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Language Variation and Change: Prof. Dr. Marianne Hundt Wintersemester 2005/06
Language Variation and Change: Prof. Dr. Marianne Hundt Wintersemester 2005/06
Language contact
Prof. Dr. Marianne Hundt Wintersemester 2005/06
Intra-lingustic reasons
u Rule
contact
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Language Contact
(a) Types of language contact
hostile vs. benign (conquest vs. migration) short-lived vs. long-term mediated vs. direct
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Pidgin
Pidgins are formed by two mutually unintelligible speech communities attempting to communicate, each successively approximating to the more obvious features of the others language. [A pidgin is a language] with a markedly reduced grammatical structure, lexicon, and stylistic range, compared with other languages, and which is the native language of no one.
(Crystal, 1980:264)
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Creole
A creole is a pidgin language which has become the mother-tongue variety of a speech community, as is the case in Jamaica, Haiti, []. The process of creolisation expands the structural and stylistic range of the pidginised language, such that the creolised language becomes comparable in formal and functional complexity to other languages.
(Crystal, 1980:89)
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Language birth
Tok Pisin (pidgin stage) mi go I go yu go you go mi lukim yu I see you yu lukim mi you see me Tok Pisin (creolisation) baimbai you go you will go bambai yu go bai yu go yu bai go grammaticalisation yu bego
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Language death
u individual
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Last speakers
Nettle&Romaine (2000)
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Last speakers
Nettle&Romaine (2000)
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Last speakers
Nettle&Romaine (2000)
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Language death
u individual
vs. community level u loss vs. death u death, suicide, murder (Nettle&Romaine) u gradual death, sudden death, radical death, bottom-to-top death (Mesthrie, 2000)
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Recommended Reading
Aitchison, Jean. 1991. Language Birth. How Languages Begin. In: ibid. Language Change: Progress or Decay? Cambridge: CUP. p. 180-196. Crystal, David. 2000. Language Death. Cambridge: CUP. Nettle, Daniel and Suzanne Romaine. 2000. Vanishing Voices: The Extinction of the Worlds Languages. Oxford: OUP. Sankoff, Gillian. 2002. Linguistic Outcomes of Language Contact. In Chambers et al. Handbook of Language Variation and Change. Oxford: Blackwell. pp. 638-659. Thomason, Sarah. 2001. Language Contact: An Introduction. Washington D.C.: Georgetown University Press.
VL Language Variation and Change Prof. Dr. M. Hundt WS 2005/06 15
Conclusion
Prof. Dr. Marianne Hundt Wintersemester 2005/06
linguistic variable
social variable
possible outcome
stable variation
language variation
possible outcome
(ongoing) change
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Sociolinguistic competence
u u u u u
repertoire of individual members of a speech community include different varieties of the same language variation described in terms of region, social class, gender, age and ethnicity language acquisition also means: learning how to use varieties of the same language appropriately knowledge involves knowing about the relative status and function of different varieties in the community speakers of a non-standard variety need to acquire knowledge of the standard language as part of their repertoire/ sociolinguistic competence
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Sociolinguistic dimensions
u solidarity
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Sociolinguistic universals
u solidarity
+ status/power + formality
u status/power
u functions
+ solidarity + power
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