. The extraordinary feature of both languages isthe stabilisation of lexical re-orientation and its con-ventionalisation within a self-contained system. Thisinvites a characterisation as a reversed turnover offunctions: what might have started off as manipulatedmixed utterances serving to ¯ag speakers' orientationtoward a colonial culture eventually gave rise to anall-purpose native-community idiom.
Conclusion
Two central methodological questions have beenaddressed in this paper. The ®rst has to do with theway we interpret functions of linguistic material ±words and grammatical formations ± especially asregards the cognitive and processing operationswhich they trigger, and the implementation of suchinterpretation in an explanatory model of languagechange through contact. The second is about thepower of the model presented here to actually predictthe mechanisms involved in the emergence of mixedlanguages and their structural outcome.
Approaches in cognitive linguistics that rely on aninterpretation of structures and their usage byspeakers, rather than on experimental data, face ageneral problem of scienti®c replicability and so ofpersuasiveness: in trying to reconstruct the internalfunctions of linguistic elements, the processing opera-tions that they trigger, and what goes on in thesubconscious planning mechanism that is responsiblefor the production of utterances, we rely primarily onan interpretation of data and their position in dis-course. Such is the case when discussing the discoursefunction of mixed utterances in secret languages, but
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also in interpreting the relevance of monitoring-and-directing operations to the fusion hierarchy (as dis-cussed in Matras, 1998). As with many attempts toexplain, rather than just describe, occurrences inlanguage, we risk speculating about the causes ofprocesses. However, such speculations once formu-lated can indeed be put to the test. It has beenclaimed that discourse operators are positioned at thehead of a chain of grammatical items which aresubjected to different contact mechanisms than, say,lexical items, and that keeping an ancestral languagepartially alive for speci®c functions will target adifferent selection of structures than consciously re-orienting oneself toward a new or neighbouringlanguage. These claims derive from observations onthe behaviour of the relevant classes of elements incontact situations. They involve relating those obser-vations to what we know about the function andstructure of linguistic categories. The overall messageis that we must draw on the trivial but crucialrealisation that words are not simply words, but aredivided into function-oriented categories. Whenitems display a similar behaviour in contact situa-tions, it is not only legitimate but necessary to searchfor their common denominator, however unapparentit may seem from a structural viewpoint. It is on thisbasis that the hierarchy of fusion has been postu-lated, and that an explanation has been suggestedthat relates the susceptibility of wholesale replace-ment to cognitive overload surrounding automati-cised monitoring-and-directing operations.
My point of departure in this contribution wasthat mixed languages do not offer a uniform lan-guage type, but are outcomes of diverse mechanismsand combinations of mechanisms. It is thereforeimpossible in my view to make general predictionsabout the linguistic outcome of extreme cases ofpopulation mixtures, as has been attempted in theliterature (e.g. Bakker and Mous, 1994b, 1995). Butcan we use the explanatory model outlined here tomake alternative predictions? While I have arguedabove that mixed languages are neither uniform norpredictable, I have at the same time maintained that,given the types and combinations of contact mechan-isms which give rise to them, their structural compo-sitions are not entirely arbitrary either. Thus we canon the whole predict the course of fusion, which willtarget monitoring-and-directing operations in a uni-versal order. We can also explain why certain typesof contact constellations are likely to trigger fusion ±those for instance, where full bilingual competenceinvolving linguistic processing operations will lead toliteral interference of one system with another. Wecan further predict the types of social±communicativecircumstances in which lexical re-orientation might
occur, or where selective replication is likely to beencountered. We can explain why lexical re-orienta-tion will target items that express meaning, and leavethe grammar component of the language largelyintact. We can ®nally predict that where preference isgiven to maintaining the material autonomy of aparticular language, contact might be re¯ectedthrough the synchronisation of the triggers of gram-matical operations with their counterparts in theother language, resulting in what I offered above as anarrow de®nition of convergence.
What we cannot predict, however, is the combina-tion of processes, or the full extent to which they willaffect the linguistic systems involved in them. We canonly assume in hindsight that cases such as that ofMalay passive morphology in Javindo and Petjo, ofFrench noun phrase morphology in Michif, or ofRussian ®nite verb in¯ection in Copper Island Aleutare the result of speci®c structural constraints ondevelopments such as Dutch±Malay convergence inthe ®rst instance, lexical re-orientation towardsFrench in the second, and a shift to a Russian-basedpredication and sentence production in the ®nal. Acatalogue of possible structural constraints, withmore predictive power, is indeed a desirable endea-vour, but will depend on future availability of more®rst-hand data on mixed language systems.
The fact that motivations for mixing are diversehelps explain why mixed languages are not uniform.Moreover, it is precisely the fact that mixed lan-guages are products of such complex density ofmotivations, resulting in diverse contact mechanisms,that makes them both relatively rare and perhapsalso short-lived. The argument line adopted here wasmainly based on the assumption that an appreciationof the structural compartmentalisation in mixed lan-guages must ®rstly take into account the naturalfunction-based and cognitive compartmentalisationof linguistic structures. It is here that I attempted toventure beyond some of the more general postula-tions of a split between lexicon, grammar, and func-tion words. In providing us with various clusteringsof linguistic features and categories, mixed systemspose a special challenge to grammatical theory andmodels of grammar, even beyond the issue ofcontact: they offer opportunities to identify naturalalliances among structures, allowing testing of ourhypotheses regarding compartmentalisation ingrammar and language processing functions.
References
Acton, T. A. (1971). The functions of the avoidance of
Moxadi Kovels. Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, 3rd
In my response I will consider Matras' observation that
``words are not simply words, but are divided into function-
orientated categories'' from the perspective of Medieval
Latin/Middle English and Anglo-Norman/Middle English
business texts, as written in Britain from the Norman
Conquest to the sixteenth century. I will concentrate on his
assumption that the social context of speakers plays a
de®ning role in the resultant language outcome.
Matras presents a discussion of the context in which
Lekoudesch and Romani are spoken, detailing the way in
which the constraints of the social context (the presence of
outsiders) dictate the emergent language mixture. This
discussion is given to demonstrate processes of lexical re-
orientation, and the function is, apparently, not only to
preserve secrecy but also to demarcate group identity.
I am particularly interested in the notion of demarcating
group identity. My viewpoint is entirely from that of a
written text-type; there is no evidence (either way) that
medieval business writing was ever a spoken variety. Med-
ieval Latin and Anglo-Norman became the main languages
of governmental administration in England when it became
annexed to the Anglo-Norman empire as a result of Duke
William of Normandy's succession to the English throne in
1066. His census of his new holdings, the Domesday Book,
was written in a Medieval Latin containing some content
words in English (presumably as these were technical terms
referring to cultural items which it was felt important to
retain), although it is not always possible to determine
which elements belong to Medieval Latin and which to Old
English, as in (1).
(1) in Eldeha ten Goisfrid 9 de bech sub abbe j hid tra eÅ j carÅsed deest carÅ ibi ij cot silua C porcin Aldenham holds Geoffrey of Bech under the abbot
one hide land for one plough but lacks plough there
two cottagers woodland 100 pigs
``In Aldenham Geoffrey of Bech holds 1 hide of land
rented from the Abbot; there is land for one plough but
the plough is missing; there are two cottagers and