Language Contact and the Origins of the Germanic Languages

Language Contact and the Origins of the Germanic Languages
Author: Peter Schrijver
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2013-12-04
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1134254490

History, archaeology, and human evolutionary genetics provide us with an increasingly detailed view of the origins and development of the peoples that live in Northwestern Europe. This book aims to restore the key position of historical linguistics in this debate by treating the history of the Germanic languages as a history of its speakers. It focuses on the role that language contact has played in creating the Germanic languages, between the first millennium BC and the crucially important early medieval period. Chapters on the origins of English, German, Dutch, and the Germanic language family as a whole illustrate how the history of the sounds of these languages provide a key that unlocks the secret of their genesis: speakers of Latin, Celtic and Balto-Finnic switched to speaking Germanic and in the process introduced a 'foreign accent' that caught on and spread at the expense of types of Germanic that were not affected by foreign influence. The book is aimed at linguists, historians, archaeologists and anyone who is interested in what languages can tell us about the origins of their speakers.

Early Germanic Languages in Contact

Early Germanic Languages in Contact
Author: John Ole Askedal
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2015-06-15
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027268231

This volume contains revised and, in some cases, extended versions of twelve of the fourteen lectures read at the conference on “Early Germanic Languages in Contact” held at the University of Southern Denmark in Odense on 22-23 August 2013 – with a paper and a review article added at the end on themes pertaining to the aim and scope of the symposium. All papers cover central aspects of the early contact between Germanic and some of its Indo-European and non-Indo-European linguistic neighbours; and, in certain cases, aspects involving internal Germanic language contact.

Languages in Contact

Languages in Contact
Author: Uriel Weinreich
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 437
Release: 2011-11-23
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027284997

The appearance of Uriel Weinreich's Languages in Contact: Findings and Problems (1953) marked a milestone in the study of multilingualism and language contact. Yet until now, few linguists have been aware that its main themes were first laid out in Weinreich’s Columbia University doctoral dissertation of 1951, Research Problems in Bilingualism with Special Reference to Switzerland. Based on the author's fieldwork, it contains a detailed report on language contact in Switzerland in the first half of the 20th century, especially along the French-German linguistic border and between German and Romansh in the canton of Grisons (Graubünden). The present edition reproduces Weinreich's original text in full, with only minor alterations and corrections, as well as the author's fieldwork photographs and many of his hand-drawn diagrams. A new foreword reviews Weinreich's life and legacy, as well as developments in contact linguistics and the Swiss linguistic situation over the past 60 years. With selected comments on noteworthy points and references to more recent literature, this volume will be of interest not only to those working on the languages of Switzerland, or specialists in language contact, but all scholars today whose work builds on the broad and lasting foundations laid over half a century ago by Uriel Weinreich.

Language Contact at the Romance-Germanic Language Border

Language Contact at the Romance-Germanic Language Border
Author: Jeanine Treffers-Daller
Publisher: Multilingual Matters
Total Pages: 160
Release: 2002
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9781853596278

The current volume brings together sociolinguistic analyses of language contact along the Romance Germanic Language Border, shedding more light on the variable and the universal elements in language contact and shift. It covers the whole range of the border, from French Flanders through South Tirol. Every part of it has been treated by outstanding experts. They describe the current state of the art in 'their' portion of the language border and include information on the legal and/or practical status of the language border and the status and function of all languages concerned. Attitudinal and language planning initiatives as well as the standardisation status of the regionally official and minority languages are discussed. Language borrowing, code switching and other language contact phenomena are analysed in detail.

The Handbook of Language Contact

The Handbook of Language Contact
Author: Raymond Hickey
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 1065
Release: 2020-09-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1119485053

The second edition of the definitive reference on contact studies and linguistic change—provides extensive new research and original case studies Language contact is a dynamic area of contemporary linguistic research that studies how language changes when speakers of different languages interact. Accessibly structured into three sections, The Handbook of Language Contact explores the role of contact studies within the field of linguistics, the value of contact studies for language change research, and the relevance of language contact for sociolinguistics. This authoritative volume presents original findings and fresh research directions from an international team of prominent experts. Thirty-seven specially-commissioned chapters cover a broad range of topics and case studies of contact from around the world. Now in its second edition, this valuable reference has been extensively updated with new chapters on topics including globalization, language acquisition, creolization, code-switching, and genetic classification. Fresh case studies examine Romance, Indo-European, African, Mayan, and many other languages in both the past and the present. Addressing the major issues in the field of language contact studies, this volume: Includes a representative sample of individual studies which re-evaluate the role of language contact in the broader context of language and society Offers 23 new chapters written by leading scholars Examines language contact in different societies, including many in Africa and Asia Provides a cross-section of case studies drawing on languages across the world The Handbook of Language Contact, Second Edition is an indispensable resource for researchers, scholars, and students involved in language contact, language variation and change, sociolinguistics, bilingualism, and language theory.

Germanic Heritage Languages in North America

Germanic Heritage Languages in North America
Author: Janne Bondi Johannessen
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Total Pages: 426
Release: 2015-08-15
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027268193

This book presents new empirical findings about Germanic heritage varieties spoken in North America: Dutch, German, Pennsylvania Dutch, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish, West Frisian and Yiddish, and varieties of English spoken both by heritage speakers and in communities after language shift. The volume focuses on three critical issues underlying the notion of ‘heritage language’: acquisition, attrition and change. The book offers theoretically-informed discussions of heritage language processes across phonetics and phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics and the lexicon, in addition to work on sociolinguistics, historical linguistics and contact settings. With this, the volume also includes a variety of frameworks and approaches, synchronic and diachronic. Most European Germanic languages share some central linguistic features, such as V2, gender and agreement in the nominal system, and verb inflection. As minority languages faced with a majority language like English, similarities and differences emerge in patterns of variation and change in these heritage languages. These empirical findings shed new light on mechanisms and processes.

Convergence and Divergence in Language Contact Situations

Convergence and Divergence in Language Contact Situations
Author: Kurt Braunmüller
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2009
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027219281

This book deals with the consequences of converging and diverging processes and their development in language contact situations. It provides insights into the various forms of language contact and the conditions under which bilingual speakers master their every-day life in bilingual communities. Its nine contributions cover both theoretical and typological aspects, such as the classification of languages, the role of language contact, linguistic complexity and spontaneous speech innovations, and convergence and divergence processes in translation, (morpho)syntax and phonology/phonetics. Taken together, these studies provide challenges for linguistic theories that generalize from situations of monolingualism suggesting instead that a sound linguistic theory cannot be a theory for just one single, isolated language but must be a theory for at least two languages. It must also account for the fact that some structures involved in contact situations are not kept apart but develop in such a way that the distance decreases between the languages involved.

Diaspora Language Contact

Diaspora Language Contact
Author: Jim Hlavac
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 659
Release: 2021-10-25
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1501503812

This book is an innovative contribution to contact linguistics as it presents a rarely studied but sizeable diaspora language community in contact with five languages – English, German, Italian, Norwegian and Spanish – across four continents. Foregrounded by diachronic descriptions of heritage Croatian in long-standing minority communities the book presents synchronically based studies of the speech of different generations of diaspora speakers. Croatian offers excellent scope as a base language to examine how lexical and morpho-structural innovations occur in a highly inflective Slavic language where external influence from Germanic and Romance languages appears evident. The possibility of internal factors is also addressed and interpretive models of language change are drawn on. With a foreword by Sarah Thomason, University of Michigan

When Languages Collide

When Languages Collide
Author: Brian D. Joseph
Publisher: Ohio State University Press
Total Pages: 396
Release: 2003
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780814209134

Germanic Language Histories 'from Below' (1700-2000)

Germanic Language Histories 'from Below' (1700-2000)
Author: Stephan Elspaß
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 532
Release: 2011-07-26
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 311092546X

Focusing on the sociolinguistic history of Germanic languages, the current volume challenges the traditional teleological approach of language historiography. The 30 contributions present alternative histories of ten ‘big’ as well as ‘small’ Germanic languages and varieties in the last 300 years. Topics covered in this book include language variation and change and the politics of language contact and choice, seen against the background of standardization processes of written and oral text genres and from the viewpoint of larger sections of the population.