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The introductory paper to the special issue summarises key aspects of contact-related linguistic dynamics such as the communicative interfaces of modern complex societies, the multi-layered textual and discoursal repertoire of their speaker groups and the role of the speakers' cognitive mechanisms, social identity, and interactional strategies in settings of language contact. Giving an overview of the contributions, it aims to connect classic topics of language contact research with recent theoretical and methodological approaches investigated in the papers, and to highlight interconnections and interdisciplinary links that can stimulate further research on linguistic variation and change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with languaging, a manifestation of language contact often found in tourism communication. It is understood as the use of local language in tourism texts written in the language of the tourists. After a review of previous research on languaging and its functions within tourism communication and on the contact linguistic status of languaging units and their mediation in the text, an analysis of a corpus consisting of four general German guidebooks on the northern Italian region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia is carried out with regard to how the examples of languaging found therein are distributed between the different guides and within each guidebook. Previous studies have already pointed out that the distribution in the guides is not uniform. The analysis is based on the work on text genres by Fandrych and Thurmair, according to which travel guides are large texts with four subtext genres, namely orientation texts, sightseeing texts, advice texts and in-depth texts, each of which fulfils certain dominant functions, has certain linguistic structures and deals with certain topics. The research questions posed are: what is the quantitative distribution of languaging evidence in the analysed guidebooks, and do certain semantic-functional types of languaging occur preferentially or even exclusively in certain subtext genres? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study investigated lexical production and innovation of 202 participants across six groups: child and adult heritage speakers of Russian, dominant in Hebrew or American English, and monolingual Russian-speaking children and adults. Understanding quantitative performance across these six groups was intended to provide a comprehensive perspective on heritage language (HL) development, while comparing the participants' qualitative non-target response patterns would elucidate the organization of the HL lexicon. We assessed the production of Russian nouns and verbs using a naming task. We then considered the effects of input at the societal and lexical levels (focusing on word frequency and age of acquisition). Our findings are discussed in terms of accounts of HL developmental trajectories: monolingual-like trajectory, frozen lexical development, attrition, and new language variety in a contact situation. The results presented no evidence for attrition, while elements of the other three trajectories were found in our quantitative and qualitative analyses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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.)

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.)

Nabataean Aramaic contains a large number of loanwords from Arabic. Together with other evidence, this has been taken as an indication that the Nabataeans used Aramaic as a written language only, while a Pre‐Islamic variety of Arabic was their spoken language. Based on a comprehensive review of the evidence, however, this article concludes that both Arabic and Aramaic were in spoken use in the Nabataean Kingdom and Late Antique Northwest Arabia. Departing from this modified understanding of the linguistic status of Nabataean Aramaic, various features of Pre‐Islamic Arabic are then examined based on the Nabataean evidence: the realisation of the voiceless sibilant /s/, nominal morphology, the reflexes of stem‐final *y, verbal syntax, and the lexicon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 Lexicographica is the property of De Gruyter 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.)

In multilingual societies, it is common to encounter different language varieties. Various approaches have been proposed to discuss different mechanisms of language shift. However, current models exploring language shift in languages in contact often overlook the influence of language ideologies. Language ideologies play a crucial role in understanding language usage within a cultural community, encompassing shared beliefs, assumptions, and feelings toward specific language forms. These ideologies shed light on the social perceptions of different language varieties expressed as language attitudes. In this study, we introduce an approach that incorporates language ideologies into a model for contact varieties by considering speaker preferences as a parameter. Our findings highlight the significance of preference in language shift, which can even outweigh the influence of language prestige associated, for example, with a standard variety. Furthermore, we investigate the impact of the degree of interaction between individuals holding opposing preferences on the language shift process. Quite expectedly, our results indicate that when communities with different preferences mix, the coexistence of language varieties becomes less likely. However, variations in the degree of interaction between individuals with contrary preferences notably lead to non-trivial transitions from states of coexistence of varieties to the extinction of a given variety, followed by a return to coexistence, ultimately culminating in the dominance of the previously extinct variety. By studying finite-size effects, we observe that the duration of coexistence states increases exponentially with the network size. Ultimately, our work constitutes a quantitative approach to the study of language ideologies in sociolinguistics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article studies the structure of the resultative stream (a part of the verbal system that hosts grams diachronically evolving along and synchronically modelled by means of the resultative path: resultative > perfect > perfective/past and resultative > stative > present) in the Fanakalo pidgin as compared to the lexifier Nguni languages (Zulu/Xhosa). The evidence indicates that the organization of the resultative stream in Fanakalo is different from that found in Nguni, attesting to both simplification and complexification, as well as the acceleration of the movement along the resultative path and the cline of structural grammaticalization. This corroborates the views concerning the increase in complexity of stabilized and expanded pidgins and the observation suggesting the acceleration of grammaticalization processes in a situation of contact.

The Kyrgyz are one of the Turkic peoples that have had extensive contact with Mongolian tribes throughout history, and their language has one of the largest numbers of loanwords of Mongolian origin. Careful analysis shows that these words were borrowed from several historical Mongolian idioms at various times. Western Mongolian loanwords make up the most recent stratum in terms of chronology. They were acquired in the 16th–18th centuries from Western Mongolian idioms, whose living successors are Oirat and Kalmyk. This article is the first attempt to deal specifically with loanwords from Western Mongolian languages to a particular Turkic language. The author of the paper offers numerous, especially phonological, criteria, for identifying Western Mongolian loanwords in Kyrgyz, and provides examples that meet these criteria. The fact that Mongolian loanwords from the late period are more prevalent than those from earlier layers, and that they also include examples related to Lamaism, Mongolian culture and ethnography, suggests that the Oirat-Kalmyk and Kyrgyz tribes had more intensive interaction than is often recognized.

The present study investigates variability in the production of Catalan vowels by Barcelona young, middle-aged, and older adults who speak the Central Catalan variety. The degree of exposure to and use of Central Catalan varies among speakers as half of the participants are second-generation and subsequent-generation migrants from other regions of Spain, where the vernacular is Spanish. All speakers have been born, raised, and schooled in Barcelona, and have acquired both Central Catalan and Spanish. Central Catalan possesses two sets of phonemic mid-vowels (/e/–/ε/ and /o/–/ↄ/), unlike Spanish which has a single vowel per set (/e/ and /o/). This study aims to detail the Catalan mid-front and mid-back vowel contrasts used by speakers of different gender, age, language use, and exposure to Catalan from the bilingual speech community of Barcelona.

The study deals with variable phonetic traits of Brazilian Portuguese (BP) in contact with Italian immigration languages. It focuses on the realization of an alveolar tap (weak-r) in onset position where one would expect an alveolar trill (strong-r) or its fricative variants (glottal/velar fricative): [ɾ]ápido instead of [r]ápido or [h]ápido ‘fast’, ca[ɾ]o instead of ca[r]o or ca[h]o ‘car’. The realization is relatively stigmatized and declining in younger generations (Azeredo, 2012; Frosi, Faggion & Dal Corno, 2017). The study uses methods from variationist sociolinguistics (Labov, 1972; Labov, 1994; Labov, 2001; Labov, 2010) to examine speech data of a southern Brazilian town, Flores da Cunha, founded by Italian immigrants in the late 19th century. The objective of the study is to identify the linguistic and social factors correlated to the realization of a weak-r and thus to elucidate the pattern of variation and change. Logistic regression performed with R (Venables, Smith & the R Core Team, 2022) in a real-time trend study with data from 1990 (VARSUL sample) and 2008–2009 (BDSer sample) shows that the process is relatively stable in the speech community and conforms to a pattern of generational change (Labov, 1994). Despite the tendency towards leveling of Flores da Cunha BP with supralocal patterns of Portuguese, the slow decline in the realization of weak-r suggests that the socioindexical value of the alveolar tap has changed in recent years, along with socioeconomic and cultural changes.

Estonian is a verb-second (V2) language: in certain types of sentences, the finite verb tends to be the second constituent. The V2 feature of Estonian is most likely to have developed under Germanic influence. However, there are differences between Germanic and Estonian V2 order. The word order of Estonian main-clause wh-interrogatives is one of the major exceptions to the V2 order. Main-clause wh-interrogatives are always V2 in Germanic but predominantly verb-final in Estonian. The paper describes two corpus studies – a synchronic and a diachronic one – that aimed to clarify the proportion, nature and development of the V2 order in Estonian main-clause wh-interrogatives. The synchronic study showed that the proportion of the V2 order in present-day Estonian main-clause wh-interrogatives is approximately 22%. The V2 order is thus considerably less frequent in wh-interrogatives than in declaratives, but it is subject to similar prosodic exceptions in both. The V2 order is nevertheless more frequent in main-clause wh-interrogatives than in embedded wh-interrogatives and relative clauses, giving evidence of a Germanic-like asymmetry between main and embedded clauses. The results of the diachronic study suggest that the V2 order has never been borrowed as the predominant order of Estonian main-clause wh-interrogatives. To explain why the V2 feature was borrowed to a different extent into declaratives and wh-interrogatives, we hypothesise that their word order had already diverged before the V2 order was borrowed. According to the hypothesis, wh-interrogatives had retained the historical verb-final order, which remained unaffected by the V2 order, while declaratives had already lost the verb-final order.

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.

The paper outlines the contribution of German to the word stock of English in the three periods of Old English, Middle English, and Early Modern English, or, in other words, from the early Middle Ages up to 1700, and relates these words to major cultural events, such as the Christianisation of England, the Norman Invasion, the Reformation and to the beginnings of science and technology during the Renaissance. Methodologically, the term German will be used in the sense of High German and its antecedents rather than Low German or Low Dutch. As a consequence of this approach, the impact of German on the English language during these periods is rather small in terms of numbers, but interesting and varied as far as domains of borrowing, transmission routes of words, linguistic strategies (i.e. importation v. substitution), and mode of transmission (i.e. written v. spoken) are concerned.

This study aims to examine linguistic and non-linguistic determinants that contribute to language change in the Gurage area of Ethiopia. The linguistic and non-linguistic determinants were investigated by combining methods of dialectometry and mutual intelligibility. Principally, the study was interested in the potential influences of three linguistic factors (mutual intelligibility, contact-induced diffusion of linguistic features, and borrowing from dominant languages) and four non-linguistic factors (between-speakers contact, geographical distance, population size, and attitude of the speakers). Statistical analyses performed on the aforementioned factors show that the linguistic determinants significantly contribute to language change in the Gurage area. Geographical distance, attitude of the speakers, and contact among the speakers are the major non-linguistic contributors. Population size has a marginal influence.

This study examines the correspondence between the borrowability indices from the Loanwoard Typology (LWT) project and Castilianization indices from the Atlas Lingüístico Galego (ALGa) across seven semantic fields. To this end, we identified all Castilianisms in the ALGa and conducted a quantitative analysis to compare these indices. Results obtained indicate a mismatch between the rankings of the LWT project and the ALGa. For example, the field ‘The body’ has the highest level of Castilianization according to the ALGa but the lowest borrowed score in the LWT project. Moreover, Castilianization levels in the ALGa show greater dispersion than borrowability levels from the LWT project. In fact, in each semantic field, many concepts (52.2%) have low levels of Castilianization, between 0% and 10%, and only a few concepts have high levels. A more detailed analysis of three semantic fields (‘The body’, ‘Agriculture and vegetation’, and ‘The physical world’) suggests that explanations based solely on semantic criteria (such as the existence of an unalterable central lexicon) are insufficient; other factors such as prestige, urbanization, cultural modernity, frequency of word usage, and perhaps other intralinguistic factors should be taken into account.

Whilst study abroad (SA) periods hold much promise for foreign language development, increasing research suggests sojourners’ experiences are unique, and language development does not always follow a linear trajectory. For some learners, SA has little impact on their language performance despite the affordances of L2 immersion (the Survivors). Other learners maximise the potential of SA, and this has a positive impact on their language development (the Thrivers). This paper examines the selected cases of four Japanese learners of English and their request language performance during a 10-month SA in the UK. Changes in pragmatic knowledge (based on appropriateness ratings) were documented at three equidistant time points. Language contact profile data also provided quantitative insights into the learners’ extracurricular language use and qualitative personal reflections. The selected cases illustrate two learners surviving the SA experience, showing minimal change in their request performance. The other two learners thrived during SA, showing accelerated performance in terms of lexical variation at the production level. This paper reports on the case histories of these learners to better understand these unique experiences and pragmatic discrepancies. Suggestions for how learners might be more pragmatically successful during SA are also offered.

Recent sociolinguistic studies have emphasized the role of the linguistic landscape (LL) in relation to languages and identity negotiation. The present study examines the presence of Asturian, a minoritized language spoken in the Principality of Asturies, in the LL of a town located in the center of Asturies: Mieres. Through qualitative analyses, data illustrate that Asturian has visibility not only on top-down signage but also on bottom-up. Furthermore, findings reveal that the use of this language, as well as semiotic resources that convey the Asturian identity in the Mieres signage, portray the struggles and fragility of the Asturian minoritized linguistic group within this locality. This study illustrates the importance of comprehensive implementation of language protection policies in relation to the maintenance and revitalization of minoritized languages, as well as in the protection of a speech community’s linguistic rights.

The paper examines the semantics and distribution of the polyfunctional Hill Mari focus particle =ok. We describe two interpretations of =ok ­possible on a wide range of hosts: the exhaustive use and the counteradditive use; besides, we consider several uses that are only possible with a lexically or semantically conditioned set of entities. We argue that =ok falls into a class of devices with not-at-issue exhaustive inferences, along with the English it-cleft and some other cross-linguistic counterparts. We discuss the implications that the Hill Mari data have for the typology of this class of constructions: Hill Mari =ok suggests that discourse givenness of the denotation of the focus constituent is an important dimension along which such elements vary across languages. Besides, in this paper we draw an areal comparison of the Hill Mari =ok with its counterparts in the Volga-Kama languages: Meadow Mari, Chuvash, Tatar, Bashkir, and Udmurt. Although the origin and the general set of readings are the same, the ­syntactic behavior of =okâs counterparts varies significantly.

As the English lexicon has become more frequently borrowed and used in Thai mass media and social media, Thais are quickly adapting to such foreignness and are open to language contact-induced change. The current study explores the extent of the public’s familiarity with borrowed words in contemporary Thai public media and attitudes toward language borrowing. The study participants comprised 120 Thais who voluntarily completed a questionnaire. They were from different age groups and were relatively highly educated. The instrument for the data collection was an online three-part questionnaire probing demographic information, an individual’s comprehension of the borrowed lexicon as tested via 15 questions of lexical borrowing in context, and personal views probed in the questionnaire questions about English lexical borrowing. Follow-up interviews with six selected respondents according to age groups verified and elicited attitudes toward lexical borrowing. The findings revealed that high exposure to English resulted in a high level of comprehension, especially when words were transcribed in the Thai script with tone markers. If the borrowing was in Romanized script, it was less likely to be understood. The majority of the respondents recognized the need for English language borrowing in Thai communication, especially for terminology. They also expressed positive views toward the adoption of the practice. English was perceived as necessary for effective Thai communication, particularly among acquaintances and professionals. The ubiquity of English in Thai society today has led to general adaptability and acceptance of borrowing as part of language evolution; such practices are no longer a sign of prestige. The study suggests that language classrooms should consider using borrowed English lexicons to assist Thai EFL learners in developing English proficiency.

Geographical confounding in phylogenetic inference models has long been an issue. Often models have great difficulty detecting whether congruences or similarities between languages in phylogenetic datasets stem from common genetic descent or geographical proximity effects such as language contact. In this study, we introduce a distance-based Gaussian process approach with latent phylogenetic distances that can detect potential geographic contact zones and subsequently account for geospatial biases in the resulting tree topologies. We find that this approach is able to determine potential high-contact areas, making it possible to calculate the strength of this influence on both the tree-level (clade support) and the language-level (pairwise distances).

The Influence of the German Language on Czech and Upper Sorbian Phraseology: Czech-Upper Sorbian Parallels The article is an attempt to assess the influence of the German language on Czech and Upper Sorbian phraseology. Research on this topic is motivated by the fact of the very long contact of Czech and the constant contact of Upper Sorbian with German, as well as Upper Sorbian-Czech contacts. The study analyses idioms of German origin in contemporary Upper Sorbian and Czech languages – primarily calques, but also semi-calques and idioms containing a German component. A separate place is devoted to the so-called winged words of German origin belonging to the phraseological resources of these two languages. The collected material shows that all the mentioned types of idioms significantly enrich these resources. Wpływ języka niemieckiego na czeską i górnołużycką frazeologię: czesko-górnołużyckie paralele Artykuł jest próbą oceny wpływu języka niemieckiego na czeską i górnołużycką frazeologię. Do podjęcia tego tematu skłania bardzo długi kontakt czeszczyzny i stały kontakt górnołużycczyzny z językiem niemieckim, a także kontakty górnołużycko-czeskie. Przedmiotem analizy są frazeologizmy pochodzenia niemieckiego we współczesnych językach górnołużyckim i czeskim – przede wszystkim kalki, ale także półkalki i frazeologizmy zawierające komponent niemiecki. Osobne miejsce poświęca się tzw. skrzydlatym słowom pochodzenia niemieckiego należącym do zasobów frazeologicznych tych dwóch języków. Zgromadzony materiał pokazuje, że wszystkie wymienione typy frazeologizmów istotnie te zasoby wzbogacają.

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.

Language diversity gives rise to language phenomena (language contact, language borrowing, language shift, language maintenance and language accommodation). Even though Indonesian appears to be the state or unified language, the role of regional languages and foreign languages (English) is quite influential in social life. The purpose of this research is to provide information regarding trends in linguistic phenomena that will occur in the languages spoken in Banyumas Regency. This research also aims to determine the communication strategy and level of accommodation of the speech community in Banyumas Regency. In addition, this research aims to identify diversity in the use of Indonesian, regional languages and foreign languages based on the characteristics of respondents in the areas used in Banyumas Regency. Another aim is to identify which social communities in each language community are more dominant in linguistic adaptation while other communities are not dominant. Identifying whether there are differences in the tendency to make linguistic adaptations between speech communities that are prone to conflict (disharmony) and speech communities that are not susceptible to social conflict (harmony). Data collection used listening techniques and depth interviews. Data analysis using interactive models. The results of this research indicate that there are challenges to linguistic adaptation of speech communities in Banyumas Regency which are related to differences in language, culture and communication styles that exist with different backgrounds. Then, there is a linguistic adaptation strategy for the speech community in Banyumas Regency which is related to communicative competence. The language accommodation of the Banyumas spoken community towards Indonesian is very accommodating, towards mother tongue it is also accommodating, but towards second regional languages and foreign languages it is not accommodating. Abstrak Keberagaman bahasa memunculkan fenomena bahasa (kontak bahasa, peminjaman bahasa, pergeseran bahasa, pemertahanan bahasa dan akomodasi bahasa). Meskipun bahasa Indonesia tampil menjadi bahasa negara atau bahasa persatuan, tetapi peran bahasa daerah dan bahasa asing (Inggris) cukup berpengaruh di dalam kehidupan bermasyarakat. Tujuan penelitian ini adalah sebagai informasi mengenai kecenderungan fenomena kebahasaan yang akan terjadi pada bahasa-bahasa yang dituturkan di Kabupaten Banyumas. Penelitian ini juga bertujuan mengetahui strategi komunikasi dan tingkat akomodasi masyarakat tutur di Kabupaten Banyumas. Selain itu, penelitian ini bertujuan mengidentifikasi keberagaman terhadap penggunaan bahasa Indonesia, bahasa daerah dan bahasa asing berdasarkan karakteristik responden di wilayah pakai di Kabupaten Banyumas. Tujuan lainnya yaitu mengidentifikasi komunitas sosial manakah dalam masing-masing masyarakat bahasa tersebut yang lebih dominan melakukan adaptasi linguistik sementara komunitas lainnya tidak dominan. Mengidentifikasi adakah perbedaan kecenderungan melakukan adaptasi linguistik di antara masyarakat tutur yang rentan terhadap konflik (disharmoni) dengan masyarakat tutur yang tidak rentan terhadap konflik social (harmoni). Pengumpulan data menggunakan teknik simak dan depth interview. Analisis data menggunakan model interaktif. Hasil penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa terdapat tantangan adaptasi linguistik masyarakat tutur di Kabupaten Banyumas yang berkaitan dengan perbedaan bahasa, budaya dan gaya komunikasi yang ada dengan latar belakang yang berbeda. Kemudian, terdapat strategi adaptasi linguistik masyarakat tutur di Kabupaten Banyumas yang berkaitan dengan kompetensi komunikatif. Akomodasi bahasa masyarakat tutur Banyumas terhadap bahasa Indonesia sangat akomodatif, terhadap bahasa ibu juga akomodatif, tetapi terhadap bahasa daerah kedua dan bahasa asing tidak akomodatif.

In this paper, we discuss the remarkable decrease in the use of French-origin loanwords and loan suffixes in Late Modern Dutch. We consider both changes to be lexical changes since the decrease in loan suffixes such as the verbal suffix -eren appears to result from a shift in certain lexical choices as well (Rutten/Vosters/van der Wal 2015). Our data come from the newly compiled Language of Leiden Corpus (LOL Corpus), developed at Leiden University in the context of a project on the historical Dutch-French contact situation. The main aim of the project is to assess empirically the supposed ‘Frenchification’ of Dutch in the Early Modern period (Frijhoff 2015). The LOL Corpus comprises data from seven social domains (Academy, Charity, Economy, Literature, Private life, Public opinion, Religion) significant in the history of the city Leiden from 1500 to 1899. Leiden was chosen as it was one of the important urban centers in Holland, attracting many migrants, including French-speaking labor migrants and Huguenots. The results for both words and suffixes borrowed from French show a gradual increase from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, and a remarkable decrease from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century. The results partially confirm the ongoing and intensifying influence of French on Dutch in the Early Modern period, depending strongly however on the social domain involved (Assendelft/Rutten/van der Wal 2023a). At the same time, the results also show an unanticipated ‘Dutchification’ in more recent times. We relate these ‘Dutchifying’ lexical changes to the national language planning efforts emerging in the eighteenth century, following the rise of the standard language ideology from the middle of the eighteenth century onwards. These language planning efforts led to the official codification of Dutch in 1804/1805, which targeted spelling and grammar. Previous research has shown the significant influence of the officialization of Dutch, both on the field of education and on language use (Rutten 2019). In this paper, we argue that the successful language policy had the surprising side effect of inspiring language users to exchange sometimes long-established loans for originally Dutch words.

The paper presents an overview of Fula and Wolof numeral systems. Fula is represented by six major lects, for which cardinal, ordinal, distributive, fraction, and human forms of numerals are analyzed. Wolof is the closest relative of Fula, and for this language cardinal and ordinal numeral systems are also analyzed. Apart from the numerals themselves, the syntax of the noun phrase which contains a numeral is analyzed for each language. The language contacts and borrowings are also included in the analysis.

Tjhauba, spoken in northwestern Botswana, is a regional variety of the Bantu language Kgalagadi. Tjhauba exhibits a number of striking linguistic differences with respect to other, previously described Kgalagadi varieties, some the result of language-internal changes, but mostly due to contact with different surrounding Khoisan and Bantu languages. Making use of newly collected field data, this paper shows that Tjhauba has an extensive inventory of click phonemes, contrasting different click accompaniments and, in the speech of elderly speakers, also different click types. Tracing the sources of Tjhauba click words shows that these originate in different Khoisan languages, but also in the Bantu click language Yeyi. Semantically, click words, but also loanwords that do not contain clicks, cluster in the domain of flora and fauna, particularly species found in or close to water. These linguistic findings also shed light on the history of Tjhauba speakers. The adoption of a large number of click phonemes suggests intensive language contact, as still evidenced by ongoing Tjhauba/Khwe bilingualism. A number of the likely source languages for Tjhauba click words are no longer spoken in the area, suggesting contact situations that are no longer ongoing. Furthermore, clicks occur in loanwords, but unlike in neighbouring Bantu click languages, there is no evidence that clicks were also extended to inherited Tjhauba words. This suggests that the sound symbolic or identity marking functions of clicks as posited for other Bantu click languages do not play a role in Tjhauba.

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]

Copyright of Sprachreport is the property of Institut fuer Deutsche Sprache 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.)

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]

Estonian is a verb-second (V2) language: in certain types of sentences, the finite verb tends to be the second constituent. The V2 feature of Estonian is most likely to have developed under Germanic influence. However, there are differences between Germanic and Estonian V2 order. The word order of Estonian main-clause wh-interrogatives is one of the major exceptions to the V2 order. Main-clause wh-interrogatives are always V2 in Germanic but predominantly verb-final in Estonian. The paper describes two corpus studies -- a synchronic and a diachronic one -- that aimed to clarify the proportion, nature and development of the V2 order in Estonian mainclause wh-interrogatives. The synchronic study showed that the proportion of the V2 order in present-day Estonian main-clause wh-interrogatives is approximately 22%. The V2 order is thus considerably less frequent in wh-interrogatives than in declaratives, but it is subject to similar prosodic exceptions in both. The V2 order is nevertheless more frequent in main-clause wh-interrogatives than in embedded wh-interrogatives and relative clauses, giving evidence of a Germanic-like asymmetry between main and embedded clauses. The results of the diachronic study suggest that the V2 order has never been borrowed as the predominant order of Estonian main-clause wh-interrogatives. To explain why the V2 feature was borrowed to a different extent into declaratives and wh-interrogatives, we hypothesise that their word order had already diverged before the V2 order was borrowed. According to the hypothesis, wh-interrogatives had retained the historical verb-final order, which remained unaffected by the V2 order, while declaratives had already lost the verb-final order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this contribution we conduct linguistic and historical research on a Dutch-Russian glossary from the early seventeenth century discovered not so long ago and published in Russian in 2017. The concise word list is the oldest surviving testimony to date of language contact between Dutch and Russians. Based on the provenance of the manuscript in which the word list is located and on the semantic fields found in it, we argue that it should be associated with the northern Russian port city of Arkhangel on the White Sea. Here the Dutch traded with the Russians as early as the sixteenth century. The Dutch part of the glossary shows that a North Holland dialect north of the IJ and especially West Frisian qualify as the informant’s area of origin. This assumption is consistent with historical research on the origins of Dutch traders at Arkhangel from the late sixteenth century onward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 age groups. The results show that speakers of the two older generations tend to accept and produce the regional construction significantly more than speakers of the two younger generations, who favor the Standard Spanish variant (yo tampoco voy a la fiesta 'I'm not going to the party either'). It is suggested that this trend is mainly due to the participants' different language contact situations (Thomason and Kaufman, 1988) and levels of formal education. Since older speakers grew up in a situation of shift via interference and with lower levels of formal education, they prefer the preverbal double negation construction, which was already a norm in the regional Spanish. However, younger speakers grew up in a language maintenance situation and have relatively high formal education levels, factors that have conditioned dialectal leveling in this case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 to early pearl millet domestication not far from here, a Sahelian staple, around 5,000 years ago. Examining current plant-related lexemes across local languages and contrasting with distant, unrelated languages offers insights into older forms. Merging these findings with external data depicts language contact layers. Modern Bandiagara residents, likely with pre-existing botanical knowledge, may have been influenced by the 'Mande Expansion' and its vast West African trade routes. [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]

Copyright of Kwartalnik Neofilologiczny is the property of Polish Academy of Sciences 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.)