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Some Issues in the Study of Language Contact* SOME ISSUES IN THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE CONTACT* Donald Winford Ohio State University 1. Introduction The earliest conceptions of the field of Contact Linguistics envisioned it as a multi-disciplinary area of study, encompassing a broad range of language contact phenomena and issues, linguistic, sociolinguistic, sociological and psycholinguistic. The field of study developed out of several lines of research dating back to the 19th century. Among its foundations was work on dialect contact and the formation of pidgins and creoles, as conducted by researchers such as Schuchardt, Hesseling, and others. Other lines of research concerned with contact phenomena included work on the linguistic and social aspects of code-switching, contact-induced language change, the dynamics of language maintenance and shift in immigrant and other multilingual communities, and the nature of bilinguals’ linguistic competence and cognition. All of these diverse lines of enquiry have become part of the general study of languages in contact, but we are still far from integrating them into a coherent and comprehensive theoretical/methodological framework. Some time ago, Appel & Muysken (1987: 7) claimed that “bilingualism or language contact in itself is not a scientific discipline.” More recently, Van Coetsem (2000: 39-40) pointed out that “Contact linguistics still lacks an adequate conceptual basis on which a synthesis can be built that is theoretically well- founded.” One of the factors that appear to contribute to the apparent disunity in the field is the territoriality adopted by scholars in various disciplines. Researchers in “Bilingualism,” Code- switching”, “Creole Linguistics”, Historical Linguistics” and so on, seem to want to preserve the boundaries and distinctiveness of their own area of interest. In general, researchers tend to define the field in terms of their particular concerns, or in opposition to other areas of study that investigate language contact. For Myers-Scotton (2002: 5), for example, “Contact Linguistics belongs with theoretical studies of grammar; it can contribute to, and challenge, theories of syntax and morphology as well as phonology.” Despite this heavily linguistic bias, she still includes within the field a wide range of contact phenomena, including borrowing, morphosyntactic change, language attrition, pidgin and creole formation, and Interlanguage, that is, “the grammar(s) of learners of a second language” (ibid.). Yet, most interestingly, she distinguishes Contact Linguistics from *I wish to express my gratitude for the useful comments made by a reviewer of this paper. I alone am responsible for any errors or omissions. Journal of Language Contact – THEMA 1 (2007) www. jlc-journal.org Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 10:23:38AM via free access Some issues in the study of language contact 23 Bilingualism, which she defines as “a much broader topic that typically includes language contact and may include contact linguistics.” Bilingualism, in her view, is concerned with such questions as the social factors involved in how people become bilingual; childhood acquisition of two languages; bilinguals and their cognition; and language policy toward bilinguals. Thus, on the one hand, she sees bilingualism as akin to sociolinguistics and the sociology of language, and, on the other, to psycholinguistics. This kind of partitioning of the field is also seen among those who study bilingualism. For instance, in his excellent study of the interaction of sociopragmatic and psycholinguistic factors in bilingual language production, Walters (2005: 4) acknowledges that he must ignore several areas of research on contact phenomena, including structural (linguistic) approaches to second language acquisition (e.g, Epstein & al. 1996); bilingual code-switching (Poplack 1980) and, curiously, Contact Linguistics (Winford 2003). Of course, limiting one’s study in this way is often necessary and understandable, given the scope and complexity of contact phenomena. Nevertheless, whether intentionally or not, it encourages an atomistic view of the various areas of study, rather than the kind of comprehensive and integrated approach that the field needs. In fact, all of the phenomena listed above by Myers-Scotton and Walters fall under the scope of Contact Linguistics in the broad sense of the term. Whatever the approach may be, we are all concerned, ultimately, with the same problem – how to analyze and account for language contact phenomena. Hence we should be devoting our efforts to achieving consensus and unity in the field. We might begin by agreeing on the range of phenomena that we are all interested in. There is growing agreement that these include: bilingual code-switching and mixture; second language acquisition; borrowing and convergence between languages; and language attrition or obsolescence. Bilingual mixture has traditionally been seen as the province of “Bilingualism”, yet to distinguish this field from “Contact Linguistics”, as Walters does, is an odd thing to do, since they are concerned with the same issues. With regard to second language acquisition, contact linguists are particularly interested in the formation of “indigenized” varieties of languages, such as Hiberno English or Singapore English, and the second language varieties of dominant languages used by immigrants in Europe, the Americas and elsewhere. Borrowing, substratum influence, and convergence have traditionally been the concern of historical linguistics, but their products are now being increasingly examined within the framework of contact linguistics. Language attrition and death has recently emerged as a major area of study in its own right, but the phenomena it deals with are similar in many ways to those found in cases of language shift and convergence. Each of these types of contact has been instrumental in various types of contact-induced change, and in the creation of “new” contact languages such as bilingual mixed (intertwined) languages, pidgins, and creoles. The huge task facing Contact Linguistics is to integrate all of these phenomena and the various disciplinary approaches to them, into a coherent framework. The elements of such a framework include, among other things, a consistent terminology for dealing with the phenomena in question, a common set of criteria for classifying various outcomes of language contact, and a theory that includes all aspects of language contact, whether linguistic, sociolinguistic, or psycholinguistic. I do not pretend to have such a framework to offer here, nor to be able to show how such integration of approaches can be accomplished. It would be a gigantic, and (given our current knowledge) near impossible task to cover all of the issues that are relevant to a comprehensive theory of contact-induced change. Hence, I limit my attention to linguistic approaches to contact phenomena and the kinds of progress they have made. I also briefly discuss ways in which linguistic and psycholinguistic approaches to contact phenomena might inform each other. Journal of Language Contact – THEMA 1 (2007) www. jlc-journal.org Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 10:23:38AM via free access 24 Donald Winford 2. Problems of definition and classification I suggest that there are two broad problems that linguistic approaches have failed to adequate address, with the result that we still lack a coherent theoretical framework of our own. One has to do with matters of definition and classification; the other involves questions of the processes and principles underlying contact-induced change. Obviously, there is much more to the problem than just these questions, for instance, the role of sociolinguistic factors in shaping the outcomes of contact. But I confine my attention here just to issues concerning definition, classification and process, all of which are in fact closely related. In this connection, I argue that the linguistic model of contact-induced change proposed by Van Coetsem (1988, 2000) offers the best approach to understanding such issues. I also focus particularly on recent research that suggests how psycholinguistic models of language production can shed light on processes of contact-induced change, and perhaps contribute toward the integrated theory we seek. 2.1 Definition and classification At this point, we are still far from consensus on even the definition of a contact language, and what criteria we should use for their classification. As Markey (1982: 170) notes: “All languages are contact languages. For purposes of contact-linguistic classification, we need another notion than ‘mixing’ or ‘intertwining’”. No contact linguist would disagree with Markey’s observation. Usually, however, we focus our attention on a subset of the outcomes of language contact, paying particular attention to salient cases such as bilingual mixed languages, pidgins, and creoles. I follow the latter tradition here, but this does not deny the fact that the processes of change found in these “prototypical” cases are simply extreme manifestations of what is found in every case of language contact. The framework I discuss later, that of Van Coetsem (1988, 2000) is in fact sufficiently broad to account for most of the phenomena associated with cross-linguistic influence, but I apply it here only to the more limited set of “contact languages.” For the most part, we still define the class of contact languages in terms of what we know of their history, rather than in terms of the structural or typological features that they all share, or the
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