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Bilingualism, Language Contact and Change: the Case of Bengali and English in India by Tridha Chatterjee a Dissertation Submitt Bilingualism, language contact and change: The case of Bengali and English in India by Tridha Chatterjee A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Linguistics) in the University of Michigan 2015 Doctoral Committee: Professor Marlyse Baptista, Co-Chair Professor Acrisio Pires, Co-Chair Professor Madhav Deshpande Professor Sarah G. Thomason Acknowledgements This dissertation would never have been possible without the immense support and guidance of my co-advisor, Marlyse Baptista. Her role in my professional development has been tremendous. Her high standards for methods, analysis, and writing have been vital in the completion of this dissertation. My other guide and mentor, my co-advisor, Acrisio Pires has influenced my graduate career immensely with his continuous encouragement, support and insights on my work. I owe a deep gratitude to Sally Thomason for her indispensible guidance and insightful comments on my project, which have made me a better writer and clearer thinker. Thanks also to Madhav Deshpande for his expertise in Indo-Aryan languages and interest in my work. In addition to my committee, many other members of the Linguistics Department have supported me over the years. My first mentor in graduate school, Carmel O’Shannessy helped me immensely in understanding the basics of linguistics research and academic writing. I also thank Andries Coetzee for being an approachable graduate chair; the members of the SoConDi discussion group for their valuable feedback on my research; the past and present support staff of the Linguistics department, Sylvia Suttor, Tim Moore, Jen Nguyen and Sandee Petee for their help. My research was also supported by financial assistance from Rackham Graduate School and the Linguistics Department; the staff of CSCAR for help with the quantitative analysis; Jeffrey Martin, librarian for South Asian Studies in Hatcher Library for helping me locate Bengali plays; the undergraduate students who helped code the English data. ii I am indebted to many graduate students in the Linguistics Department for their companionship and guidance: Harim Kwon and Mike Opper, for always being there, Sujeewa Hettiarachchi, my connection to South Asia, Jae Young Shim, for making me laugh so often, Erica Beck for her help and support during my move to Ann Arbor, Cameron Rule, for agreeing to read my dissertation, Jon Yip, for sharing my frustrations regarding teaching, David Medeiros, for always making sure that I did not feel left out in a group, and Miyeon Ahn, Jiseung Kim and Yiwen Zhou for being such warm people. I thank my friends in Ann Arbor outside of Linguistics: Bratati Kahali, Kohinoor Dasgupta, Samopriyo Maitra, Mukesh Patir, Liduina Kimbu, Surma Talapatra, and Madhumita Dutta for their kindness and warmth, for helping me overcome homesickness, and treating me to delicious home-cooked meals. My dearest friends in India, Tansushree Bhattacharya, Ayesha Gautam, and Saswati Chatterjee have always expressed a keen interest in my work and without their help and that of several other relatives and acquaintances in Kolkata and Durgapur, I would have never been able to complete my fieldwork. Finally and most importantly, I am immensely grateful and appreciative of my family’s support throughout my graduate studies. Without my husband, Soumya De’s support and motivation, I would never have started graduate studies, applied to the University of Michigan or survived its rigors. His continuous encouragement has been indispensible for my progress in graduate school. My father and mother, Tushar and Lakshmi Chatterjee and my sister, Deepsikha Chatterjee contributed immensely to my well-being and education. Their faith in me has always given me the strength to carry on in life. Ann Arbor, my home for the last six years, also deserves mention for being such a kind, welcoming and safe city and for helping me grow up in many ways. iii Table of Contents Acknowledgements....................................................................................................................... ii List of Figures............................................................................................................................... vi List of Tables............................................................................................................................... vii List of Appendices..................................................................................................................... viii List of Abbreviations.................................................................................................................. ix Abstract.......................................................................................................................................... x Chapter 1: Introduction ............................................................................................................... 1 1.1. Research questions ................................................................................................................. 4 1.2. Organization of the dissertation ........................................................................................... 6 Chapter 2: The socio-historical background of contact between English and Indian ........... 8 languages 2.1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 8 2.2. History of English in India .................................................................................................... 9 2.2.1. English and its predecessors in India ............................................................................ 9 2.2.2. The dissemination of English in India ........................................................................ 10 2.2.3. The role of English after Indian independence ........................................................... 16 2.3. Background of Bengali and English in Bengal .................................................................. 20 2.3.1. Background on Bengali............................................................................................... 20 2.3.2. The arrival and spread of English in Bengal ............................................................... 22 2.3.3. English education and its sociocultural, literary and linguistic impact in Bengal ...... 23 2.4. Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 29 Chapter 3: Literature review on language contact and change ............................................. 31 3.1. Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 31 3.2. Language contact and change ............................................................................................. 32 3.3. Processes and mechanisms of contact-induced change .................................................... 35 3.4. Ascertaining contact-induced change ................................................................................ 51 3.5. Bidirectional influences ....................................................................................................... 55 3.6. Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 60 Chapter 4: Methodology: Data collection and coding ............................................................. 62 4.1. Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 62 4.2. Description of corpora ......................................................................................................... 63 4.2.1. Nineteenth-century Bengali corpus............................................................................. 63 iv 4.2.2. Bilingual Bengali-English corpus ............................................................................... 64 4.2.3. Monolingual Bengali corpus ....................................................................................... 65 4.2.4. Monolingual English corpus ....................................................................................... 65 4.3. Procedure of data collection ................................................................................................ 67 4.4. Coding of the data ................................................................................................................ 68 4.5. Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 69 Chapter 5: Contact-induced changes: From the lexicon to morphosyntax .......................... 71 5.1. Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 71 5.2. Changes at the lexical level.................................................................................................. 71 5.2.1. Borrowing of English lexical items in Bengali ........................................................... 72 5.2.2. Loan translations from English ................................................................................... 76 5.3. Code-switching between Bengali and English ................................................................... 77 5.4. Complex verb structures ....................................................................................................
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