scholarly journals Language Contact and Morphosyntactic Complexity: Evidence from German

2014 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Péter Maitz ◽  
Attila Németh
Keyword(s):  
Statistical Analysis ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Structural Complexity ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Linguistic Complexity ◽  
Language Varieties ◽  
Corpus Data

The article focuses on the hypothesis that the structural complexity of languages is variable and historically changeable. By means of a quantitative statistical analysis of naturalistic corpus data, the question is raised as to what role language contact and adult second language acquisition play in the simplification and complexification of language varieties. The results confirm that there is a significant correlation between intensity of contact and linguistic complexity, while at the same time showing that there is a need to consider other social factors, and, in particular, the attitude of a speech community toward linguistic norms.*

The Development of Metropolitan Languages in Post-Colonial Contexts: Language Contact and Language Change and the Case of Portuguese in Maputo

1996 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-213
Author(s):  
Christopher Stroud
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Contact Linguistics ◽  
The Social

This article explores briefly some phenomena of potential indigenization of the Portuguese spoken in Mozambique. Data for the study has been taken from work that is currently underway in Maputo, Mozambique, that was originally initiated to investigate contact varieties of Portuguese and to probe their educational implications. Speech samples comprise formal interviews and non-formal encounters from a socio-demographically representative sample of informants. The article first provides an inventory of some non-standard European Portuguese variants that are found in this data, and subsequently focusses upon a discussion of what contribution different linguistic processes make to indigenization, specifically the role played by processes of second language acquisition in a context of massive and diffuse language contact and change. Special attention is also paid to the social contexts in which different manifestations of language contact are found, and the importance of linguistic ideology for the form that language contact takes in particular cases is explored. The article concludes with the suggestion that the salient characteristics of types of non-native speech community such as Maputo require a reconceptualization of models and methods of contact linguistics and second language acquisition, and that this in turn carries implications for the terms of reference and analysis to which indigenization need be related.

The fate of linguistic innovations

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 302-322 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Rosen
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Foreign Language ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Foreign Language Acquisition ◽  
The Social ◽  
French Speaking ◽  
Linguistic Level ◽  
Corpus Data ◽  
Norman French

Drawing on spoken corpus data, this study traces the emergence and development of Norman French-influenced innovations in the nativised L2 variety of Jersey English and compares them to features in the speech of French-speaking learners of English. The comparison shows that such innovations do not differ from errors in a learner variety on a formal linguistic level and that they arguably result from the same processes as are present in foreign language acquisition, such as transfer or simplification. The paper therefore argues that innovations can only be identified reliably in retrospect, once they are more widely accepted in the speech community. It also points to the social factors that are crucial in shaping the use and probable fates of former innovations in Jersey English and suggests a typology of innovations according to their developments.

scholarly journals A note on mans in Toronto

2016 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derek Denis
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Short Note ◽  
Data Sources ◽  
First Person ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Plural Noun ◽  
Pronominal System

This paper serves as a short note about an ongoing innovation in the pronominal system of multiethnic adolescent Toronto English. The plural noun mans is in the early stages of grammaticalizing into a first person singular pronoun in this speech community in a way similar to the development of man in Multicultural London English (Cheshire 2013). To illustrate the function and distribution of mans, examples are taken from a variety of data sources including reflexive performances of and meta-commentary about multiethnic adolescent Toronto English. While mans in Toronto English is similar to man in London, critical differences exists. The presence of such a similar innovation in both Toronto and London leads to several empirical questions about language contact, diffusion, group second language acquisition, and grammaticalization.

At the interface of contact linguistics and second language acquisition research

2015 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gaëtanelle Gilquin
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Discourse Markers ◽  
Phrasal Verbs ◽  
Contact Linguistics ◽  
Language Varieties ◽  
Descriptive Account ◽  
Corpus Data ◽  
Similarities And Differences

This paper examines the possible interface between contact linguistics and second language acquisition research by comparing the institutionalized second-language varieties of English known as “New Englishes” and the foreign varieties of English called “Learner Englishes”. On the basis of corpus data representing several populations of various origins, it investigates four linguistic phenomena, ranging from syntax (embedded inversion) to lexis (phrasal verbs with up), through phraseology (word clusters) and pragmatics (discourse markers), with a view to identifying similarities and differences between the two types of varieties at several levels of the language. The paper also explores avenues for going beyond a descriptive account towards a more explanatory one, in an attempt to build the foundations of a theoretical rapprochement between contact linguistics and second language acquisition research.

World Englishes, Second Language Acquisition, and Language Contact

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rajend Mesthrie
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
World Englishes ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Political Dimension ◽  
Second Languages

Although areas of potential overlap between the fields of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and World Englishes (WE) may seem obvious, they developed historically in isolation from each other. SLA had a psycholinguistic emphasis, studying the ways in which individuals progressed towards acquisition of a target language. WE studies initially developed a sociolinguistic focus, describing varieties that arose as second languages in former British colonies. This chapter explores the way in which each field could benefit from the other. The SLA emphasis on routes of development, overgeneralization, universals of SLA, and transfer in the interlanguage has relevance to characterizing sub-varieties of WEs. Conversely, the socio-political dimension of early WE studies and the notion of macro- or group acquisition fills a gap in SLA studies which sometimes failed to acknowledge that the goal of second language learners was to become bilingual in ways that were socially meaningful within their societies.

Semantic Borrowing in Language Contact

2020 ◽  
pp. 154-172
Author(s):  
Brian Mott ◽  
Natalia J. Laso
Keyword(s):  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Morphological Change ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Native Language ◽  
Lexical Item ◽  
Semantic Change ◽  
General Introduction ◽  
Formal Similarity ◽  
Foreign Counterpart

After providing a general introduction to loan phenomena, which may be phonological, grammatical and syntactic, morphological or lexical, and commenting on the degree to which various different languages have borrowed elements from other languages, this chapter concentrates on the main types of semantic change triggered by language contact, and underlines the frequency of these processes. First, loanwords are distinguished from loan creations, which are new coinages made from loan material. Then pure loanwords are contrasted with loanblends. Pure loanwords are adopted wholesale, with little phonological or morphological change, while loanblends adopt only part of the form of a foreign lexical item. Loanshifts borrow the meaning, but the form is native. These include pure loan translations (calques), where the original morphemes are translated item by item. The more fanciful among these are called loan renditions, in which the translation of the foreign word is freer and less than literal. In semantic loan (semantic calque), a native word undergoes extension of its meaning on the model of a foreign counterpart. The second half of the chapter deals with the causes of semantic borrowing, and shows that it is often induced by formal similarity of cognates. In this section, attention is paid to pressure from the native language in second language acquisition, and the influence exerted on dialect by the standard language, or vice versa. The chapter ends with some examples of pragmatic borrowing.

Second Language Acquisition and Syntactic Theory in the 21st Century

2010 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 248-269 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juana M. Liceras
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Minimalist Program ◽  
Science Field ◽  
Syntactic Theory ◽  
Syntactic Properties

Syntactic theory has played a role in second language acquisition (SLA) research since the early 1980s, when the principles and parameters model of generative grammar was implemented. However, it was the so-called functional parameterization hypothesis together with the debate on whether second language learners activated new features or switched their value that led to detailed and in-depth analyses of the syntactic properties of many different nonnative grammars. In the last 10 years, with the minimalist program as background, these analyses have diverted more and more from looking at those syntactic properties that argued for or against the various versions of the UG-access versus non-UG-access debate (UG for Universal Grammar) and have more recently delved into the status of nonnative grammars in the cognitive science field. Thus, using features (i.e., gender, case, verb, and determiner) as the basic units and paying special attention to the quality of input as well as to processing principles and constraints, nonnative grammars have been compared to the language contact paradigms that underlie subsequent bilingualism, child SLA, creole formation, and diachronic change. Taking Chomsky's I-language/E-language construct as the framework, this article provides a review of these recent developments in SLA research.

scholarly journals How Do New Languages Arise? A Comparison of Romanization and Gallicization

2020 ◽  
Vol 59 (1-4) ◽  
pp. 9-18
Author(s):  
Adrienn Gulyás
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Whole Language ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Ecological Factors ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Complicated Case ◽  
Language Varieties ◽  
Colonial Expansion ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
Founding Populations

SummaryThis paper compares the romanization of Gaul in the 1st century BC and the gallicization of the island of Martinique during 17th-century French colonial expansion, using criteria set out by Muf- wene's Founder Principle. The Founder Principle determines key ecological factors in the formation of creole vernaculars, such as the founding populations and their proportion to the whole, language varieties spoken, and the nature and evolution of the interactions of the founding populations (also referred to as “colonization styles”). Based on the comparison, it will be claimed that new languages arise when a language undergoes vehicularization and subsequently shifts from one speech community to another. In other words, linguistic genesis would be a complicated case of language contact, where not only one, but sev- eral dialects of both superstrate and substrate varieties are involved, in a historical context where the identity function of language, or the norm, is overriden by the need to communicate. Research also indicates that language varieties spoken at the time of the shift did not pertain to normative usage, but to popular varieties, dialects, or both, since the emerging vernaculars - in Gaul, as well as in Martinique - preserved some of their phonological and lexical particularities.

scholarly journals AN ANALYSIS ON THE FACTORS INFLUENCING THE SECOND LANGUANGE ACQUISITION (STUDENTS’ ENGLISH LEARNING ACHIEVEMENT) OF THE USHULUDDIN, ADAB AND DA’WAH STUDENTS

Al-Hikmah ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Wardah Wardah
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
Quantitative Research ◽  
Research Use ◽  
English Learning ◽  
Learning Achievement ◽  
Factors Influencing ◽  
Effect Relation

This research was conducted for factors (internal and external) which influences students’ second language acquisition (students’ learning achievement). This research has investigated the effect relation of the factors on students’ learning achievement and the factors which influence the students’ learning achievement and the factors that comes from the students that influencing the students’ second language acquisition (learning achievement).This research use quantitative research. This research conducted in Ushuludddin, Adab and Da’wah Faculty, especially for 5 majors. The sample of this research about 100 students. The data in this research were collected by documentation technique and questionnaire technique. In analyzing the data, the researcher using Multiple Regression Analysis (SPSS 17), T test, F test, and Coefficient Determination (R2). Motivation, personal practice, study habits, and input has significant effect to the students’ learning achievement. Attitude, social factors and interaction has no significant effect to the students’ learning achievement. (Penelitian ini dilakukan untuk mengetahui faktor-faktor (internal dan eksternal) yang mempengaruhi akuisisi bahasa kedua mahasiswa (prestasi belajar mahasiswa). Penelitian ini telah meneliti hubungan pengaruh antara faktor-faktor prestasi belajar mahasiswa dan faktor-faktor yang mempengaruhi prestasi belajar mahasiswa, serta faktor-faktor yang berasal dari mahasiswa yang mempengaruhi akuisisi bahasa tersebut. Penelitian ini menggunakan pendekatan kuantitatif. Penelitian ini dilakukan di Ushuludddin, Adab dan Fakultas Dakwah, khususnya pada 5 jurusan. Sampel penelitian ini sekitar 100 mahasiswa. Data dalam penelitian ini dikumpulkan dengan teknik dokumentasi dan teknik kuesioner. Dalam menganalisis data, peneliti menggunakan Analisis Regresi Berganda (SPSS 17), uji T, uji F, dan Koefisien Determinasi (R2). Motivasi, praktik pribadi, kebiasaan belajar, dan masukan memiliki pengaruh yang signifikan terhadap pencapaian belajar mahasiswa. Sikap, faktor sosial dan interaksi tidak berpengaruh signifikan terhadap prestasi belajar mahasiswa).

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