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Argument Case Leveling toward Genitive: An Unexpected Outcome in a Language Contact Situation Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-09-18 Nerea Madariaga, Olga Romanova
This article contributes to the study of a productive morphosyntactic mechanism in a peculiar type of linguistic variety, the Russian language of Odessa (OdR). This variety was born as a lingua franca in the city of Odessa soon after its foundation, implying the massive acquisition of the Russian language in a nonnative way in its initial stages. Afterwards, it was transmitted to successive generations
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Khoekhoe Loanwords in isiXhosa and isiZulu: Beyond Click Loan Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-09-18 Camilla Rose Christie
A precolonial language contact event between languages in the Nguni group of the Bantu family and extinct undocumented languages in the Khoekhoe branch of the Khoe family left an enduring impact on the linguistic landscape of South Africa. isiXhosa and isiZulu gained a massive lexis of Khoekhoe loanwords that remains understudied. Prior research has focused primarily on the behaviour of click consonants
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Kinship Terminologies of the Circum-Baltic Area: Convergences and Structural Properties Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-09-18 Veronika Milanova, Niklas Metsäranta, Terhi Honkola
Contact and areal studies of kinship terminologies have by now received too little attention in social anthropology and linguistics. To fill in one of numerous research gaps, we investigated kinship terminologies of the Circum-Baltic (CB) area. We discovered many heterogeneous overlapping micro- and macro-convergences belonging to different temporal strata and contact situations. This was especially
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Object Marking in Western Eurasia: The Circum-Baltic Area Dissolves into the Broader Areal Background Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-09-18 Daria Alfimova
This paper investigates object marking strategies in Circum-Baltic languages and beyond, using a sample of 103 predicates from 30 Western Eurasian languages from the BivalTyp database. The study aims to identify areal clusters in object marking and evaluate the relevance of the Circum-Baltic linguistic area in this context. It finds that while most Circum-Baltic languages dissolve into larger, genealogy-driven
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Typology of Plurality in Turkish, Classical Arabic and Cukurova Arabic and the Effect of Plurality in Turkish on Cukurova Arabic Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-09-18 Muna Yüceol Özezen, Eser Ordem
Noun pluralisation has been of paramount importance in typological studies, considering a wide range of varieties in different languages. This study examines the relationships between Classical Arabic, Turkish, and Cukurova Arabic – an Arabic dialect spoken in the Eastern Mediterranean region (Antakya, Adana, and Mersin) in Turkey – in the context of noun plurality inflection. In fact, considering
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Akie as a Language Island Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-08-02 Christa König, Bernd Heine, Karsten Legère
The traditional hunter-gatherer group of Akie in Tanzania provides a paradigm example of a language island. Separated from its linguistic relatives by hundreds of kilometres, with no contact whatsoever between the two, the Akie are struggling for survival, both economically and linguistically.
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The Anii Language Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-08-02 Deborah Morton
The Anii language of Togo and Benin is surrounded by essentially unrelated languages because the ancestors of the current speakers migrated into their modern territory within the last few centuries. This paper presents what is known about the cultural history and current social context of the Anii people and argues that Anii is a progressive language island despite a social situation that is different
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Bajuni – A Language Peninsula Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-08-02 Derek Nurse, Jasmin Mahazi
The article deals with the northern Swahili dialect Bajuni. It is viewed as a language peninsula rather than island, attached to neighbouring and related dialects to the south but jutting north into Somali-speaking areas. It is currently severely endangered, having been largely replaced by Somali in Somalia, and Swahili in Kenya during the late twentieth century, so it is regarded essentially as a
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Korandje as a Songhay Language Island Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-08-02 Lameen Souag
Among the many language islands produced by the expansion of Songhay out of the middle Niger valley, Korandje stands out for its geographical isolation and linguistic divergence. Confined since perhaps 1200 CE to a single Algerian oasis well over a thousand kilometres from any other Songhay-speaking community, its speakers have extensively reshaped their language and identity under the influence of
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L1 Attrition and Repair in Remnant Language Islands Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-08-02 Henning Schreiber
Sociolinguistically, isolation can be seen as a speech-community event which is commonly the result of migration, e.g., if speakers from a larger speech community migrate into a language island, leading to contact-induced variation. Another type of language island results from extensive language shift when a formerly larger language area shrinks to a remnant speech community, an enclave. The literature
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A Language Island in a Sea of Sand Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-08-02 Valentina Schiattarella
The Siwi language is spoken in the Siwa oasis in the Egyptian Western Desert. It is the easternmost place where a Berber variety (Afro-Asiatic) is spoken. Siwi is not the only language spoken in the oasis, as the entire population speaks at least one variety (Bedouin and/or Egyptian) of Arabic. Siwi speakers can be firmly differentiated from Egyptians or Bedouins settled in the oasis not only because
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Language Islands Worldwide – Theoretical and Methodological Issues Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-08-02 Peter Rosenberg
What can we learn from language island research? Answers drawn from German language island research refer to linguistics, ethnology and language politics. German language islands in Russia and Brazil are on the way to language shift. The varieties of these communities display varying degrees of decomposition and simplification in terms of morphology. Regular and irregular morphology are developing
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Le berbère zénaga de Mauritanie Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-08-02 Catherine Taine-Cheikh
Résumé Il existe, dans le sud-ouest de la Mauritanie, un îlot de locuteurs parlant une variété de berbère appelée le zénaga. Dans cet îlot, devenu entièrement bilingue, la pratique de l’arabe ḥassāniyya est devenue beaucoup plus courante que celle du berbère et ne cesse de se renforcer. L’article comporte trois parties après l’introduction. La première, consacrée à la situation actuelle des zénagophones
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Miini – A Lonely Bantu Outpost in the Vast North Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-08-02 Derek Nurse, Alessandra Vianello
The article deals with Miini, spoken in the town of Brava. Some regard it as a northern Swahili dialect, others view it as a closely related language. The town and its speech form have existed for probably a millennium. During most of that period it flourished, surrounded by a community or communities speaking southern Somali dialects. When the Somali central government collapsed in 1991 it was invaded
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Sandawe Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-08-02 Helen Eaton
The Sandawe language community in Tanzania is surrounded by languages from different African language families, yet retains a special distinctiveness in this context by virtue of its unusual phonology and its status as a relic of the original inhabitants of the area. It is also noteworthy how long the Sandawe situation has endured and how this has been possible. This paper examines the reasons for
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Temi – A Survivor in Difficult Sea Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-08-02 Derek Nurse, Christine Derungs
This article treats the Bantu language Temi, sometimes called Gitemi or Sonjo. The Temi language island is 125 kilometres from the nearest Bantu community and completely surrounded by historically hostile Maasai communities. As far as we know, Maasai were preceded by other non-Bantu communities for most of the last millennium. Community and language are both in good shape: in 1928 the population was
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The Chukchi Influence on Chaplinski Yupik Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-07-31 Anastasia Panova
Chaplinski Yupik (also often referred to as Siberian Yupik), a critically endangered Eskimo language spoken on the Bering coast in the north-eastern Siberia, shows numerous traces of language contact with Chukchi. A striking example is Chaplinski Yupik personal names, a significant part of which have Chukchi origin. In this study Chaplinski Yupik names are analyzed based on the genealogies of Chaplinski
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The Dynamics of Multilingualism in an Arctic Language Ecology Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-07-31 Lenore A. Grenoble, Marina Imeeva-Kysylbaikova, Ninel Malysheva, Aitalina Timofeeva, Antonina Vinokurova
The Dolgan language is a Turkic variety, closely related to Sakha but differing from it due to contact, primarily with Evenki (Tungusic). We analyze the linguistic identity of translocal Dolgan communities in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) in the Anabar District, which is home to a minority of the larger group of Dolgan people. Linguistically, Anabar Dolgan is best classified as a northern Sakha variety
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Even Kinship Terminology, Society and Language Contact Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-07-31 Alexandra Lavrillier, Dejan Matić
The paper analyses on the basis of new fielddata the transformations of kinship terminologies in three Even dialects which have come about through cultural and linguistic contacts. We investigate two possible sources of change. First, the adaptation of kinship terminology to the ways of subsistence, such that, e.g., hunting and gathering cultures preferably use one, while herding cultures prefer other
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Incorporation as a Grammaticalization Pathway Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-07-31 Jessica Kantarovich
In addition to canonical noun incorporation, Chukchi exhibits other kinds of incorporating morphology that are consistent with polysynthesis but have seldom been considered as part of a unified morphological phenomenon. This paper examines different patterns of incorporation in Chukchi across time and asks: what are the useful loci of variation for typological comparison, how do these distinct patterns
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Recent Contact-Induced Morphosyntactic Changes in the Lower Kolyma Region Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-07-31 Dejan Matić, Irina Nikolaeva
The paper deals with recent contact-induced changes in the grammar of two languages of the Lower Kolyma tundra, Tundra Yukaghir (TY) and Lower Kolyma Even (LKE). The morphosyntax of these languages has undergone a rather strong influence from Sakha in the course of the 20th century. The investigation focusses on the structural copying of Sakha patterns into TY and LKE, which resulted in the emergence
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The Tundra Yukaghir Language in a Multilingual Environment Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-07-31 Maria Pupynina, Nikolai Vakhtin
The article presents the results of a longitudinal study of the language situation in a multilingual village of Andryushkino (northeast of the Sakha Republic). It is one of two localities where the endangered Tundra Yukaghir (TY) language is still used. Data on TY proficiency were collected in this village by one of the authors in 1987 and then, 35 years later, by the other author in 2022. In both
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Layers of Lexical Borrowing in Long-Term Contact Rooted among Ancient Crops from Mali’s Bandiagara Region Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-07-31 Abbie Hantgan
In this research, the People and Plants method illuminates language interactions in Eastern Mali’s Bandiagara Region. Home to six linguistic groups, the Bandiagara Escarpment has sheltered two populations for at least 800 years, though their pre-cliff origins are unclear. Historical empires might have driven them to this defensible terrain, with fertile lands anchoring them. Notably, evidence points
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Linguistic Variability across Four Generations of Basque Spanish Speakers Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-07-31 Ager Gondra
The present study uses the apparent-time construct to analyze cross-generational variability of the preverbal double negation construction (i.e., yo tampoco no voy a la fiesta ‘I’m not going to the party either’), traditionally cited as a regional characteristic of the Spanish spoken in the Basque Country. An acceptability judgment task and a semi-structured interview were carried out among four different
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Mouthing Constructions in 37 Signed Languages Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-07-31 Felicia Bisnath
The descriptive contribution of this paper is a typology of mouthing constructions in 37 signed languages and an analysis of the ideologies and resources that affect their documentation. The languages are divided into two categories labelled deaf (n=26) and rural (n=11), that are defined based on socio-historical/-cultural properties, but which have been problematised for their conflation of multiple
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Variable Contrast in Border Uruguayan Spanish /b/ Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-07-31 Michael Gradoville, Mark Waltermire, Julie Engelhardt
This study addresses variation in the realization of intervocalic /b/ in the Spanish of Rivera, Uruguay, a border community that is bilingual in Portuguese and Spanish. While Spanish has one phoneme that corresponds to the graphemes ⟨b⟩ and ⟨v⟩, which is normally realized as an approximant or deleted intervocalically, Portuguese contrasts a voiced bilabial stop phoneme /b/ with a voiced labiodental
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Contact, Diffusion and Divergence Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-03-22 Shobha Satyanath
The study discusses the outcomes of the contact and diffusion in two contact varieties of Assamese with respect to classifiers. The findings suggest that while classifiers have remained remarkably stable in their characteristics in Assamese over the past 160 years, during the same period, one of the contact varieties (Nagamese) has significantly diverged from the source language, and the other variety
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Hebrew Loanwords in Two Rural Dialects of Arabic in Israel Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-03-22 Duaa Abu Elhija
This study examines loanwords from Hebrew into Arabic in the spoken language of people from Iksal village, in the lower Galilee and Um Al-Fahm city, in the Triangle region in Israel. The current study specifically examines borrowing in spoken language, with a comparison of the current findings with a previous research by Abu Elhija (2017), where the data was taken from online writings on Facebook.
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Loanwords in Basic Vocabulary as an Indicator of Borrowing Profiles Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-03-22 Mervi de Heer, Rogier Blokland, Michael Dunn, Outi Vesakoski
Loanwords carry information on linguistic interactions, and can also reveal (pre-)historical population contacts. The contact history of a particular language family is an essential component of historical linguistics, but it is also illuminating for integrative studies of the human past. However, data availability and the time-consuming nature of etymology mean that comprehensive research on loanword
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On Middle Persian Interference in Early Arabic Prose Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2024-03-22 Luca D’Anna, Adam Benkato
This paper discusses agreement patterns in Kalīla wa-Dimna, a collection of animal fables translated from Middle Persian to Arabic in the 8th century CE by Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ and considered one of the masterpieces of early Arabic prose. It advances the hypothesis that the text bears traces of interference from the L1 of its translator, Middle Persian. Kalīla wa-Dimna features agreement patterns unattested
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Beyond Segment Inventories: Phonological Complexity Measures and Suprasegmental Variables in Contact Situations Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-12-29 Ricardo Napoleão de Souza, Kaius Sinnemäki
This article has three goals. First, it provides a broad cross-linguistic survey of phonological change in contact situations focusing on the suprasegmental domain. The term suprasegmental refers here to syllable structure, stress patterns, tonal patterns, and vowel and nasal harmony systems. Secondly, it assesses phonological change to suprasegmental variables whereby external influence causes an
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Colexification of ‘Enough’, ‘Able’ and ‘Until’ in Tok Pisin and Papapana: Independent or Contact-induced Change? Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-12-29 Ellen Smith-Dennis
Considerable research has concerned the influence of Papua New Guinea’s Oceanic languages on the development of the pidgin/creole Tok Pisin, but little research has considered linguistic influence in the opposite direction. This paper adds to both bodies of research by investigating whether the colexification of ‘enough’, ‘able’ and ‘until’ in Papapana (Oceanic) and Tok Pisin results from internal
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Kin Term Borrowings in the World’s Languages Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-12-29 Terhi Honkola, Fiona M. Jordan
The universality of kinship terms means they are regarded, like much basic vocabulary, as resistant to borrowing. Kin term borrowings are documented at varying frequencies, but their role in the dynamics of change in this core social domain is understudied. We investigated the dimensions and the sociolinguistic contexts of kinship borrowings with 50 kinship categories from a global sample of 32 languages
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La prononciation du français au Burundi: influence du français de Belgique et du kirundi Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-12-29 Gélase Nimbona, Anne Catherine Simon
French in Burundi offers an interesting case of language contact: speakers have Kirundi as their first language and French imported during the colonial era was the variety spoken in Belgium, which does not share all the features of reference French. In this study, we analyze a corpus of 12 speakers (including 4 women; mean age 38.5) producing different speaking styles collected according to the methodology
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A Typological and Diachronic Analysis of Replication: Body-Part Reflexives in Romance-Lexifier Pidgins and Creoles Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-12-29 Iker Salaberri, Anne C. Wolfsgruber
The fact that body-part reflexives (bpr s) are widespread in Romance-lexifier pidgin, creole and mixed (pcm) languages of the Atlantic area has usually been accounted for in terms of substratum influence from West African languages, in which such reflexives are common. However, this approach does not explain why bpr s are also frequently found in Romance-lexifier pcm languages like Zamboanga Chavacano
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Adapting Methods of Language Documentation To Multilingual Settings Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-05-25 Jeff Good
Commonly recommended methods for documenting endangered languages are built around the assumption that a given documentary project will focus on a single language rather than a multilingual ecology. This hinders the potential usability of documentary materials for the study of language contact. Research in domains such as ethnography and sociolinguistics has developed conceptual and analytical tools
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Documenting Multilingual Language Practices and the Erasure of Language Boundaries Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-05-25 Isabelle Léglise
Although we know multilingualism is the norm, most previous work has focused on languages as self-contained entities. Research on language contact mostly assumes bounded languages or repertoires: most studies presuppose contact between stable “communities” and the identifiability of specific languages in bilingual (sometimes plurilingual) corpora. Similarly, language annotation in corpus linguistics
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Documenting Multilingualism and Contact Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-05-25 Lenore A. Grenoble, Jack B. Martin
In order to understand why languages become endangered, linguists must shift from documenting the last fluent speakers to documenting the larger ecology of language use in an area. The papers in this special issue all address different aspects of documenting language multilingualism. They address three related topics: (1) consideration of the state of multilingualism in endangered language ecologies;
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A Micro-Typology of Contact Effects in Four Tibeto-Burman Languages Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-05-25 Kristine A. Hildebrandt, Oliver Bond, Dubi Nanda Dhakal
When minority languages with similar typological profiles are in long-term contact with a genealogically unrelated socioeconomically dominant language, the perfect context is provided for investigating which observed contact effects are demonstrably allied to sociolinguistic dynamics rather than purely structural ones. This paper investigates the factors determining the different extent of contact
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Multilingual Language Ideological Assemblages: Language Contact, Documentation and Revitalization Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-05-25 Paul V. Kroskrity
Data from long-term research in two ideologically divergent Native American linguistic communities demonstrate the importance, first, of indigenous multilingualisms and, second, of distinctive ideologies of multilingualism in shaping the divergent language contact outcomes and practices of those communities as they adapted to such forces as economic incorporation, colonization, assimilationist policies
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Reappraising Survey Tools in the Study of Multilingualism: Lessons From Contexts of Small-Scale Multilingualism Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2023-05-25 Pierpaolo Di Carlo
Surveys can allow for the collection of non-speech data in a relatively short time and might benefit field linguists working in contexts of language contact. Existing survey models broadly share a basic structure embodying ways of understanding speakers and contexts of interaction that are ultimately derived from diglossia theory. By attempting a critical analysis of the ideological foundations of
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Contact-Induced Language Change: the Case of Mixtec Adverbial Clauses Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2022-11-23 Jesus Olguin Martinez
It is now clear that languages not-genetically related can come to share syntactic structures that were not necessarily borrowed directly in their modern forms. Although it can be challenging to spot these structures, striking similarities in certain patterns and in fine details of usage may shed light on this process. Not only may spotting the patterns be a difficult task, but also establishing the
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Continuity and Change in Modern Nahuatl Word Formation Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2022-11-23 Szymon Gruda
The paper presents an analysis of Nahuatl coinages for six artifacts: ‘bicycle,’ ‘car,’ ‘clock,’ ‘key,’ ‘pen,’ and ‘umbrella,’ as attested in interviews with speakers from four communities in Mexico. These artifacts have been selected because of their shared characteristics: the terms for them do not belong to the core vocabulary; they tend to be referred to with Spanish loanwords or with terms created
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Continuity and Change in New Dialect Formation: Tú vs. Usted in New York City Spanish Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2022-11-23 Víctor Fernández-Mallat, Michael Newman
This study uses an innovative translation task method to explore second person singular (2ps) address patterns in New York City Spanish (nycs), a new dialect that formed in contact with English and among multiple dialects of Spanish. Results reveal more continuity than disruption in address choice with source varieties of Spanish, unlike some other diasporic language communities that show radical simplification
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The Lesser Antillean Origins of Guianese Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2022-11-23 Mikael Parkvall, Bart Jacobs
This paper investigates the origins of Guianese French Creole. Whereas the existing literature assumes Guianese was formed in situ, we argue the creole is in fact genetically related to Lesser Antillean French Creole. We support our hypothesis by means of a range of comparative linguistic data. Furthermore, a historical framework is provided that accounts for linguistic transfer from the Lesser Antilles
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Passing the Test of Split: Israbic-A New Mixed Language Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2022-11-23 Afifa Eve Kheir
Israbic is a language variety that is spoken by a majority of the Druze community in Israel and is characterised by a mixture of Israeli Hebrew and Palestinian Arabic. Longitudinal data of Palestinian Arabic/Israeli Hebrew code-switching from the Israeli Druze community collected in 2000, 2017 and 2018 indicate that Israbic went through a gradual process of language mixing. The process started with
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Similarity in Language Transfer – Investigating Transfer of Light Verb Constructions From Dutch to German Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2022-11-23 Marie Barking, Ad Backus, Maria Mos
Bilingual speakers of typologically closely related languages tend to frequently experience language transfer, which suggests that similarity between languages is likely to play an important role in the transfer process. In this paper, we explore how three different types of similarity affect transfer of light verb constructions (lvc s), such as take a walk or set an alarm, from Dutch to German by
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Gender Agreement in Correntino Spanish Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2022-08-30 Justin Pinta
This article provides qualitative and quantitative analyses of variable gender agreement in Correntino Spanish, the variety of Spanish spoken by both Spanish-Guarani bilinguals and Correntino Spanish monolinguals in the province of Corrientes, Argentina. Drawing on data collected from fieldwork in the province, it will be shown that this variation is conditioned by distance effects and modifier class
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The Gulf of Guinea Proto-Creole and Its Daughter Languages: From Liquid Consonants to Complex Onsets and Vowel Lengthening Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2022-08-30 Manuele Bandeira, Gabriel Antunes de Araujo, Thomas Finbow
Four Portuguese-based Creoles are spoken on the islands in the Gulf of Guinea: Santome, Angolar, Lung’Ie, and Fa d’Ambô. These languages are descendants of the Portuguese-based Gulf of Guinea Proto-Creole, which emerged at the beginning of the sixteenth century on São Tomé Island. Based on Bandeira (2017), we discuss the development of liquid consonants in Santome, Lung’Ie, Angolar and Fa d’Ambô using
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A Historical Morphology of Western Karaim: The Two Pluperfect Tenses in Diachronic and Areal Perspective Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2022-08-30 Michał Németh
This article is a continuation of the analysis of the Karaim -p edi- past tense presented, for the first time in scholarly literature, in Németh (2015). In the latter paper, this verbal category was described on the basis of a few South-Western Karaim examples, only, and was termed plusquamperfectum ii. In this paper the description of its semantic scope has been refined based on an analysis of recently
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Labialization of Word-Final Nasals in Yucatecan Spanish and Yucatec Maya: Language Contact, Prosodic Prominence Marking, and Local Identity Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2022-08-30 Melanie Uth
This paper provides a comparative analysis of word-final nasals in Yucatecan Spanish and Yucatec Maya based on speech data from Quintana Roo (Mexico). In Yucatecan Spanish, a nasal is often pronounced as [m] if placed at the end of a word (e.g., Yucatá[m] instead of Yucatá[n]). Since this phenomenon is widespread on the Yucatán Peninsula, but largely unknown in other Spanish-speaking regions, it is
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Latin and Romance Influence on the Basque Verbal Morphosyntax Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2022-08-30 Mikel Martínez-Areta
Basque is the only non-Indo-European language in western Europe. This fact, and particularly its ergative alignment, make its morphosyntactic structure and its verb different from those of Standard Average European. However, the massive and prolonged influence which Basque has received first from Latin and later from Romance has conditioned the layout of the analytic vps (the open type) in a very curious
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Macanese Negation in Comparative Perspective: Typology and Ecology Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2022-08-30 Giorgio Francesco Arcodia
Macanese, the near-extinct Portuguese creole of Macao, is an Asian Portuguese Creole language closely related to Malaccan Papia Kristang. In this paper, I argue that a distinctive feature of Macanese vis-à-vis other Asian Portuguese Creoles is its system of negation; specifically, its usage of the negators nunca and nádi. Negators deriving from Portuguese nunca ‘never’ and não há-de ‘shall not’ are
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Vocabulary-Based Classification and Contact-Induced Formation of Neologisms in Two Standard Varieties of Karelian Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2022-08-30 Susanna Tavi, Lauri Tavi
This paper investigates the lexical similarities and formation of neologisms of two written standard varieties of Karelian, North and Livvi Karelian, spoken in the Republic of Karelia, Russia. Firstly, a naïve Bayes statistical model was generated to classify North and Livvi Karelian newspaper texts automatically. Secondly, the word formation strategies of neologisms from the classified newspaper texts
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Emerging Phonology Under Language Contact: The Case of Sino-Russian Idiolects Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2021-12-14 Zygmunt Frajzyngier, Natalia Gurian, Sergei Karpenko
The main aim of this study is to examine what kind of phonological system emerges because of language contact wherein adult speakers of L1 (Chinese) attempt to speak L2 (Russian) without any previous instruction in L2. The main findings of this study are as follows: a) The speakers of L1 largely adopt the phonetic inventory and phonotactics of L2 and b) the only underlying (distinctive) features in
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Factors Affecting Language Proficiency in Heritage Language: The Case of Young Russian Heritage Speakers in Spain Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2021-12-14 Tamara Vorobyeva, Aurora Bel
This study focuses on the issue of language proficiency attainment among young heritage speakers of Russian living in Spain and examines factors that have been claimed to promote heritage language proficiency, namely, age, gender, age of onset to L2, quantity of exposure and family language use. A group of 30 Russian-Spanish-Catalan trilingual children aged 7–11 participated in the study. In order
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Final Vowel Loss in Lower Kasai Bantu (drc) as a Contact-Induced Change Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2021-12-14 Sara Pacchiarotti, Koen Bostoen
In this article, we present a qualitative and quantitative comparative account of Final Vowel Loss (fvl) in the Bantu languages of the Lower Kasai region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We argue that this diachronic sound shift rose relatively late in Bantu language history as a contact-induced change and affected adjacent West-Coastal and Central-Western Bantu languages belonging to different
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Numeral Classifiers in Udi: A Unique Contact-Induced Development among Nakh-Daghestanian? Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2021-12-14 Timur Maisak
Following study of small-inventory classifier systems in a number of Indo-European, Turkic, Kartvelian and Semitic languages of the Araxes-Iran Linguistic Area, the paper presents an account of numeral classifiers in Udi, a Nakh-Daghestanian (Lezgic) language spoken in northern Azerbaijan. Being a peripheral member of the linguistic area in question, Udi possesses an even more reduced version of a
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On the Borrowability of Body Parts Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2021-12-14 Kelsie Pattillo
Within recent years, quantitative cross-linguistic research has shown that body parts are one of the least borrowed semantic fields (Tadmor and Haspelmath, ; ; ). With body parts showing many similarities to closed classes, it is simple to assume there is little motivation for a language to borrow body part terms into its lexicon. Yet, despite its lower percentage of borrowings cross-linguistically
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When Language Contact Says Nothing: A Contrastive Analysis of Queísta Structures in Two Varieties of Peninsular Spanish Journal of Language Contact (IF 0.5) Pub Date : 2021-12-14 José Luis Blas Arroyo
Based on the existence of some structural conflict between Spanish and Catalan in certain points of the syntax, this study tests the hypothesis about the influence of the latter on the distribution of queísmo uses (‘Me alegro que vengas’ [‘I’m glad you come’]) in the Spanish spoken in an eastern peninsular variety in contact with Catalan. Using the tools of comparative sociolinguistics, and the analysis