This research studies language contact as a possible cause of differences between languages in their degree of transparency. As transparency is assumed to facilitate intelligibility and learnability, especially for adult L2 learners, it is hypothesized that in particular contact settings with many such learners, languages tend to show increasing transparency. The study tests this hypothesis by investigating transparency in Norwegian, which has been exposed to extensive contact with Low German and Danish, and the relatively isolated Icelandic language. Based on a set of opacity features formulated in Functional Discourse Grammar, the degree of transparency of the two languages is compared. The results show that, as predicted, Norwegian is more transparent than Icelandic, which seems due to an increase in transparency in Norwegian and general opacity maintenance in Icelandic compared to their ancestor Old Norse. The study thus supports the hypothesized relation between language contact and transparency.

中文翻译：

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挪威语和冰岛语的透明度：语言接触与语言隔离

这项研究将语言接触作为语言之间透明度差异的可能原因进行了研究。由于透明度被认为有助于提高可理解性和可学习性，特别是对于成人 L2 学习者，因此假设在与许多此类学习者的特定接触环境中，语言往往显示出越来越高的透明度。该研究通过调查挪威语的透明度来验证这一假设，挪威语与低地德语和丹麦语以及相对孤立的冰岛语有广泛接触。基于功能性话语语法中制定的一组不透明特征，比较了两种语言的透明程度。结果表明，正如预测的那样，挪威语比冰岛语更透明，这似乎是由于与他们的祖先古挪威语相比，挪威语的透明度和冰岛语的一般不透明度维护增加了。因此，该研究支持语言接触与透明度之间的假设关系。