Language Contact and Language History

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Language Contact and Language History

• Nicole Scott

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General Aims

• To identify the social contexts of language
  contact
• To discuss the impact of contact on languages.
• To discuss how new languages emerge.

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Background

• The Caribbean space has a remarkable
• montage of linguistic situations. A study of
• the social and linguistic factors which
• defines us as a people will enable us to
• understand why we are who we are as a
• people.

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What are the social contexts of language
contact?

• ????

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Social contexts of language contact

• Trade/Business
• Work
• Recreation
• Educational institutions
• Worship centres
• Migration
• Willful migration e.g. Asian migration
• Forced migration e.g. Slave trade

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What is the impact of contact on languages?

• ????

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Impact of Contact on Language

• Language death
• No consensus when a language is to be regarded as
  dead.
• Minority languages most vulnerable

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Impact of Contact on Language contd

• Language maintenance
• varieties can be maintained to different degrees.
  Three categories are proposed by Siegal
  (199094-96). According to him, languages can
  be -
• thriving
• declining
• dying

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Impact of Contact on Language contd

• Bilingualism
• Multilingualism
• Continuum
• Diglossia
• De jure
• De facto
• Code switching/Code mixing
• Borrowing syntax, lexicon etc.

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Impact of Contact on Language contd

• Language Change
• Synchronic language change study of a language
  at a given moment.
• Diachronic language change studies the history
  of a language or language families as it changes
  over time.
• Syntax
• Phonology
• Lexicon
• Semantics
• (slangs)

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Impact of Contact on Language contd

• New varieties emerge
• Jargon occurs when individuals simplify and
  reduce their language on an ad hoc basis with no
  fixed norms (for example Jamaicans buying
  sunglasses in Caracas)
• Pidgin a reduced language that results from
  extended contact between groups of people with no
  language in common. It evolves when they need
  some means of verbal communication for example
  trade, but no group learns the native language of
  any other group. E.g. Tok Pisin spoken in Papua
  New Guinea

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Impact of Contact on Language contd

• Creole Languages
• Spoken natively
• History of slavery
• Spoken natively
• Use covers all aspects of social life
• Examples of Creole languages
• English Lexicon Creole -JC, French Lexicon
  Creole - TFC, Portuguese Lexicon Creole -
  Papiamento, Dutch Based Creole- Berbice Dutch
  Creole

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How do new languages emerge?

• ????

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How do new languages emerge? contd

• Deliberate creation For example Esperanto
• People are forced to co-exist Creoles.
• There are various theories of Creole genesis
• Language Bio-program Hypothesis (Bickerton)
• Superstrate view (Mufwene)
• Substrate view (Alleyne)

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Questions

• ?????