3- LANGUAGES IN CONTACT
Language contact occurs when speakers of distinct speech
varieties interact. When speakers of different languages interact closely, it
is typical for their languages to influence one another. One of the main
consequences arising from language contact is the influence exerted by one
language on the other and in most of the cases that of the superstratum over
the substratum. This influence can be mutual or non mutual. Other no less
important consequences of language contact are: borrowing, mixed languages, or
even language endangerment or death to mention only these few.
Change as a result of contact is often one-sided.
Chinese, for instance, has had a profound effect on the development of
Japanese, but the Chinese language remains relatively free of Japanese
influence, other than some modern terms that were re - borrowed after having
been coined in Japan. In India, Hindi and other native languages have
been influenced by English up to the extent that loan words from English are
part of day to day vocabulary.
In some cases, language contact may lead to mutual exchange,
although this exchange may be confined to a particular geographic region. For
example, in Switzerland, the local French has been influenced by
German, and vice-versa. In Scotland, the Scots language has
been heavily influenced by English, and many Scots terms have been
adopted into the regional English dialect.
All languages can borrow words from a language with which they
are in contact. Most of the time, these borrowed words undergo transformations
in conformity with the phonology of the target language. For example, given
that French words are stressed on the last syllable, the word walkman,
which has an initial accent in English, the source language, is pronounced with
a final French accent. However, there are also cases in which such an
adaptation does not take place; consequently, the sound structure of the
borrowing language undergoes a change. For example, further to the contact with
English and Italian, French has affricate consonants today, as in match
and pizza.
A mixed language is a language that arises through the fusion
of two source languages (both being clearly identifiable), normally in
situations of thorough bilingualism. It differs from either a pidgin, a Creole
and Code -Switching.
Concerning pidgin, it differs from it. The speakers of a mixed
language are fluent in both languages, whereas a pidgin develops when groups of
people with little knowledge of each other's languages come into contact and
have need of a basic communication system, as for trade, but do not have enough
contact to learn each other's language.
As for the second, they differ because a Creole language
generally has one identifiable parent in addition to diverse input which cannot
be traced to any particular language. While creoles tend to have drastically
simplified morphologies, mixed languages often retain the inflectional
complexities of both parent languages.
Finally, a mixed language differs from code-switching, such as
Spanglish and Frenglish13, in that speakers do not
need to know the source languages. The fusion of the source languages is fixed
in the grammar and vocabulary, not left to the speaker. However, it is believed
that mixed languages evolve from persistent code-switching, with younger
generations picking up the code-switching, but not necessarily the source
languages that generated it.
Language death is a recurring phenomenon in Sociolinguistics.
We can consider that generally language death occurs in a linguistic situation
of domination i.e. when a dominant language A replaces completely a dominated
language B. However the complete substitution of a language leading to its
death proceeds by stage. Three principal types of causes can be called upon to
explain the death of a language: physical, political and socio -economic
causes14.
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