Field-Testing Code-Switching Constraints: a Report on a Strategic Languages Project
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Quichua-Spanish Language Contact in Salcedo, Ecuador: Revisiting Media Lengua Syncretic Language Practices
QUICHUA-SPANISH LANGUAGE CONTACT IN SALCEDO, ECUADOR: REVISITING MEDIA LENGUA SYNCRETIC LANGUAGE PRACTICES BY MARCO SHAPPECK DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2011 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Professor Hans Henrich Hock, Director of Research Professor Rajeshwari Vijay Pandharipande, Chair Associate Professor Anna María Escobar Professor José Ignacio Hualde Abstract The purpose of the current thesis is to develop a better understanding of the interaction between Spanish and Quichua in the Salcedo region and provide more information for the processes that might have given rise to Media Lengua, a ‘mixed’ language comprised of a Quichua grammar and Spanish lexicon. Muysken attributes the formation of Media Lengua to relexification, ruling out any influence from other bilingual phenomena. I argue that the only characteristic that distinguishes Media Lengua from other language contact varieties in central Ecuador is the quantity of the overall Spanish borrowings and not the type of processes that might have been employed by Quichua speakers during the genesis of Media Lengua. The results from the Salcedo data that I have collected show how processes such as adlexification, code-mixing, and structural convergence produce Media Lengua-type sentences, evidence that supports an alternative analysis to Muysken’s relexification hypothesis. Overall, this dissertation is developed around four main objectives: (1) to describe the variation of Spanish loanwords within a bilingual community in Salcedo; (2) to analyze some of the prominent and recent structural changes in Quichua and Spanish; (3) to determine whether Spanish loanword use can be explained by the relationship consultants have with particular social categories; and (4) to analyze the consultants’ language ideologies toward syncretic uses of Spanish and Quichua. -
Searching for the Origins of Uruguayan Fronterizo Dialects: Radical Code-Mixing As “Fluent Dysfluency”
Searching for the origins of Uruguayan Fronterizo dialects: radical code-mixing as “fluent dysfluency” JOHN M. LIPSKI Abstract Spoken in northern Uruguay along the border with Brazil are intertwined Spanish-Portuguese dialects known to linguists as Fronterizo `border’ dialects, and to the speakers themselves as portuñol. Since until the second half of the 19th century northern Uruguay was populated principally by monolingual Portuguese speakers, it is usually assumed that Fronterizo arose when Spanish-speaking settlers arrived in large numbers. Left unexplained, however, is the genesis of morphosyntactically intertwined language, rather than, e.g. Spanish with many Portuguese borrowings or vice versa. The present study analyzes data from several communities along the Brazilian border (in Argentina, Bolivia, and Paraguay), where Portuguese is spoken frequently but dysfluently (with much involuntary mixing of Spanish) by Spanish speakers in their dealings with Brazilians. A componential analysis of mixed language from these communities is compared with Uruguayan Fronterizo data, and a high degree of quantitative structural similarity is demonstrated. The inclusion of sociohistorical data from late 19th century northern Uruguay complements the contemporary Spanish-Portuguese mixing examples, in support of the claim that Uruguayan Fronterizo was formed not in a situation of balanced bilingualism but rather as the result of the sort of fluid but dysfluent approximations to a second language found in contemporary border communities. 1. Introduction Among the languages of the world, mixed or intertwined languages are quite rare, and have provoked considerable debate among linguists. The most well- known cases, Michif, combining French and Cree (Bakker and Papen 1997; Bakker 1996), and Media Lengua, combining Spanish and Quechua (Muysken 1981, 1989, 1997), rather systematically juxtapose lexical items from a European language and functional items from a Native American language, in Journal of Portuguese Linguistics, 8-1 (2009), 3-44 ISSN 1645-4537 4 John M. -
Modelling Mixed Languages: Some Remarks on the Case of Old Helsinki Slang1
MODELLING MIXED LANGUAGES: SOME REMARKS ON THE CASE OF OLD HELSINKI SLANG1 Merlijn de Smit Stockholm University Abstract Old Helsinki Slang (OHS) a linguistic variety spoken in the working-class quarters of Helsinki from approx. 1900 to 1945, is marked by the usage of a virtually wholly Swedish vocabulary in a Finnish morphosyntactic framework. It has recently been subject of two interestingly contrasting treatments by Petri Kallio and Vesa Jarva. Kallio argues that the morphosyntactic base of OHS gives cause to analyzing it as unambiguously Finnic, and therefore Uralic, from a genetic perspective, whereas Jarva, drawing attention to the possible origins of OHS in frequent code-switching, believes it deserves consideration as a mixed language alongside such cases as Ma’a and Media Lengua. The contrasting approaches of the two authors involve contrasting presuppositions which deserve to be spelled out: should the genetic origin of a language be based on the pedigree of its structure (with mixed structures pointing to a mixed genetic origin) or on the sociolinguistic history of its speakers? Taking the latter course, I argue that the most valid model for the emergence of genetically mixed languages is the code-switching one proposed by Peter Auer. Measuring OHS against Auer’s model, however, it is a marginal case for a mixed language, particularly as Auer’s and similar models imply some composition in structural domains, which seems wholly absent in the case of OHS. Thus OHS is not a genetically mixed language, even if it may have developed as one, had early OHS taken a different course as it eventually did. -
The Case of Nominal Plural Marking in Zamboanga Chabacano
Language Documentation & Conservation Special Publication No. 19 Documentation and Maintenance of Contact Languages from South Asia to East Asia ed. by Mário Pinharanda-Nunes & Hugo C. Cardoso, pp.141–173 http:/nflrc.hawaii.edu/ldc/sp19 4 http://hdl.handle.net/10125/24908 Documenting online writing practices: The case of nominal plural marking in Zamboanga Chabacano Eduardo Tobar Delgado Universidade de Vigo Abstract The emergence of computer-mediated communication has brought about new opportunities for both speakers and researchers of minority or under-described languages. This paper shows how the analysis of spontaneous contemporary language samples from online social networks can make a contribution to the documentation and description of languages like Chabacano, a Spanish-derived creole spoken in the Philippines. More specifically, we focus on nominal plural marking in the Zamboangueño variety, a still imperfectly understood feature, by examining a corpus composed of texts from online sources. The attested combination of innovative and vestigial features requires a close look at the high contact environment, different levels of metalinguistic awareness or even some language ideologies. The findings shed light on the wide variety of plural formation strategies which resulted from the contact of Spanish with Philippine languages. Possible triggers, such as animacy, definiteness or specificity, are also examined and some future research areas suggested. Keywords: nominal plural marking, Zamboangueño Chabacano, number, creole languages Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License 142 Eduardo Tobar Delgado 1. Introduction1 Zamboanga Chabacano (also known as Zamboangueño or Chavacano) is one of the three extant varieties of Philippine Creole Spanish or Chabacano and totals around 500,000 speakers in and around Zamboanga City in the Southern Philippines. -
Translating Brazil: from Transnational Periodicals to Hemispheric Fictions, 1808-2010
Translating Brazil: From Transnational Periodicals to Hemispheric Fictions, 1808-2010 By Krista Marie Brune A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Hispanic Languages and Literatures in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Natalia Brizuela, Co-chair Professor Candace Slater, Co-chair Professor Scott Saul Spring 2016 Abstract Translating Brazil: From Transnational Periodicals to Hemispheric Fictions, 1808-2010 by Krista Marie Brune Doctor of Philosophy in Hispanic Languages and Literatures University of California, Berkeley Professor Natalia Brizuela, Co-chair Professor Candace Slater, Co-chair This dissertation analyzes how travel and translation informed the construction of Brazil as modern in the 19th century, and how similar processes of transnational translation continue to shape the cultural visibility of the nation abroad in the contemporary moment. By reading journals, literary works, and cultural criticism, this study inserts Brazilian literature and culture into recent debates about translatability, world literature, and cosmopolitanism, while also underscoring the often-overlooked presence of Brazilians in the United States. The first half of the dissertation contends that Portuguese-language periodicals Correio Braziliense (London, 1808-1822), Revista Nitheroy (Paris, 1836), and O Novo Mundo (New York, 1870-1879) translated European and North American ideas of technology and education to a readership primarily in Brazil. The transnational circulation of these periodicals contributed to the self- fashioning of intellectuals who came to define the nation. To suggest parallels between Brazil and the United States in the late 19th century, the analysis of O Novo Mundo focuses on discourses of nation, modernity, and technological progress emerging in the hemispheric travels of scientists, intellectuals, and the Brazilian empire Dom Pedro II, and in the national displays at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia. -
The Use of Third Person Accusative Pronouns in Spoken Brazilian Portuguese: an Analysis of Different Tv Genres
THE USE OF THIRD PERSON ACCUSATIVE PRONOUNS IN SPOKEN BRAZILIAN PORTUGUESE: AN ANALYSIS OF DIFFERENT TV GENRES by Flávia Stocco Garcia A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies of The University of Manitoba in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of MASTER OF ARTS Department of Linguistics University of Manitoba Winnipeg Copyright © 2015 by Flávia Stocco Garcia ABSTRACT This thesis presents an analysis of third person accusative pronouns in Brazilian Portuguese. With the aim to analyze the variation between the use of standard (prescribed by normative grammar) and non-standard pronouns found in oral language, I gathered data from three kinds of TV show (news, non-scripted and soap-opera) in order to determine which form of pronoun is more common and if there is any linguistic and/or sociolinguistic factors that will influence on their usage. Based on data collected, I demonstrate that non-standard forms are favored in general and that the rules prescribed by normative grammar involving standard forms are only followed in specific contexts. Among all the variables considered for the analysis, the ones that showed to be significant were the kind of show, the context of the utterance, the socio-economic status of the speaker and verbs in the infinitive. Considering my results, I provide a discussion regarding to which extent the distribution of the 3rd-person pronouns on TV reflect their use by Brazilians and a brief discussion of other issues related to my findings conclude this work. 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to express my gratitude to my advisor, Verónica Loureiro-Rodríguez, for all her help during the completion of this work. -
El “Nuevo” Palenquero Y El Español Afroboliviano: ¿Es Reversible La Descriollización?
El “nuevo” palenquero y el español afroboliviano: ¿es reversible la descriollización? John M. Lipski The Pennsylvania State University 1. Introducción ¿En qué consiste la simplificación lingüística? ¿Cuáles son las características del bilingüismo cuando se trata de una lengua criolla y su principal lengua lexificadora? ¿En qué se parecen la criollización y la adquisición de una segunda lengua? ¿Qué semejanzas comparten la descriollización y la atrición de una lengua nativa? Estas son algunas de las preguntas teóricas y metodológicas que surgen al estudiar bajo la lupa de los modelos de bilingüismo el comportamiento de las lenguas formadas en condiciones de transmisión incompleta. En varios lugares del mundo las lenguas criollas están en contacto con los idiomas que proveían la base léxica durante el período de formación. En todos los casos existentes en la actualidad, la lengua lexificadora es también la lengua oficial y mayoritaria de la comunidad de habla donde se emplea la lengua criolla. Podemos citar los ejemplos de muchas naciones anglófonas del Caribe (Jamaica, Grenada, Belice, Dominica, Santa Lucía, etc.), de Cabo Verde, São Tomé y Príncipe y Guiné-Bissau en África (contacto entre lenguas criollas afrolusitanas y el portugués), Guadalupe y Martinica (contacto entre el francés y los criollos afrofranceses), y el Gullah en el sudeste de los Estados Unidos (contacto entre el inglés y un criollo angloafricano). En estas circunstancias de contacto, se produce con frecuencia un proceso de descriollización, es decir la aproximación gradual a la lengua lexificadora de una lengua criolla, dejando como resultado un continuum pos-criollo: una serie de etapas intermedias entre la variedad acriollada más alejada de la lengua lexificadora (el basilecto) y las variedades que acercan más a la lengua lexificadora (el acrolecto). -
A Discrete Co-Systems Approach to Language Variation on the Panamanian Island of Bastimentos
University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics Volume 7 Issue 3 Papers from NWAV 29 Article 20 2001 A Discrete Co-Systems Approach to Language Variation on the Panamanian Island of Bastimentos Peter Snow Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl Recommended Citation Snow, Peter (2001) "A Discrete Co-Systems Approach to Language Variation on the Panamanian Island of Bastimentos," University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics: Vol. 7 : Iss. 3 , Article 20. Available at: https://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl/vol7/iss3/20 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl/vol7/iss3/20 For more information, please contact [email protected]. A Discrete Co-Systems Approach to Language Variation on the Panamanian Island of Bastimentos This working paper is available in University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics: https://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl/vol7/iss3/20 A Discrete Co-Systems Approach to Language Variation on the Panamanian Island of Bastimentos 1 Peter Snow 1 Introduction In its ideal form, the phenomenon of the creole continuum as originally described by DeCamp (1971) and Bickerton (1973) may be understood as a result of the process of decreolization that occurs wherever a creole is in direct contact with its lexifier. This contact between creole languages and the languages that provide the majority of their lexicons leads to synchronic variation in the form of a continuum that reflects the unidirectional process of decreolization. The resulting continuum of varieties ranges from the "basilect" (most markedly creole), through intermediate "mesolectal" varie ties (less markedly creole), to the "acrolect" (least markedly creole or the lexifier language itself). -
Contact Languages Around the World and Their Levels of Endangerment
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by ScholarSpace at University of Hawai'i at Manoa Vol. 12 (2018), pp. 53–79 http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/ldc http://hdl.handle.net/10125/24764 Revised Version Received: 23 Jan 2017 Contact languages around the world and their levels of endangerment Nala H. Lee National University of Singapore This paper provides an up-to-date report on the vitality or endangerment status of contact languages around the world, including pidgins, creoles, and mixed lan- guages. By utilizing information featured in the Endangered Languages Project and the Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Languages online portals, 96 contact languages are assessed on the Language Endangerment Index, a method of assessment that is based on four factors including intergenerational transmission, absolute num- ber of speakers, speaker number trends, and domains of use. Results show that the contact languages are most at risk with respect to intergenerational transmis- sion and domains of use. This is explained by the social and historical nature of contact languages. Overall results further raise the concern that the proportion of pidgins, creoles and mixed languages at some level of risk is extremely high. Rea- sons are provided for why linguists should be concerned about the endangerment of these languages. 1. Introduction1 While the language endangerment problem has been generally well- highlighted in linguistics, the endangerment of contact languages has not received the same level of attention. Krauss (1992) postulates that at least half and possibly as much as 90% of the world’s languages will no longer be spoken by the end of the present century, while a more recent empirical study estimates a slightly less catas- trophic rate of loss, at one language every three months (Campbell et al. -
MIXED CODES, BILINGUALISM, and LANGUAGE MAINTENANCE DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requi
BILINGUAL NAVAJO: MIXED CODES, BILINGUALISM, AND LANGUAGE MAINTENANCE DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Charlotte C. Schaengold, M.A. ***** The Ohio State University 2004 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor Brian Joseph, Advisor Professor Donald Winford ________________________ Professor Keith Johnson Advisor Linguistics Graduate Program ABSTRACT Many American Indian Languages today are spoken by fewer than one hundred people, yet Navajo is still spoken by over 100,000 people and has maintained regional as well as formal and informal dialects. However, the language is changing. While the Navajo population is gradually shifting from Navajo toward English, the “tip” in the shift has not yet occurred, and enormous efforts are being made in Navajoland to slow the language’s decline. One symptom in this process of shift is the fact that many young people on the Reservation now speak a non-standard variety of Navajo called “Bilingual Navajo.” This non-standard variety of Navajo is the linguistic result of the contact between speakers of English and speakers of Navajo. Similar to Michif, as described by Bakker and Papen (1988, 1994, 1997) and Media Lengua, as described by Muysken (1994, 1997, 2000), Bilingual Navajo has the structure of an American Indian language with parts of its lexicon from a European language. “Bilingual mixed languages” are defined by Winford (2003) as languages created in a bilingual speech community with the grammar of one language and the lexicon of another. My intention is to place Bilingual Navajo into the historical and theoretical framework of the bilingual mixed language, and to explain how ii this language can be used in the Navajo speech community to help maintain the Navajo language. -
Spanish-Based Creoles in the Caribbean
Spanish-based creoles in the Caribbean John M. Lipski The Pennsylvania State University Introduction The Caribbean Basin is home to many creole languages, lexically related to French, English, and—now only vestigially—Dutch. Surrounded by Spanish-speaking nations, and with Portuguese-speaking Brazil not far to the south, the Caribbean contains only a single creole language derived from a (highly debated) combination of Spanish and Portuguese, namely Papiamentu, spoken on the Netherlands Antilles islands of Curaçao and Aruba. If the geographical confines of the designation `Caribbean’ are pushed a bit, the creole language Palenquero, spoken in the Afro-Colombian village Palenque de San Basilio, near the port of Cartagena de Indias, also qualifies as a Spanish-related creole, again with a hotly contested Portuguese component. There are also a number of small Afro-Hispanic enclaves scattered throughout the Caribbean where ritual language, songs, and oral traditions suggest at least some partial restructuring of Spanish in small areas. Finally, there exists a controversial but compelling research paradigm which asserts that Spanish as spoken by African slaves and their immediate descendents may have creolized in the 19th century Spanish Caribbean—particularly in Cuba—and that this putative creole language may have subsequently merged with local varieties of Spanish, leaving a faint but detectable imprint on general Caribbean Spanish. A key component of the inquiry into Spanish-related contact varieties is the recurring claim that all such languages derive from earlier Portuguese-based pidgins and creoles, formed somewhere in West Africa1 and carried to the Americas by slaves transshipped from African holding stations, and by ships’ crews and slave traders. -
A Brief Descriptive Grammar of Pijal Media Lengua and an Acoustic Vowel Space Analysis of Pijal Media Lengua and Imbabura Quichua
A Brief Descriptive Grammar of Pijal Media Lengua and an Acoustic Vowel Space Analysis of Pijal Media Lengua and Imbabura Quichua by Jesse Stewart A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies of The University of Manitoba in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of MASTER OF ARTS Department of Linguistics University of Manitoba Winnipeg Copyright © 2011 by Jesse Stewart Abstract This thesis presents an acoustic vowel space analysis of F1 and F2 frequencies from 10 speakers of a newly documented variety of Media Lengua, called Pijal Media Lengua (PML) and 10 speakers of Imbabura Quichua (IQ). This thesis also provides a brief grammatical discription of PML with insights into contrasts and similarities between Spanish, Quichua and other documented varieties of Media Lengua, namely, Salcedo Media Lengua (Muysken 1997) and Angla Media Lengua (Gómez-Rendón 2005). Media Lengua is typically described as a mixed language with a Quichua morphosyntactic structure wherein almost all content words are replaced by their Spanish-derived counterparts through the process of relexification. I use mixed effects models to test Spanish- derived vowels against their Quichua-derived counterparts in PML for statistical significance followed by separate mixed effects models to test Spanish-derived /i/ vs. /e/ and /u/ vs. /o/ for statistical significance. The results of this thesis provide suggestive data for (1) co-existing vowel systems in moderate contact situations such as that of Quichua and (2) moderate evidence for co-exsiting vowel systems in extreme contact situations such as mixed languages. Results also show that (3) PML may be manipulating as many as eight vowels wherein Spanish-derived high vowels and low vowels co-exist as extreme mergers with their Quichua- dervied counterparts, while high vowel and mid vowels co-exist as partial mergers; and (4) IQ may be manipulating as many as six vowels instead of the traditional view of three wherein Spanish-derived high vowels have completely merged with their native Quichua counterparts.