Language Variation And Contact Induced Change

This collection of original contributions dealing with Hispanic contact linguistics covers an array of Spanish dialects distributed across North, South, and Central America, the Caribbean, the Iberian Peninsula, and the Bosporus. It deals with both native and non-native varieties of the language, and includes both synchronic and diachronic studies. The volume addresses, and challenges, current theoretical assumptions on the nature of language variation and contact-induced change through empirically-based linguistic research. The sustained contact between Spanish and other languages in different parts of the world has given rise to a wide number of changes in the language, which are driven by a concomitance of different linguistic and social processes. This collection of articles provides new insight into such phenomena across the Spanish-speaking world.

This volume is at the cross-roads between two research traditions dealing with language change: contact linguistics and language variation and change. It starts out from the notion that linguistic variation is still a little researched area in most contact-induced language change studies. Intending to fill this gap, it offers a rich panorama of case studies and approaches dealing with linguistic variation in contact settings. It concentrates both on monolingual data, tracing variation and contact beneath surface homogeneity, and on bilingual data such as code-switching and other forms of variation, to trace their underlying regularities. It investigates the relationship between variation and change in language contact settings. The book will be relevant for students and researchers in contact linguistics, sociolinguistics, language variation and change, sociology of language, descriptive linguistics and linguistic typology.

This volume offers a synthesis of current expertise on contact-induced change in Arabic and its neighbours, with thirty chapters written by many of the leading experts on this topic. Its purpose is to showcase the current state of knowledge regarding the diverse outcomes of contacts between Arabic and other languages, in a format that is both accessible and useful to Arabists, historical linguists, and students of language contact.

Reflecting a multitude of developments in the study of language change and variation over the last ten years, this extensively updated second edition features a number of new chapters and remains the authoritative reference volume on a core research area in linguistics. A fully revised and expanded edition of this acclaimed reference work, which has established its reputation based on its unrivalled scope and depth of analysis in this interdisciplinary field Includes seven new chapters, while the remainder have undergone thorough revision and updating to incorporate the latest research and reflect numerous developments in the field Accessibly structured by theme, covering topics including data collection and evaluation, linguistic structure, language and time, language contact, language domains, and social differentiation Brings together an experienced, international editorial and contributor team to provides an unrivalled learning, teaching and reference tool for researchers and students in sociolinguistics

Open publication The volume deals with previously undescribed morphosyntactic variations and changes appearing in settings involving language contact. Contact-induced changes are defined as dynamic and multiple, involving internal change as well as historical and sociolinguistic factors. A variety of explanations are identified and their relationships are analyzed. Only a multifaceted methodology enables this fine-grained approach to contact-induced change. A range of methodologies are proposed, but the chapters generally have their roots in a typological perspective. The contributors recognize the precautionary principle: for example, they emphasize the difficulty of studying languages that have not been described adequately and for which diachronic data are not extensive or reliable. Three main perspectives on contact-induced language change are presented. The first explores the role of multilingual speakers in contact-induced language change, especially their spontaneous innovations in discourse. The second explores the differences between ordinary contact-induced change and change in endangered languages. The third discusses various aspects of the relationship between contact-induced change and internal change.

Analysis of bilinguals' use of two languages reveals highly adept code-switching: alternating between languages while keeping intact the separate grammars.

This volume serves to illustrate the promising insights to be gained when cross-fertilizing Cognitive Linguistics and contact linguistics, which each hold crucial ingredients to an encompassing study of contact-induced variation and change. Combining the study of the individual mind with the study of shared context, bridging research on experience and perspective with research on variation and change, and tackling the methodological complexities that this empirical approach to mental categorization entails, help us determine how the meaningful units that make up language are categorized and structured in the bi- and multilingual mind and, by extension, in any human mind. Together, the ten papers in this volume reveal the complexities of the interaction between usage, meaning and mind in contact-induced variation and change, which we hope will inspire future research exploring the possibilities of the cross-fertilization we have labeled Cognitive Contact Linguistics.

Every language has been influenced in some way by other languages. In many cases, this influence is reflected in words which have been absorbed from other languages as the names for newer items or ideas, such as perestroika, manga, or intifada (from Russian, Japanese, and Arabic respectively). In other cases, the influence of other languages goes deeper, and includes the addition of new sounds, grammatical forms, and idioms to the pre-existing language. For example, English's structure has been shaped in such a way by the effects of Norse, French, Latin, and Celtic--though English is not alone in its openness to these influences. Any features can potentially be transferred from one language to another if the sociolinguistic and structural circumstances allow for it. Further, new languages--pidgins, creoles, and mixed languages--can come into being as the result of language contact. In thirty-three chapters, The Oxford Handbook of Language Contact examines the various forms of contact-induced linguistic change and the levels of language which have provided instances of these influences. In addition, it provides accounts of how language contact has affected some twenty languages, spoken and signed, from all parts of the world. Chapters are written by experts and native-speakers from years of research and fieldwork. Ultimately, this Handbook provides an authoritative account of the possibilities and products of contact-induced linguistic change.

Modern contact linguistics has primarily focused on contact between languages that are genetically unrelated and structurally distant. This compendium of articles looks instead at the effects of pre–existing structural congruency between the affected languages at the time of their initial contact, using the Romance and Slavic languages as examples. In contact of this kind, both genetic and typological similarities play a part.