Ethnologue: Languages of the World

1. Introduction 2. The Roots of Language Contact 3. CS Models and New Developments 4. Considering Problematic CS Data and Other Approaches 5. Convergence and Attrition 6. Lexical Borrowing, Mixed (Split) Languages, and Creole Formation 7. Concluding Remarks: The Out of Sight in Contact Linguistics

Contact Linguistics: Bilingual Encounters and Grammatical Outcomes

The phenomenon of language contact, and how it affects the structure of languages, has been of great interest to linguists. This study looks at how grammatical forms and structures evolve when speakers of two languages come into contact, and offers an interesting insight into the mechanism that induces people to transfer grammatical structures from one language to another. Drawing on findings from languages all over the world, Language Contact and Grammatical Change shows that the transfer of linguistic material across languages is quite regular and follows universal patterns of grammaticalization - contrary to previous claims that it is a fairly irregular process - and argues that internal and external explanations of language structure and change are in no way mutually exclusive. Engaging and informative, this book will be of great interest to sociolinguists, linguistic anthropologists, and all those working on grammaticalization, language contact, and language change.

https://assets.cambridge.org/97805216/08282/copyright/9780521608282_copyright.pdf

Language Contact and Grammatical Change

The handbook of language contact

UC Berkeley Phonology Lab Annual Report (2005) To appear in Bert Remijsen & Vincent J. van Heuven (eds), Special Thematic Issue of Phonology, “Between Stress and Tone” (submitted July 2005, revised November 2005) Word-Prosodic Typology Larry M. Hyman University of California, Berkeley If stress is monarchic, and length oligarchic, we may say that tone is democratic. (Greenberg & Kaschube 1976:9) Introduction Over the past several decades, many linguists have made pronouncements on how prosodic systems should be typologized. While no other area of phonological typology has attracted as much attention, it is not clear how much consensus there is on where things currently stand. Linguists sometimes speak or write on the subject with great conviction, but the views that are expressed often conflict on both general and specific issues, e.g. whether all human languages must have “stress”, whether the prosodic system of Tokyo Japanese is “tonal” vs. “accentual”, and so forth. In this paper I attempt to sort out some of the complexities of word-prosodic typology. I begin in §2 with a brief discussion of problems inherent in doing typology, particularly when applied to phonology. In the next two sections I give brief definitions of tone (§3) and stress-accent (§4), followed by a longer section (§5) which addresses the more problematic notions of “accent” and “pitch-accent”. I argue that the highest-level typological cut consists of identifying two prototypes, one with stress-accent, the other with tone. While it is possible to define these prototypes and establish a set of properties that typically cooccur in each, establishing a third pitch- accent prototype is more elusive. This is, in part, because languages which have been identified as pitch- accent freely “pick and choose” between the prototypical properties of stress-accent systems vs. tone systems. In other words, there are many intermediate word-prosodic systems which are not best seen as discrete types. While most of the discussion centers around typological issues resulting from structural or systemic difference, §6 addresses the role of phonetics in typologizing prosodic systems. §7 provides a brief conclusion. * Typology Since the concern of this study is to address the typology of word-prosodic systems, it seems appropriate to begin by asking the questions: What is typology? phonological typology? word-prosodic typology? Concerning the first question, Hagege (1992:7) provides a traditional definition of typology as “... a principled way of classifying the languages of the world by the most significant properties which distinguish one from another.” Vajda (2001) answers the second question in a similar fashion: “...it is possible to classify languages according to the phonemes they contain.... typology is the study of structural features across languages. Phonological typology involves comparing languages according to the number or type of sounds they contain.” It is significant that the above definitions speak of classifying LANGUAGES rather than subsystems of languages. In any case, only certain parameters impress linguists enough to establish language types: Within phonology, there is a class of “click languages”, but not “implosive languages”, “open syllable languages”, but not “onset languages” (meaning that every syllable has to have an onset). The question is whether there is any reality in classifying languages rather than analyzing the properties of the relevant subsystems. This issue is particularly pronounced in the area of prosody, where the practice of distinguishing “stress languages” from “tone languages” is well- established and has encouraged some to propose additional types: “pitch-accent language”, “restrictive tone language”, and so forth. However, as Greenberg (1974:14) notes, “the same data can be utilized either for a typology of linguistic properties or a typology of individual languages.” A major aim of this study is to show that there is considerably more diversity in prosodic systems than such labels have thus far distinguished. Most phonologists would probably agree that there is little, if any, difference between doing phonological typology vs. phonological theory. At the very least, it is unlikely that one can do insightful This paper was first presented as an invited talk at the conference Between Stress and Tone (BeST). I would like to thank Bert Remijsen and Vincent Van Heuven for the invitation and those in attendance for their helpful comments. I have particularly profited from extended discussions with Carlos Gussenhoven and Jose Hualde on the tone vs. accent question and good Bantu exchanges with David Odden and Gerard Philippson. I also would like to thank the editors and anonymous reviewers for their very thoughtful comments on the original manuscript.

Word-prosodic typology

Youths in several urban centers on the African continent are continuously creating their own languages in order to set themselves apart from the older generation. These languages also serve to bridge ethnic differences. Cases have been reported for Abidjan, Nairobi, Johannesburg, Kinshasa-Brazzaville, and Yaounde. We show that these urban youth languages have much in common, both in function and in the linguistic strategies that their speakers use. The strategies found are typical for conscious language manipulation in general. Languages that arise through lexical manipulation can be divided into four types according to their function and use. Urban youth languages fall into the category of what Halliday terms antilanguages, but differ from other instances of language manipulation such as argot, taboo, jargon, slang, secret languages, and in-law respect languages. The difference lies not only in their different functions, but also, and related to these, in a preference for the use of certain types of conscious manipulation above others. The primary function of these urban youth languages is to create a powerful icon of identity. The identity in question is established through the reversal of norms, and develops from an underdog type of identity to one aimed at reforming society.

Urban youth languages in Africa

The Mbugu (or Ma'a) language (Tanzania) is one of the few genuine mixed languages, reputedly combining Bantu grammar with Cushitic vocabulary. In fact the people speak two languages: one mixed and one closely related to the Bantu language Pare. This book is the first comprehensive description of these languages. It shows that these two languages share one grammar while their lexicon is parallel. In the distant past the people shifted from a Cushitic to a Bantu language and in the process rebuilt a language of their own that expresses their separate ethnic identity in a Bantu environment. This linguistic history is explained in the context of the intricate history of the people. The discussion of the processes that were involved in the formation of Ma'a/Mbugu is extremely relevant for both creole studies and for contact linguistics in general.

The Making of a Mixed Language: The case of Ma’a/Mbugu

A grammar of Iraqw

Mixed Languages. 15 Case Studies in Language Intertwining

l Introduction The aim of this article is to provide an assessment of the linguistic diversity that is endangered in Africa. The African continent has a large number of languages , roughly 2000, or, one third of the world's linguistic heritage. At the outset we should state that the Situation of the indigenous languages of Africa is in general healthy, presently and in the immediate future. Most African languages are not on the verge of extinction and many smaller languages, i.e. languages with fewer than 50,000 speakers, are quite stable and do not show reduction in number of speakers. In this respect the African Situation is markedly different from that in Europe and in the Americas. The Ethnologue (Grimes 2000) names 37 African languages that are on the verge of extinction against 161 in the Americas or in percentages: roughly 0.02% of the languages of Africa is in immediate clanger against 1.15% (a percentage that is 60 times higher) of those in the Americas. When we consider every language that has under 10,000 speakers endangered — which seems to be reasonable —, the number for Africa rises to toughly 300. In other respects, too, the African Situation is different from that in the Americas and Australia, where endangered languages are associated with (indigenous) peoples who belong to the "lower" classes of society. This is not generally the case in Africa. A number of African languages are now in a stronger socio-political Situation than they were twenty years ago and these languages have gained ground against the European official languages: Wolof in Senegal, Bambara in Mali, Setswana in Botswana to name a few. Their success is a force against the long term threat of loss of linguistic diversity in a world dominated by English, a perspective that is predicted by some globalists. This does not relieve us from the task of documenting the languages that are endangered. It does, however, have its consequences for the need of linguistic attention to be devoted to the growing languages as well, and in particular when

/pdf/loss-of-linguistic-diversity-in-africa-wod2vsjlsy.pdf

Maarten Mous

Papers

Urban youth languages in Africa

The Making of a Mixed Language: The case of Ma’a/Mbugu

A grammar of Iraqw

Mixed Languages. 15 Case Studies in Language Intertwining

Loss of linguistic diversity in Africa