Search

This study investigates the impact of language contact on three generations of bilingual Spanish and Uruguayan Portuguese speakers in Rivera City, Uruguay, located on the Uruguayan–Brazilian border. Focusing on the confirmed presence of the Portuguese-like/b/and/v/phonemic distinction, and the lower frequency of the Montevideo Spanish-like approximantized stops in Riverense Spanish (RS), the research examines the production of and b in 29 female Rivera Spanish bilinguals belonging to different age groups. More specifically, the aim was to see if the previously observed differential use of language-specific phonological variants could be accounted for by using precise measurements of relative intensity, duration, and voicing coupled with a distributional analysis of realizations derived from auditory coding. At the same time, their production is compared to that of 30 monolingual Montevideo Spanish (MS) speakers, who served as the control group, offering a first description of the production of and b within this distinct Rioplatense Spanish variety. Riverense's higher overall relative intensity, duration, and voicing values support auditory coding results, providing evidence of the expected phonological differences between both Uruguayan Spanish varieties. In particular, an exclusive presence of fricative/v/and less approximantization of/b/in RS speech exposed the influence of Portuguese in Rivera bilinguals and their divergence from MS. In addition, as predicted, the findings reveal a higher presence of Portuguese-like productions of [v] and [b] in older bilinguals when compared to younger generations. This illustrates a continuum from Portuguese-like forms to Spanish-like forms, which is confirmed by both acoustic and distributional analyses. Finally, evidence of the existence of innovative forms resulting from mixing Portuguese and Spanish phonological systems in RS are presented. This study's findings contribute to sociolinguistics and bilingualism by exposing cross-linguistic influence in a border setting with rigorous analytical methods that offer reliable results and go beyond a basic analysis based on auditory identification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines variation in six features of Spanish, testing the hypothesis that outcomes of language and dialect contact are shaped by the differing social meaning of linguistic variables. Two of the study's variables are strongly associated with aspects of identity and style. Four others are poorer signals of social meaning, despite constituting sites of crosslinguistic and/or dialectal difference. In the speech of life-long residents of the contact setting (Boston, MA), the weak features have converged with English grammatical norms. In contrast, the strong features show persistence of dialectal and crosslinguistic differences, suggesting that socially weaker variables are more susceptible to reconfiguration by bilingual optimization strategies. The effect of contact on strong variables, by comparison, is to amplify their already powerful links to ideologies of personal and group style. While strong variables are not immune to contact-induced change, modification in their use is primarily social, rather than cognitive, in nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study is a sociolinguistic exploration into the survival of a transnational language in the United States-a multilingual and multicultural environment. Using an adapted General Ethnicity Questionnaire, it interrogates the social dimensions of heritage language use and the diverse linguistic experiences of 120 first-generation Yorùbá-English Nigerian Immigrants living in New York, Texas, and Maryland. It also conducts structured interviews with 30 of them. The study tests two hypotheses that examine the significance of age and length of stay on heritage language use. Findings reveal that first-generation Yorùbá-English Nigerian Immigrants report high frequencies of heritage language use with their co-ethnic peers as well as in their self-created micro-linguistic markets. Results also show that age and the length of stay are significant to heritage language use in the United States. Finally, these immigrants create enabling environments where the heritage language is used frequently, ensuring continued use and survival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with an important aspect of the integration of loan nouns into the grammatical systems of languages attesting to grammatical gender, namely gender assignment. Traditionally, it is assumed that gender assignment takes place according to the internal assignment rules of the replica language. In many cases, however, the original grammatical gender is borrowed along with the source word. This is the case of gender copy which often takes place under special (sociolinguistic) conditions and is used as assignment strategy in languages to a different extent. A special focus of my study is on gender assignment and particularly gender copy in the contact of languages of different assignment types (formal vs. semantic). The empirical data comes from five European languages in different sociolinguistic situations, attesting to different assignment systems and of different language branches of two language families – Indo-European (Romanian, Slavic, and Indo-Arian) and Nakh-Daghestanian (Lezgic and Tsezic). The analysis shows that gender copy is possible mostly in the contact of languages of the same assignment type. In the contact of languages of the formal assignment type, gender copy often goes along with the formal adjustment of the loan word. Sociolinguistic circumstances play an important role as to the possibility and frequency of the occurrence of gender copy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we discuss a possible classification for Brazilian Venetan, also known as Talian: a linguistic phenomenon developed and employed by Italian immigrants and their descendants in the southern region of Brazil. Brazilian Venetan is the result of the continuous contact between distinct languages and varieties brought from Italy to Brazil in addition to Brazilian Portuguese. Therefore, Brazilian Venetan is a linguistic phenomenon born and developed due to language contact, and to just acknowledge it as, for instance, one of the several dialects of standard Italian doesn’t seem adequate to describe it. Thus, our main focus here is to seek more suitable sociolinguistic definition(s) for this linguistic manifestation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While studies of lectal coherence, the extent to which speakers' uses of multiple linguistic variables correlate, have not historically been frequent within sociolinguistics, recent studies have added to our knowledge of co-variation between variables. The present study contributes to this growing body of knowledge by analyzing co-variation of the Spanish voiced obstruent series /bdɡ/ in the bilingual border community of Rivera, Uruguay. On the basis of 5,569 tokens from sociolinguistic interview data from 40 Riverense Spanish speakers, we acoustically analyze mean constriction of /bdɡ/ for each speaker and each phoneme, taking into consideration the influence of Portuguese cognates and Spanish orthography on /b/. Results show positive correlations between constriction of /d/, /ɡ/, and /b/ (when the latter is spelled and has a /b/ cognate), which is expected given the parallel social patterning for these sounds. However, the relationship between these portions of the data and the contrast of /b/ on the basis of orthography and cognates is much weaker. While one factor that could contribute to this empirical observation is methodological in nature, individual lects reflect the unique linguistic histories of their users, including who their interlocutors are, and in a linguistically diverse community, diverse lects can be expected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Linguistic Landscape: An International Journal (LL) is the property of John Benjamins Publishing Co. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study examines the impact of Malay on Moklenic dialects spoken by Moklen and Moken communities to uncover the historical contact setting between Proto-Moklenic and Malay. It shows that a significant portion of Proto-Moklenic vocabulary was borrowed from Malay, while aspiration and three-way vowel height contrasts arose from Malay influence. Sociolinguistic dynamics resulting from contact between Moklenic and Malay, as reflected in the contact-induced changes, indicate a long-lasting and closely intertwined, though asymmetrical, relationship, which suggests widespread bilingualism and openness towards the influence of Malay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The diversity of ethnicities on Banggi Island cultivates an environment characterized by a rich tapestry of languages and dialects. Notwithstanding the prominence of the Sabah Malay dialect as the prevailing mode of communication, the heterogeneous linguistic landscape has exerted a discernible influence on the selection of languages. One ethnic group particularly impacted by this phenomenon is the Bonggi community. This scholarly inquiry is dedicated to exploring linguistic proclivities in the routine familial discourse of the Bonggi community. The cohort under study comprises 370 members of the Bonggi community, all of whom are residents of Banggi Island. The study, employing a methodology anchored in quantitatively driven descriptiveness, leverages a questionnaire structured upon the theoretical framework of Fishman's Domain Theory (1972). The findings shed light on a prevailing predilection among the Bonggi community for the employment of both the native Bonggi language and the Sabah Malay dialect as communicative vehicles within the familial ambit. Furthermore, the research underscores the concurrent utilization of other languages within the same familial domain, such as Dusun, Bajau, and Ubian. Intriguingly, some participants have transitioned away from the Bonggi language, relying solely upon other ethnic languages or the Sabah Malay dialect. In a broader context, this study assumes significance as a catalytic driver for initiatives aimed at preserving and perpetuating the Bonggi language within the community, thereby ensuring its sustained functional relevance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For centuries, France and the French-speaking areas of Belgium and Switzerland have been home to a large minority of Gypsies and Travellers, comprising about 300,000 individuals who all speak a form of French as their native language and form a close-knit sociolinguistic community. Their French sociolect, hitherto never described by linguists, differs from other varieties of French through a wide array of phenomena at all levels of language structure: phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexical semantics and morphology. Diachronic and contrastive analysis shows that these features are either (1) non-standard, archaic or regional characteristics now lost in other varieties of European French, but kept by the Travellers as diastratic variants; (2) internal innovations within the diasystem of Traveller French; (3) outcomes of contact with heritage languages of some of these groups (Sinti Romani, Jenisch, and Alemannic and Gallo-Romance dialects). Using predominantly new fieldwork I provide here the first description of this important set of diastratic varieties of French, which represents an outstanding case of linguistic variation in a context of social separation yet with sustained contact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study examines the language contact situation in Santrokofi, in Ghana, where Selee, a Ghana-Togo Mountain language, enjoys a good degree of maintenance although it is in triglossic contact with Ewe, Akan, and English. With insight from the triglossic structure model, we collected and analysed quantitative and qualitative data which revealed that Selee is the natives' ingroup language while Ewe (and to a limited extent, Akan) is their intergroup informal language with "others"; English is the dominant language of classroom interactions and other formal settings. There is evidence of lexical borrowing into Selee from the other languages, especially English and Ewe. The youth may be said to be holding on to Selee impressively, but this ongoing language maintenance may be put to the test by the looming encroachment of Santrokofi by Hohoe, the neighbouring major township where most public servants in Santrokofi currently reside. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mai-Ndombe is one of the southwestern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Ecologically, it can be characterised as a transition zone between a moist, broadleaf rainforest ecotone in the north and shrubland/savannah areas in the south. Linguistically, Mai-Ndombe, along with the rest of southwestern Congo all the way down to the border with Angola, is among the least well-surveyed areas of the planet. Within its borders, several different Bantu (Guthrie's zones B, C, and H) varieties are spoken, near the newly identified West-Coastal Bantu homeland, itself a hot spot of phonological diversity unlike any other in the West-Coastal Bantu domain. Phonetic and phonological accounts of its languages are particularly lacking (apart from impressionistic "grey literature" reports which seldom comply with the standards of present-day phonetic and phonological inquiry). This gap is particularly concerning as Mai-Ndombe is also an area of great anthropological diversity, with numerous hunter-gatherer Twa communities living deep in its eastern and northern forests. Their lects, collectively known as Lotwa, are severely endangered, as they face the threats of social stigma and the growing use of national and regional linguae francae. As part of the author's doctoral project (still underway), phonetic data were collected in the area between May and July 2021, specifically in Inongo (the provincial capital) and Nioki. The present contribution is intended as a brief note on the relevant results produced so far, mainly bearing on the analysis of some phenomena of interest in the languages of the region, including Sakata rhotics and labial–velars and the presence of unusual trilling/flapping realisations in Lotwa. The picture yielded by this preliminary exploration is one of striking phonetic and phonological variation, possibly pointing to earlier stages of greater linguistic diversity than previously supposed. It is also tentatively proposed that one of the specific characteristics of the phenomena attested in the present contribution is that they tend to affect more than one language at a time, working rather as areal "phonetic possibilities" than language-bound outcomes of traditional sound change rules; in this sense, it is suggested that in-depth documentation and description can help broaden our understanding of how language contact works in highly multilingual contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study shows that the incorporation of the first-person plural pronoun a gente has not only reached the southernmost tip of the Brazilian territory, but has crossed the border and entered Uruguayan Portuguese, or varieties of Portuguese spoken in northern Uruguay by Portuguese–Spanish bilinguals. This finding is based on the quantification of the a gente/nós variable in sociolinguistic interviews carried out in two border communities: Aceguá, Brazil, and Aceguá, Uruguay. The analysis of interviews recorded on each side of the border yielded a total of 1000 tokens that were submitted to a multivariate analysis. Following the premises of comparative sociolinguistics, we compared the distribution of the variable on both sides of the border and found that although Uruguayans used a gente less often than Brazilians, this innovation, preferred by young speakers, is incorporated in both dialects, following similar linguistic paths. These results show that Uruguayan Portuguese has incorporated the pronominal a gente in its grammar in a clear sign of convergence towards Brazilian Portuguese and divergence from Spanish, despite the coexistence with Spanish that categorically uses nosotros as the first-person plural pronoun and reserves the cognate la gente for its purely lexical meaning 'the people'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction to our special issue surveys some of the current work undertaken by scholars on the island of Puerto Rico and abroad that document the language forms, uses, and ideologies of language in the U.S. territory. We provide the "total linguistic fact" (Silverstein 1985) of what it means to speak English and Spanish in Puerto Rico, Census projections of language use, self-reported data and actual documented work on the form and social uses of languages. We provide the sociohistorical context of the history of both Spanish and English on the Island, language policies across time, and how these have played out and been contested in real time. Setting the scene for our special issue, we ask our readers to think critically on the status of contact languages in globalized times, ideological shifts of language practices, and the intimate ties between language and identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although not studied by the generative approach (Shlonsky 2017), the embedded Wh - in situ clause nevertheless belongs to the French language spoken in a large amount of areas, and, we believe, to "français tout court" (Blanche-Benveniste & Jeanjean 1987): until now, it has mainly been studied in Quebec (Lefebvre & Maisonneuve 1982 ; Blondeau & Ledegen 2021) and in Reunion Island (Ledegen 2007 a, 2007 b, 2007 c, 2016 ; Ledegen & Martin 2020), but it has recently been massively attested in the Multicultural Paris French project in the suburbs of Paris (Gardner-Chloros & Secova 2018) and Strasbourg (Marchessou 2018). These new data could be read as a language contact, as a recent linguistic change, or as a long-established "popular" structure (Guiraud 1966), different analytical hypotheses that will be detailed in this study. These recent data also argue in favour of the methodology of ecological corpora, obtained within the framework of a strong acquaintanceship and located at the pole of communicative proximity (Koch & Oesterreicher 2001). The examination of various existing corpora will reveal the structural functioning of the structure and contrast the corpora following the modes of interaction, the oral or written medium, as well as on the chronological axis. Résumé: Bien que non étudiée par l'approche générative (Shlonsky 2017), la structure indirecte in situ fait pourtant partie de la langue française parlée dans un grand nombre de régions, et appartient, selon nous, au " français tout court " (Blanche-Benveniste & Jeanjean 1987) : jusqu'à présent, elle a surtout été étudiée au Québec (Lefebvre & Maisonneuve 1982 ; Blondeau & Ledegen 2021) et à La Réunion (Ledegen 2007 a, 2007 b, 2007 c, 2016 ; Ledegen & Martin 2020), mais elle a récemment été massivement attestée dans le cadre du projet Multicultural Paris French en banlieue parisienne (Gardner-Chloros & Secova 2018) et strasbourgeoise (Marchessou 2018). Ces nouvelles données pourraient être lues comme un contact de langue, comme un changement linguistique récent, ou comme une structure " populaire " établie de longue date (Guiraud 1966), différentes hypothèses d'analyse qui seront détaillées dans cette étude. Ces données récentes plaident également en faveur de la méthodologie des corpus écologiques, obtenus dans le cadre d'une connaissance forte et situés au pôle de la proximité communicative (Koch & Oesterreicher 2001). L'examen de différents corpus permettra de révéler le fonctionnement structurel de la structure et de contraster les corpus selon les modes d'interaction, la modalité orale ou écrite, ainsi que sur l'axe chronologique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tatar minorities have lived in Finland and Estonia as a multilingual diaspora for more than a century. This study explores how the different generations of Tatars living in Finland and Estonia perceive polite forms of address, focusing on the choice of informal and formal second-person pronouns and the use of kinship terms. The research material includes 7 h 20 min of semi-structured interviews conducted with nine Tatars from Finland and ten Tatars from Estonia. The results suggest a parallel tendency of variation in the address forms among the Finnish and Estonian Tatar minorities. Specifically, the Tatars in Finland are more likely to use sin, the second-person singular form (T-form), than the Estonian Tatars. This is similar to Finnish, where the T-form is more extensively used than in Estonian and Russian, which are the main contact languages of Tatar in Estonia. The results also propose that Finnish and Estonian Tatar diaspora members use kinship terms less as a polite form of address and accept being addressed by their first name. However, in standard Tatar, it is perceived to be impolite to address the interlocutor by only their first name without a kinship term or title. Many of the participants were also aware of these pluriareal differences in the use of T-forms and the use of Sez, the second-person plural form (V-form), and kinship terms in Tatar, suggesting the existence of meta-linguistic awareness among Tatar speakers in terms of polite language use.

Contact between languages has become increasingly recognized as a major source of historical change, as linguistic properties are introduced from one language into another. Yet contact does not necessarily lead to such changes. In fact, arguably most of the properties that contrast between two languages in contact at a given place and time do not change. This paper argues that historical and contact linguistics should now look more systematically at different kinds of bilingualism rather than contact per se and should incorporate recent sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic findings from this literature, since these can help us understand both when change occurs and when it does not. In this context we build on the general model of bilingualism, CASP (short for "complex adaptive system principles"), proposed by Filipović and Hawkins and explore its predictions for whether and when changes will occur in one or the other language of a bilingual. In the event that the relevant speech community comprises monolinguals in addition to bilinguals, these changes may then spread to the wider community when social and demographic circumstances favor this. The paper gives illustrative data supporting CASP's predictions for change in both language usage and grammar among bilinguals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article "Spanish Diversity in the Amazon: Dialect and Language Contact Perspectives" presents a book that addresses the lack of studies on Spanish varieties in the Amazon region of Latin America. The book, titled "Spanish Diversity in the Amazon," contains a collection of twelve articles that explore different aspects of Amazonian Spanish, including its contact with indigenous languages and its sociolinguistic, discursive, and phonological characteristics. These studies contribute to the study of Spanish dialects in the Amazon region and are accessible to non-Spanish speakers. Additionally, the article mentions other works related to the topic of languages in contact in Hispanic America. [Extracted from the article]

Copyright of German as a Foreign Language is the property of German as a Foreign Language and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Aramaic influence on Hebrew among Jews in the Land of Israel is well established, especially from the Persian period (from the sixth century BCE) until it completely replaced Hebrew as the natively spoken vernacular sometime before the Arab conquest (seventh century CE). Scholars have paid little attention to the Jews of that period as a distinct speech community, the uniqueness of their dialect or dialects of Aramaic, and the possibility that their ancestral language, Hebrew, had influenced their unique dialects of Aramaic. The present article aims to illuminate these understudied questions by analyzing the syntax of the lexeme ‮ אפשר ‬‎ ʾpšr , unique to Rabbinic Hebrew and the Jewish dialects of Qumran, Targumic, and Talmudic Aramaic from Palestine and Babylonia. This lexeme, and its shared syntax among those languages and dialects, points to an early use of language to maintain ethnic and religious distinctness among Jews in antiquity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores language contact in north-eastern Siberia, focusing on the indigenous groups and the consequences of linguistic and cultural mixtures in the region. It discusses factors such as Russian colonization, nomadic populations, and economic cooperation that have contributed to language contact. The article provides an overview of the physical landscape, languages, and people of north-eastern Siberia, highlighting the changes brought about by colonization and assimilation processes. It also examines the impact of language contact on various indigenous languages in the region and discusses the complex processes of linguistic and cultural intertwining. The article concludes by discussing the dynamics of multilingualism and the negotiation of identities in the Anabar District. [Extracted from the article]

The area between Romania and Ukraine has been the site of frequent language contact for many centuries. This contact has impacted the onomastic store of both nations. This study analyzes anthroponyms (family and first names) in the border area between Ukraine and Romania, along the Tisza River. This study investigates the frequency and etymological origin of family names in the Ukrainian/Romanian communities on both sides of the Tisza. It explores the factors that may have facilitated the spread of Ukrainian/Romanian names beyond their linguistic communities of origin; and it discusses the cultural identity of the two minorities as expressed by their anthroponymic trends. Based on the results of a corpus of historical data gathered between 2000 and 2021, the findings of this research show how language contact, migration, fashion, and tradition can influence anthroponymic choices and reflect ethnic identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates Amis language use and Amis-Chinese code-mixing using naturally occurring data and inferential statistics. The results indicate that there is a statistically significant difference between age and language use. The younger an Amis person is, the less Amis he or she speaks. This shift becomes apparent from the birth cohort of 1961 to 1970, and their language ability in Amis and their frequency of speaking Amis sharply deteriorates as age decreases. Among all types of code-mixing defined by Muysken (2000), insertion is the most common among Amis-Chinese bilinguals, irrespective of their age or generation. This is typical for two typologically different languages as Amis and Chinese. The insertion of Chinese into Amis structure is more prevalent than inserting Amis into Chinese structure, and a significant difference is found between age and preferred structure. The most typical elements used in noun phrases referring to things, followed by name, time, and kinship.

This document introduces a special issue of the International Journal of the Sociology of Language that focuses on language ideology in Japan. The authors explore how contact and space influence language ideologies and metapragmatic meanings, as well as the impact of language contact situations on identity formation. The document emphasizes the need for a broader investigation of language ideologies in Japan, particularly in relation to power dynamics. It also discusses the importance of studying the materiality and commodification of language, and highlights the multidimensional nature of language ideologies and their intersection with power dynamics. The authors hope that their contributions will expand the understanding of ideology and contribute to the development of language and power studies. [Extracted from the article]

Copyright of Diachronica is the property of John Benjamins Publishing Co. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Most approaches to discourse markers tend to rely on observation on the behavior of monolingual classes of markers. In this paper, we offer a detailed analysis of the behavior and function of a single Spanish discourse marker, namely bueno , in bilingual discourse as opposed to its bilingual counterpart well. In particular, we compare pragmatic factors, and namely fine-grained differences between Spanish bueno and English well , with interactional factors such as the position of the marker in monological vs. dialogical sequences. Finally, we also take into account the impact of individual linguistic choices by comparing the behavior of different speakers when using the scrutinized discourse marker. Thus, we do not only contribute to and expand on previous literature on the behavior of discourse markers, but we also offer a new perspective to further study discourse markers in situations of language contact. • The paper explains the behavior of a single Spanish DM and its English counterpart in bilingual discourse. • A methodology based on online focus groups is used to explore the functionality of the discourse marker in interactions. • The paper finds a broad range of interpersonal functions that explain the use of bueno in bilingual discourse. • An underexplored community is proposed as a focal point in the study of contact and pragmatics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explored language choice for informal interactions of the Frafra people of the Upper East Region of Ghana, who migrated in the early 1960s to settle in Damongo in the then West Gonja District in the Northern region of Ghana for farming among the Gonja of the migration destination. As is often the case in multilingual communities, a speaker needs to make the right language choice to be able to communicate with others. This study therefore investigated the language use of the migrant settlers in their new environment. The main objective of this study was first to determine the survival or otherwise of Grune and to account for the choice of a particular language for informal interactions between migrant settlers (the Frafras) and native people of Damongo, Analysis of the data was done within the general framework of communication accommodation theory and the constructivist paradigm. A questionnaire was used to collect data from 263 participants in 6 Frafra communities around Damongo in the West Gonja Municipality. The main findings of the study are that among the Frafras, Grune has been maintained and is widely spoken regardless of generation, Hausa and Grune by older generation of settlers and English, Gonja and Hausa by younger generations. There is no one dominant language for informal interactions between migrant settlers and the Gonjas. At the same time, the younger generation code-switches or code-mixes English, Hausa, Grune and Gonja. In spite of this, Hausa remains the most preferred language for informal interactions by the older settler generation with Gonjas for informal interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Luxembourgish is a Germanic language in Western Europe situated on the Germanic-Romance language border. The centuries-long multilingualism, that has included German and French as main contact languages, has led to much variation on all linguistic levels, yielding lexical doublets – contact-induced synonym pairs. The study presents the results from the online Lëtzebuerger Futtballsprooch 'Luxembourgish football language' survey (n = 1189 participants), set up to analyze the distribution of the variants of lexical doublets in the special language of football in order to exemplify the mechanisms of contact-induced lexical variation in Luxembourgish as a whole. The variation is correlated with sociodemographic and language biographical factors (quantitative analysis, beta regression). The study also introduces linguistic orientation as an overarching factor for the individual language biography that is useful to model the positioning of individuals in relation to the contact languages involved in a complex multilingual society. The results reveal a societal trend towards Germanic variants linked to the linguistic orientation of the participants towards German, mirroring sociolinguistic dynamics and changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Subject dislocation (SD) is common across languages. In French, it is a vernacular norm. In English, it is comparatively rare. This article examines English SD in a unique contrastive situation in Ontario, Canada: two communities where SD is a community norm, one where individuals speak both English and French (Kapuskasing), and the other where the population speaks English only (Parry Sound). Dislocated subjects are produced by the same underlying linguistic mechanisms in both places, with parallel constraints by type of subject and intervening material, suggesting a typological universal. However, SD is age-graded in Kapuskasing, regardless of heritage language. In Parry Sound, it is obsolescent, in steady decline over the twentieth century. We conclude that while typological trends are underlain by universal cognitive processes, locally embedded sociocultural influences are the source of differentiation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 fricative phoneme /v/. Sociolinguistic interviews from 40 native speakers of Riverense Spanish were analyzed acoustically using a consonant-vowel intensity ratio as a correlate of the degree of constriction in the realization of intervocalic /b/. Results indicate that speakers that use more Portuguese are more likely to contrast degree of constriction in words with Portuguese /b/ and /v/ cognates. Speakers that primarily use Spanish, on the other hand, contrast constriction based on orthography, a phenomenon that has been called "pedantic v" and "orthographic loyalty" in other Spanish varieties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Border Uruguayan Spanish, intervocalic voiced obstruents have been known to be produced as stops due to the variety's contact with Portuguese. The present study investigates intervocalic /ɡ/ in a corpus of sociolinguistic interviews. Using an acoustic measure, a consonant-vowel intensity ratio, as an index of constriction of /ɡ/, we found that, similar to /b/ and /d/, the speaker's age, Spanish use, and sex have a strong impact on the realization of intervocalic /ɡ/. Specifically, younger speakers, those that speak Spanish most of the time, and men are likely to use less constricted variants such as approximants and elision. Given the parallels that these results have with findings of studies of intervocalic /d/ and, to a lesser extent, /b/ in this variety, we discuss support for the notion that the three phonemes behave as a series and not independently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most sociolinguistic work on variation focuses on how rates of occurrence or mean measurements differ between speech communities and speakers. However, speakers and communities also differ in variability – that is, in dispersion around the mean. The current study investigates the effects of speech style and multilingualism on variation and variability, by measuring the degree of intervocalic /bdɡ/ spirantization in spontaneous and careful speech. Data come from two varieties of Uruguayan Spanish, one monolingual (Montevideo) and one in contact with Brazilian Portuguese (Rivera). The results from a variation analysis confirm expected linguistic and social effects on gradient spirantization. An analysis of variability shows that, at the group level, careful speech is more variable than spontaneous speech, and the data from Rivera is more variable than that from Montevideo. Variability at the individual level differs slightly, suggesting that the group-level variability arises from between-speaker variability and within-speaker variability in different contexts. I propose that multilingualism in Rivera may heighten variability because contact with Portuguese provides a wider range of available pronunciations, and that careful speech may increase variability because the available pronunciations are subject to conflicting standards that are most active in this style. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Duyun has been a multi-ethnic area since ancient times, and its grammar has been influenced by both Chinese and local minority languages. This paper is intended to compare the usages of the hen-family in Duyun dialect, Mandarin, and minority languages from the perspective of language contact, and to trace the origin of xən 35 in Duyun dialect by examining the evolution of hen in Chinese. It is proposed that the prepositive usage of xən 35 is a historical continuation of hen in Chinese during the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties, while the postpositive usage of xən 35 is influenced by the local minority languages. The distinctive usages of xən 35 in Duyun dialect are due to language contact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Translation is an art. To some extent, it is an operation performed across two languages. A single language has many a variety with regard to its characteristics and the uses by its speakers. The varieties are an idiolect, a dialect, slang, register, jargon, pidgin, creole, etc. Dialect changes every sixty kilometers of a place. The factors causing changes in a language variety are manifold. The main reasons are socio-historical and linguistic. Geographically settlements, migrations, language contacts, and language groups contribute for the formation of dialects. Linguistically, word and word meaning, rule extension, pronunciation, and grammaticalization, etc. form the ground for dialects. The levels of difference in a dialect are lexical, phonological, grammatical, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic. The present paper proposes to analyze the lexical variations inherent in different Tamil dialects and their English translations. Lexis is a unit of sentence or vocabulary of a language. The variation of words occurs when different dialect speakers use varying words for the same context. For the present analysis the three different famous Tamil dialects namely, the Tamil Brahmin dialect, Coastal Muslim dialect and Tamil Dalit dialect have been chosen. It further analyzes the characteristics of lexical differences and causes and also explains the circumstances that create new words like compounding, blending, clipping, borrowing, etc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The southeastern United States has experienced rapid growth in the Hispanic population in recent decades, giving rise to a newly forming bilingual community. The present study builds on previous work by the authors via expansion of a "variable swarm": the analysis of multiple linguistic variables simultaneously for the same set of speakers, with the goal of understanding patterns of accommodation and change within the community. The initial study included four linguistic variables (prosodic rhythm, bilingual discourse markers, the realization of /bdg/ and vowel space), and the present study adds an additional four variables (bilingual filled pauses, subject pronoun realization, code switching, and the labiodental realization of orthographic ) for 23 speakers of Mexican and Central American origin across two sociolinguistic generations (G1 vs. G2). Results for individual speakers show a pattern of adoption of some features by speakers of both generations (such as English-influenced prosodic rhythm and phonological filled pauses), while other, possibly more salient forms directly integrated from English (English discourse markers and code switching) exhibit later, highly variable rates of adoption, suggesting that speakers may consciously manipulate these variables as part of a process of active identity construction. Likewise, G1 speakers show fewer correlations among linguistic variables than G2 speakers, and patterns reveal that some bilingual forms are incorporated in tandem due to shared phonological traits or discourse functions. The innovative swarm analysis further contributes to the advancement of techniques employed in sociolinguistic research by serving as a bridge between traditional first- and second-wave studies that focus on a single variable, and third-wave studies that focus more on variation at the individual level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims and objectives: The goals of this study are to examine attitudes toward Kaqchikel Maya and Spanish in domains of life in a village and a town in central Guatemala and to examine the influence of indigenous participants' attitudes toward Kaqchikel on Kaqchikel acquisition. Method: The study draws on fieldwork employing interviews and a sociolinguistic questionnaire. To investigate attitudes, we employed questions focusing on the importance of Kaqchikel and Spanish for domains of community life. The questionnaire also tested conversational ability in Kaqchikel. Data and analysis: Responses to the survey questions are examined in quantitative analyses of valuations of the importance of Kaqchikel and Spanish in domains for participants from the village and the town and of the importance of Kaqchikel for indigenous adults and students. Also gauged through quantitative analysis are correlations between attitudes toward the importance of Kaqchikel in the domains and acquired conversational ability in Kaqchikel of indigenous adults and students. Findings: The findings underscore differences and similarities in attitudes toward the two languages in the town and the village as well as differences in the attitudes of indigenous adults and students. The effects of instrumental and integrative attitudes toward Kaqchikel on Kaqchikel acquisition are highlighted for the students. Originality: Points of originality include the size of the participant sample (252), the breakdown of the sample by village and town, and by non-indigenous and indigenous participants and age groups. They include the focus on attitudes toward Kaqchikel as related to the acquisition of conversational ability in Kaqchikel for indigenous adults and students. Implications: The study confirms a shift in attitudes toward the importance of Kaqchikel for indigenous students compared to indigenous adults. For Kaqchikel-language programs for youth, the study underscores the need for fomenting awareness of the importance of Kaqchikel in domains of community life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Turks and Iranians have interacted in different geographies for centuries. Although the traces of this interaction can be detected in various Iranian and Turkic languages, the obvious examples are presented in Khalaj. Although many archaic features are preserved today, numerous linguistic copies made from Persian are also used in Khalaj. This article focuses on the texts collected from the village of Talkhab, where the majority of the Khalaj population is located. In the texts, it is seen that the features of Persian such as sound, form, syntax etc. are copied into Khalaj as a result of intense language relations. Global lexical and global grammatical copies in these texts are discussed. The use of these units, which can have simple and complex structures, differs according to age groups. When the data collected from different age groups are examined, it has been detected that while the number of lexical copies is higher in the middle (35-60) and upper middle (60-...) age groups, both lexical and grammatical copies are often used in the young population (15-35). However, this article highlights the large number of people fluent in the Khalaj language in the village of Talkhab, which has a multilingual language ecology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates Amis language use and Amis-Chinese code-mixing using naturally occurring data and inferential statistics. The results indicate that there is a statistically significant difference between age and language use. The younger an Amis person is, the less Amis he or she speaks. This shift becomes apparent from the birth cohort of 1961 to 1970, and their language ability in Amis and their frequency of speaking Amis sharply deteriorates as age decreases. Among all types of code-mixing defined by Muysken (2000), insertion is the most common among Amis-Chinese bilinguals, irrespective of their age or generation. This is typical for two typologically different languages as Amis and Chinese. The insertion of Chinese into Amis structure is more prevalent than inserting Amis into Chinese structure, and a significant difference is found between age and preferred structure. The most typical elements used in noun phrases referring to things, followed by name, time, and kinship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a new type of comparative linguistic survey, analyzing (socio)linguistic variation in a database of 1,155 grammatical constructions drawn from 42 diverse languages. We focus in particular on variation in the expression of grammatical meanings, and the extent to which grammatical variation differentiates geographic dialects. This is the first study we know of to present a systematic, crosslinguistic survey of dialect differentiation. We identify three main structural types of grammatical variation— form , order , and omission —and find that in situations of close contact between dialects, where signaling of distinct group identities is more relevant, form variables are more likely to differentiate dialects than the other two types. Order and omission variables usually only differentiate dialects that have minimal contact. Our survey suggests that social signaling may have a substantial role in the divergence of grammars, and provides systematic support for previous proposals regarding convergence and divergence under contact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]