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Sin1 先 as a function word in contemporary Cantonese encodes a number of grammatical and pragmatic meanings. As its most prominent feature in syntax, it predominantly occurs in the postverbal position while indicating the meaning of ‘first’. This paper explores the emergence of the postverbal sin1 先 ‘first’ in Cantonese. We first examine the word order typology on the element for ‘first’ in the languages and dialects of southern coastal China. In this linguistic area, the postverbal elements for ‘first’ in Chinese dialects are contact-induced by Tai-Kadai and Hmong-Mien languages; whereas sin1 先 ‘first’ in the mainstream Cantonese shows a stronger tendency to be placed in the postverbal position than its counterparts in other Chinese dialects. We then discuss the word order and semantic changes of sin1 先 from 1820s to 1960s based on Cantonese historical materials. Besides the pressure of language contact, the formation of the postverbal sin1 先 ‘first’ has been further triggered by the semantic motivation to formally differentiate the ‘precedent-subsequent’ polysemy within sin1 先 itself. In short, the emergence of the postverbal sin1 先 ‘first’ in Cantonese has been a two-stage process, dually driven by external and internal causes, respectively.

This paper analyzes the properties of the Present Perfect in Barranquenho/Barranqueño, a contact variety spoken in the southern border of Portugal and Spain. In this variety, the Present Perfect displays a mixed structure: while the forms of auxiliary and participle are from Portuguese, its range of interpretations is not attested in Portuguese but rather in Spanish. As in other domains of the grammar of Barranquenho that have been studied, the Present Perfect displays features attributable to Portuguese and to Spanish. These findings are discussed against hypotheses regarding the emergence of this contact variety as well as the theoretical debate concerning the relation between language contact and second language acquisition.

The Scanian dialect of Middle Danish underwent a range of changes and reductions in its case system. I argue that these changes were caused neither by phonological developments nor by language contact as often assumed, but by multiple processes of grammaticalisation. The present paper focuses on one of these factors: that the relatively predictable constituent order within the Middle Danish noun phrase made case marking redundant in its function of marking noun-phrase internal agreement between head and modifier(s). This redundancy caused the case system to undergo a regrammation where the indexical sign relations changed so that the expression of morphological case no longer indicated this noun-phrase-internal agreement, leaving only topology (as well as morphologically marked number and gender agreement) as markers of this type of agreement. This factor contributed to the subsequent degrammation of the entire case system.

Selibu is a Mandarin-Khams Tibetan mixed language with about 900 native speakers in northwest Yunnan, People’s Republic of China. As a Form-Semantics mixed language, it derives most of its lexicon and grammatical morphemes from Southwest Mandarin and borrows its morphosyntactic and semantic structure from Alangu Tibetan. This article examines the contact-induced emergence of a five-category complex evidential system in Selibu with a detailed comparison with its source system in the model language, Alangu Tibetan. Our discussion focuses on the hybrid features of Selibu evidentiality in both forms and functions and also on its structural formation, which does not represent a Form-Semantics mixed type in this particular domain.

The research focuses on the interaction of the Lithuanian and Belarusian languages in thesurroundings of Radun (Belarus, Voranava district, Lith. Rodūnia). Employing the language changemethodology, the paper presents a detailed analysis of the most prominent cases of phonetic interference oftwo – old and middle – generations of residents in both languages spoken by them.The data show that the oldest residents are expressing both languages using the Lithuanian articulatory base. Over time, the characteristic Lithuanian features begin to level: varies the pronunciation of a; in open endings, the long tense vowels i, ы are usually pronounced as é; unstressed vowels are reduced inconsistently, etc.As Lithuanian is for the middle-generation speakers, it already demonstrates essential changes, whichoccurred because they started expressing their Lithuanian using the Belarusian articulatory base. First of all, they usually lengthen stressed short vowels; they do no longer pronounce unstressed long vowels; they donot distinguish between acute – or circumflex-accented mixed i, u + R type diphthongs; the distinction between the falling and rising diphthongs ai, au, is made based on phonetic, not accentual, factors; the palatalised dental consonants t, d are replaced by the palatalised velar consonants k, g.

The article deals with the description of language interference as the main process in creating the regional identity of the Russian language in Donbass. The relevance of the work is determined by the fact that it is the first attempt to identify the role and forms of language interference in the formation of a regiolect, moreover, the object of research of the processes of language systems interaction is the Donetsk diffuse regiolect, which arose on the South Russian language base as a result of interference of closely related languages and regiolects. The stated subject involves the identification of types, zones, models and participants of interference interaction. The purpose of the article is to determine the sources and results of language interference that occurred during the formation of the Donetsk diffuse regiolect. The author uses general scientific and linguistic methods and techniques for analyzing regionalisms, in particular, comparative, descriptive methods, methods of collecting and processing sociolinguistic data, specialized methods for determining regionalisms. The use of basic methods of analysis and synthesis, as well as the observation method when considering Donetsk language phenomena, allowed the author to determine the Russian basis of the Donetsk regiolect, its diffuse nature, to justify the implementation in regional modifying the “interference absorption” model of external (different language and different regiolect) and internal (idiom) language phenomena, to establish the language zones of interference interaction, the main language systems that participated in the formation of the Donetsk regiolect, and the degree of their participation in this process. The obtained theoretical conclusions can be used in the study of the regiolects of the territories of late settlement, formed on the basis of closely related languages and regiolects, for example, Russian and Ukrainian, Russian and Belorussian, etc.

Turkic kinship terminologies represent a mixture of words of native and foreign origin, and the proportion of loanwords reflects the degree of linguistic and cultural interference between the Turkic and other Eurasian languages. As the intensity of socio-cultural relations between languages and communities increases, the proportion of loanwords in kinship vocabulary also increases. This paper provides an overview of historical, linguistic, and cultural aspects of kinship loanwords in the Turkic languages.The paper covers the following eight kinds of kin types in the Turkic languages: (1) parents, (2) siblings, (3) cousins, (4) children, (5) grandparents, (6) uncles/aunts, (7) nephews/nieces, (8) grandchildren. Due to the fact that in the conventional Turkic system of kinship, which is especially well-represented in pre-modern Turkic languages, two or three of these kins may be merged in one single term on the basis of generation and lineage branch, kinship loanwords examined are ordered by this criterion.

As observed by Koptjevskaja-Tamm and Liljegren, the impact of language contact on grammatical typology is well recognized, but the field of lexico-semantic areal typology is still young. Here some mechanisms leading to an areal pattern are explored in the domain of certain sets of basic verbs in languages indigenous to the North American West. The patterns involve the apparent evocation, as part of the meanings of the common verbs, of certain features of the most immediately involved participant, particularly number, animacy, shape, and/or consistency. Two mechanisms apparently underlie the areal patterns. First, bilinguals accustomed to distinguishing such features lexically in verbs in one of their languages may simply choose more specific verbs in another language on a regular basis until, over time, original hyponyms come to be basic level terms. Second, shadows of compounding and derivation can be seen in some pairs of verbs in some languages. Patterns elsewhere in the language or in a neighbor can stimulate such formations and accelerate their lexicalization, ultimately blurring their internal structure and hastening their ascent to basic-level status.

While many studies have employed variationist methods to examine longitudinal changes in the English intensifier system, to date, no variationist studies have tackled the intensifier system of Old English. By providing a critical view of this system at an earlier stage in the history of the English language, the present study adds to the long tradition of scholarship on intensifiers while providing new insight into their diachronic development. Despite its antiquity, several parallels can be drawn with the intensifier system at later stages in the language. Both internal and external factors are found to constrain this system, with predicative adjectives favoring intensification over attributive adjectives, prose texts having higher intensification rates than verse texts, Latin-based texts having higher intensification rates than vernacular texts, and the rate of intensification increasing over time. The quantitative analysis of the Old English system also increases the time depth necessary for a more detailed reflection on the diachronic recycling, replacement, and renewal of intensifiers. Language contact and borrowing are also postulated as driving forces of innovation and replacement in earlier stages of the English language.

Post-verbal markers of negation were once thought to be rare cross-linguistically, but as more has been learned about more languages, it has become clear that such markers occur in a number of parts of the world. Moreover, they often appear in areal clusters, suggesting that language contact may play a role in their development. Such a cluster can be seen in a well-known linguistic area of North America, Indigenous Northern California. Languages in the area show parallel negative constructions, but without shared substance. Here it is shown how such parallelisms may have come about.

Aims and objectives/purposes/research questions: The aim of the article is to describe what language contact phenomena are present. The research questions are as follows: (a) what types of code-switching (CS) are at work; (b) is there any preference for any particular type of CS; and (c) what Jewish (seemingly) monolingual songs in Slavic languages can tell us about contact varieties of Slavic used by Jews. Design/methodology/approach: Collecting texts of Yiddish–Slavic and Jewish folk songs in Slavic languages; and qualitative analysis of CS and structural change. Data and analysis: Sixty-two Slavic–Yiddish texts were chosen from Jewish songs’ collections and CS instances analysed. Findings/conclusions: Both insertions and alternations are present but alternations are preferred. There is an asymmetry between Yiddish insertions into Slavic (nouns) and Slavic insertions into Yiddish (all parts of speech). Alternations may be just renditions of the same meaning in another language but most often they play the same role as in naturalistic speech described in the literature on multilingual communication (change of topic, addressee, etc.). Originality: Previous research on multilingual Jewish songs concentrated on the choice of languages and interpretation of the symbolic role that each language plays but not structural analysis of multilingual texts. Significance/implications: Now that some tendencies are identified, it remains to be seen whether naturalistic Yiddish–Slavic speech exhibits the same patterns of CS.

The Proto-Slavic etyma *dъska, *misa, and *bļudo (*bļudъ), which are semantically related, are generally regarded as borrowings, but there is no consensus on the exact origins of these nouns. Following surveys of the Old Church Slavic and Gothic evidence as well as of the distribution of the etyma in Slavic, the article discusses the merits and drawbacks of the various existing views. It is argued that *dъska, *misa are best regarded as borrowings from Vulgar Latin or Early Romance, while *bļudo (*bļudъ) must have been borrowed from Germanic, but not from Gothic or West Germanic.

Gottscheerisch, a Southern Bavarian heritage grammar from Kocevje (Gottschee) in southern Slovenia, has existed in steady contact with Slovene for centuries, with arguably only negligible effects on its syntax with respect to the linear ordering of elements. An exception to this statement can be found in Gottscheerisch imperatives—in particular, negative imperatives—where this German-based dialect patterns with Slovene. Following Aboh (in The emergence of hybrid grammars: Language contact and change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), we propose that this contact-induced change is simultaneously a case of pattern and feature transmission that can be captured in a straightforward and conceptually appealing manner. Adopting a late-insertion derivational approach to morphosyntax, we show how separable prefixes (p-elements) exhibit clitic climbing-like behavior to the edge of the first (vP) phase. Finally, we sketch out an analysis of the overextension of Slovene-like (negative) imperatives in Gottscheerisch in connection with the complex nature of V2.

The Cely Letters is a well-known collection of correspondence exchanged by members of this London family of wool merchants and their associates between 1472 and 1488. A substantial part of the corpus was written and received by factors based in Calais, which had been an English outpost in France since 1346 and was strategically connected to the wool marts of the Low Countries. The great majority of the letters are monolingual English texts, thus attesting to the widespread use of the vernacular in personal correspondence by the late fifteenth century. Nevertheless, behind the monolingual English surface, traces of multilingualism are revealed. In this paper, I intend to analyse this issue with a twofold purpose. In the first place, attention will be paid to the multilingual background of the letters, considering both the persistent use of French in late medieval England and the specificity of the business transactions carried out at Calais and the marts, where language contact must have been the norm. In the second place, different textual reflections of such contact in the letters are examined and classified, both as regards the generic conventions of letter writing and as part of the multilingual business context where they were produced and received.

The article analyses the loss of agreement between the dative clitic and its plural nominal referent in indirect object clitic-doubling in Spanish spoken in Galicia. On the basis of the previously defended hypothesis that number disagreement makes part of a grammaticalisation process whereby the clitic becomes a case affix, the paper examines some internal factors which lack consensus in previous studies, such as the relation between (in)transitivity and position of the clitic or animacity of nominal referents of the IO, and other external factors. Data analysis reveals that the percentage of disagreement in this area is much higher than in other Spanish speaking areas. This fact might be a consequence of language contact with Galician, a language where number inflection in the dative clitic is neutralised. To verify this hypothesis, the paper explores the relation between the number of occurrences of disagreement and the level of bilingualism of the speakers.

This study examined Anaang substratum influence on Igbo, and how it relates to socio-cultural biographies (such as trade, intermarriage and small-scale migration) amongst Igbo and Anaang speakers i...

This article concerns establishing a plausible connection between the word jang(an) in colloquial Malay varieties and jang-, a form which negates infinitives, in the diasporic contact variety Sri Lankan Malay. The principal claim is that jang(an) marks irrealis modality in Southeast Asian Malay varieties, in which it is frequently (optionally) deployed in negative subjunctive-like embedded clauses. A related claim, dependent on the first of the two, is that the irrealis interpretation conveyed by jang(an) makes it a semantically plausible bridge from a Malay grammar with clausal symmetry to the grammar of Sri Lankan Malay. In Sri Lankan Malay, embedded clauses are frequently non-finite, with infinitives similarly conveying irrealis meaning. Sri Lankan Malay jang- is in complementary distribution with the affirmative infinitival prefix me-, which is also derived from a marker of irrealis modality (mau) in colloquial Southeast Asian Malay varieties.

This article examines multi-verb directional motion constructions in Surinamese Javanese, a heritage language undergoing structural influence from Dutch and Sranantongo. These are constructions which express ‘direction away’ by means of a V2 lunga ‘go away’. They are more frequent – and used with more different V1s – than in Indonesian Javanese, the baseline. The frequency change is a pattern change, a result of cross-linguistic transfer from Sranantongo, in which multi-verb constructions to express ‘direction away’ are very frequent. The extension of the usage contexts to more V1s is a form of semantic extension, and it is the first stage of contact-induced grammaticalization. This is caused by entrenchment of the schema motion verb + away, which exists in both Dutch and Sranantongo. The meaning of the constructions is also changing: whereas in Indonesian Javanese the directional element never refers to the causee alone, it frequently does in Surinamese Javanese. Finally, some preliminary observations are made with respect to the possible development of a parallel construction expressing ‘direction towards’ with V2 teka ‘come’, modeled on the Sranantongo multi-verb constructions with V2 kon ‘come’.

Loanwords derived from French and English deceptive cognates in Rwanda have caught the researchers’ attention because of the complexity they present in the areas of language contact and language te...

In this paper I investigate the early language contact between North Frisian and Danish. Since we have no direct evidence for this language contact apart from the layer of medieval Danish interferences in Modern North Frisian, the question arises, whether it is possible to say anything about the specific type of language contact that has taken place in the Middle Ages on the basis of the modern language data and with the help of language contact theory. Taking the lead of van Coetsem’s language contact theory, I discuss two phenomena in the (morpho)syntax of Modern North Frisian, the placement of directional particles and the inventory of verbal particles, and argue that they point to a language contact situation in which a considerable number of Danish-speakers shifted to North Frisian.

In this paper, I will deal with the diffusion pattern of the progressive periphrases (PROGPER) attested in the minority languages that are present in the areas of Swiss Grisons, Trentino-Alto Adige and Friulian Carnia. I will individualize on the one hand the vectors of diffusion between the standard languages and the minority varieties; on the other hand, I will explain the mechanism of adaptation or re-elaboration of the borrowed structure in the replica language. Finally, I will pinpoint which of this structure replication seems to be the result of an internal development witnessed in the Alpine area.

As is well-known, the Alps are a zone of long-standing, intensive contact and multilingualism among Germanic, Romance and Slavic languages and varieties. In this introductory paper, some reflections are presented on the viability of the Sprachbund hypothesis to encompass the occurring phenomena of convergence observed throughout the whole area.

One of the major issues in historical and contact linguistics is how to distinguish between inherited and acquired vocabulary in a given language: both traditional historical linguistics and modern contact linguistics are in this respect eventually forced to resort to inferences. The aim of this paper is to propose a diagnostic test to aid in the identification of putative substratum relics in the lexicon. The method for this test consists in juxtaposing and comparing word families in the source and recipient language. We use the example of Yiddish-Slavic language contact, in which contact-induced changes are still relatively transparent. We employ wordnets – digital networks of lexical entities connected by lexico-semantic relations – in order to visually “map” lexical and semantic relations of transferred lexemes within the recipient language onto the source language. The method allows us to combine contemporary empirical data with historical analysis.

Bucktee is one of several lexical items associated with ‘Toronto Slang’ – the emically-given name for an enregistered set of lexical items associated with Multicultural Toronto English (MTE), a mul...

The word-final /-a/ and the diphthong /ay/ of earlier New Persian shift respectively to /-e/ and /ey/ in modern Persian. Isfahani Persian follows suit, e.g. dande “rib” and meydun “plaza.” However, the earlier phonemes survive only in a finite set of words: Arabic loanwords in which the /a/ succeeds pharyngeal consonants, e.g. ǰomʾa (< ǰumʿa) “Friday,” fâtaː (< fātiḥa) “funeral,” ayd (< ʿayd) “feast.” Isfahani Persian shows other vocalic anomalies adjacent to original pharyngeals, including syllable-final iʿ > aː in qânaː (< qāniʿ) “content,” maːmâr (< miʿmār) “architect.” This article investigates these phonological irregularities and their geographic distribution and historical periodization.

This paper investigates the expression of grammatical gender in Heritage Argentine Danish. We examine a subset of the Corpus of South American Danish of approximately 20,500 tokens of gender marking produced by 90 speakers. The results show that Argentine Danish gender marking in general complies with the Standard Denmark Danish rules. However, there is also systematic variation: While there is hardly any difference compared to Standard Denmark Danish with respect to the definite suffix, gender marking on prenominal determiners differs from that in Standard Danish. More specifically, the less frequent neuter gender is more vulnerable, and common gender tends to be overgeneralized. Further, complex NPs with attributive adjectives show more variation in gender marking on prenominal determiners than simple NPs. As to sociolinguistic variation, the analysis shows that tokens produced by older speakers and speakers from settlements with a higher degree of language maintenance are consistent to a higher degree with Standard Danish gender marking. The paper compares these results with the results of studies of gender marking variation in other Germanic heritage languages. We conclude that the overall stability of grammatical gender in the Germanic heritage languages is a general pattern that only partly relates to social or societal factors.*

This paper offers an exploration of a European linguistic area at the dawn of history and of shifting convergence zones (Sprachbunde) in Europe since prehistoric times. Its main focus is on the dev...

This paper examines periphrastic constructions with future time reference in Middle Russian, focusing on constructions with an inchoative verb and an infinitive clause: pocnu ‘begin’ + inf, nacnu ‘...

This article analyses the use of the indefinite marker jeden ?one? in contemporary Kashubian, which has often been treated simply as an indefinite article in previous studies. A synchronic description has been presented in the first part of this paper, comparing the use of the indefinite marker in Kashubian with that in Polish, Upper Sorbian and German. The second part deals with the diachronic change in Kashubian in this respect. The main conclusion of this paper is that Kashubian has never developed the indefinite article per se, while its usage was far more frequent in the past, which could be explained by the emergence of the German influence.

The fact that Turkish palatalized consonants ḱ and ǵ are rendered ć and ‹đ› = , respectively, in Croatian and Serbian was not discussed in detail thus far. This author is trying to settle the source(s), the mechanism, the time and the place of the change.

Introduction. The paper deals with different conditional constructions in Buryat and Kalmyk. Traditionally, the main way to express the conditional meaning in Mongolic languages is a non-finite clause with a converb (there are the conditional form on -bal in Buryat and Khalkha and new marker -xla in Kalmyk). Alongside with it, there are some new conditional constructions with connectives, with conjunction-like markers herbee in Buryat and Khalkha and kemər in Kalmyk co-occurring with a form of conditional converb. The language contact approach presupposes that connectives as well as a structural pattern with a conjunction are frequently borrowed from dominant languages. Thus, the research question of the paper is how to explain the new conditional construction. Results. In particular, the paper discusses the distribution of different types of conditional construction according to the data from Buryat and Kalmyk corpora. It suggests that conjunction-like markers herbee ‘if’ in Buryat and kemər ‘if’ in Kalmyk may be viewed as grammatical interference from Russian. Nevertheless, the form of conditional converb gixlä developing to a connective in Kalmyk is grammaticalized among other forms of the verb gi- ‘say’ and its grammaticalization of a verb of saying to marker of a conditional clause is frequent cross-linguistically.

One key aspect of Englishes in the Kachruvian Expanding Circle concerns phonetic features as they commonly bear traits of speakers native languages. This article explores language contact phenomena that are likely to cause L1L2 phonological transfer, which underlies the phonetic specificity of English in East Asia. Drawing on the general theory of loan phonology, the author treats phonographic adaptation of English loanwords in East Asian languages compared to Russian, as a reliable source of data that supports research on the nature of phonetic variation in Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Russian Englishes. The data were obtained through comparative analysis of English loanwords (200 for each language) selected from dictionary sources and speech samples from the Russian-Asian Corpus of English which was collected in earlier research. The findings confirm typological correlation of phonological transfer in loanword phonographic adaptation and in foreign language phonology. In both linguistic contexts, a crucial role is played by syllabic constraints, because being the fundamental unit of any phonological system, a syllable serves a domain of its segmental and suprasegmental features. Consequently, various resyllabification phenomena occur in English borrowings in the languages of East Asia whose phonological typology is distant from that of English; as a demonstration of this same conflict, the syllabic and, hence, rhythmic organization of East Asian Englishes tends to exhibit similar code-copying variation. The greater typological proximity of English and Russian syllable regulations leads to fewer manifestations of syllabic and rhythmic restructuring in both loanword adaptations and English spoken by native speakers of Russian.

Even though there is no sonantic r̥ in Turkish, some Croatian and Serbian reflexes of Turkish loanwords display an r̥. Such examples form two typologically different groups. One of them can be explained by a purely Slavic phonological proportion. The other group, however, can only be characterised in terms of Turkish phonetics, but its full explanation escapes our analyses.

The current research paper surveys the public space of Mansoura city, Egypt. More specifically, it explores the status and functions of English and documents how it is ultimately spread visually on public signs, despite being a foreign language. Following a quantitative sampling approach, 1350 photographs of shop/business signs are gathered from three different commercial streets to be analyzed. Results show that social, economic, and aesthetic factors have played a role in the high presence of English, especially on bi/multilingual signs. On the one hand, English-only appears to be more valued in affluent areas where the message is easily understood to both local community and foreigners. On the other hand, English symbolizes positive values associated with modernity, high quality and fashion, which serve to advertise local products and link them with the global market. Further, use of English may serve innovative functions through language creativity and word play. The growing use of English entails increase use of transliterations from and into English. Arabized English or Romanized Arabic are may be used to fill a lexical or cultural gap between both languages. However, they result in the acceptance of many transliterated words as loanwords in Arabic.