Language Change and Cultural Contact Olha Mahidenko (Hauptstudium LN)

Language and CultureProf. R. Hickey

SS 06

Introduction

I. Borrowings, Calques and Interferences.

II. Pidgins and Creoles

III. Language Death

I. Borrowings

Borrowing (lexical copying, lexical change): the transfer of a word from one language into a second language, as a result of some kind of contact, between speakers of the two.

Some Scandinavian loan wordsband, bank, birth, call, die, dirt, egg, fellow, gap, gasp, get,

five, harbor, ill, keel, kid, knife, low, odd, race, root, scare. score, seat, sister, sky, take, their, they. Trust, want. window

I. Borrowings: Examples

Some Latin borrowings in the OEwall, street, wine

abbot, alms, altar, angel, apostle, candle, canon, deacon, demon, pope, priest, prophet, psalm, relic, temple.

Some French loan words in MEfood: pork (swine), beef (cow), mutton (sheep)

law: judge, court, just, marry

government: state, power, people

religion: saint, pray, save, nature

names: Helen, John, Henry, Luke

fashion: button, collar, diamond, dress, embroidery, fashion, jewel, pearl

I. Calques

Calque:a word or phrase constructed by taking a word or phrase in another language as a model and translating it morpheme by morpheme.

Examples:Greek sym-pathia → Latin com-passio → German Mit-leid

meaning “with-suffering” English television → German Fernsehen

meaning “far-seeing”English skyscraper → German Wolkenkratzer, Russian небоскреб

I. Interferences

Interference (also transfer):the non-deliberate carrying of linguistic features from your mother tongue into a second language which you also speak.

Examples:“foreign accent”: French (Celtic, Germanic) and Romanian

(South Slavic) seem so different from each other and Latin.

Two systems of forming comparatives and superlatives:Germanic: strong-stronger-strongestFrench: interesting-more interesting-most interesting

II. Pidgins and Creoles

Pidgin:

an auxiliary language constructed from bits and pieces of one or more existing languages by people who have no language in common. A pidgin is not a natural language; it has a tiny vocabulary and no grammar to speak of.

Creole:

a natural language (mother tongue) which derives from an earlier pidgin...

II. Pidgins and Creoles

The total number of pidgins and creoles is around 350.

The total number of speakers may be estimated at around 100 million.

Lexemesof

a superstrateGrammar

Ofa substrate

CreoleA Pidgin

“parent languages”

a “daughter languages”

III. Language Death

Language death:the disappearance of a language as a mother tongue…

Sudden language death results from:

a. natural disasters: A volcanic eruption on Sumbawa Island wiped out all the speakers of Tamboran in 1815

b. human intervention: 90% of the indigenous population of North America was eradicated between 1600 and 1800 by diseases carried by the Europeans and their Animals; The Tasmanians of Australia and the Beothuks of Newfoundland both became extinct by the XIXth century as a result of conquest and genocide by the Europeans.

III. Language Death

Gradual language death:a. may fall out of daily use, becoming restricted to ceremonial and formal functions: Coptic Christians of Egypt use Coptic only as a liturgical language

b. usually takes the form of language shift. Basque in France, Welsh and Scots Gaelic in Britain.

Substrate/minority language

Superstrate/dominant language

References

Crystal, David, The English Language. Penguin Books,1990.

Foley, William A., Anthropological Linguistics: an Introduction, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 2000.

Trask, R. L., The Dictionary of Historical and Comparative Linguistics, Edinburg:Edinburgh University Press, 2000.