On Isomorphism and Formulas of Equivalence in Language Contact*

Breaking Down the Barriers, 755-784 2013-1-050-036-000366-1 On Isomorphism and Formulas of Equivalence * in Language Contact Bernd Heine Universität zu Köln A survey of a number of documented cases of intense language contact suggests that looking for ways of establishing formulas of equivalence between the structures of languages in contact provides one of the motivations of people aiming at communicating successfully in bilingual situations. Equivalence manifests itself in corresponding structures of different languages (or dialects) that are conceived of and/or treated as being the same. The paper is concerned with problems that people experience when trying to adjust the structure of one language to that of another language. Key words: contact-induced change, formula of equivalence, isomorphism, language contact, replica language, translational equivalence Alain Peyraube’s academic work is centrally concerned with the dynamics of language use and language change, and the present paper is devoted to one aspect of those dynamics, namely contact-induced language change. A survey of a number of documented cases of language contact suggests that looking for ways of establishing formulas of equivalence between the structures of the languages in contact provides one of the motivations of people aiming at communicating successfully in bilingual situations. 1. On equivalence In an article on language contact involving Irish and English, Bliss observes: “It is a striking fact that there is an almost complete correspondence between the uses of the dependent ending -(e)ann in early Modern Irish and the uses of the auxiliary do in English: every use of the auxiliary do in English requires the use of the dependent form in early Modern Irish [...]”. (Bliss 1972:78-79) * I wish to express my gratitude to a number of colleagues for their cooperation when I was working on this paper, in particular to Walter Breu, Claudine Chamoreau, Hilary Chappell, Tania Kuteva, and Regina Martinez Casas. Bernd Heine The question that one may wish to ask is what induced early Modern Irish speakers to establish a connection between an Irish suffix and a verbal auxiliary in English? The literature on language contact abounds with similar examples, where speakers relate structurally contrasting elements of two languages in contact to one another. Flores Farfán (2004:91-92) found in his analysis of language contact between Nahuatl and Spanish in Mexico that under heavy influence of Spanish, speakers of Nahuatl extended the use of their future marker -s to function as an equivalent of the Spanish infinitive, and other studies on languages in contact show that speakers tend to treat infinitive markers in one language as being equivalent to markers of nominalization in another language (see Heine & Kuteva 2005: Ch. 6). Equivalence is a central notion of both contact linguistics and translation theory (see below). It manifests itself in corresponding structures of different languages (or dialects) that are conceived of and/or described as being the same; for example, when speakers regularly identify nouns in language R (the replica language) with nouns in language M (the model language)1 then they establish what─following Keesing (1991) ─we will call a formula of equivalence between two languages in contact. Establishing equivalence is a process that can be of two kinds: it may simply mean that speakers select a given entity Rx of the replica language to correspond to an entity Mx of the model language, but it may also concern a more complex process whereby speakers modify, that is, change, existing material of the replica language to achieve equivalence with the model language. What is called here ‘equivalence’ has been described in a number of different ways in the literature and referred to variously with terms such as “connection”, “correspondence”, “isogrammatism”, “mutual isomorphism”, or “similarity”. As these terms suggest, the term equivalence, or formula of equivalence, may refer to a range of different things. Heine & Kuteva (2005: §6.1) propose to distinguish two main notions of equivalence. One notion, called structural isomorphism2 (henceforth referred to as simply isomorphism), rests on the linguist’s theoretical constructs of categories. ‘Equivalent categories’ then means that there is a category Mx in language M and a category Rx in language R which are in some sense taken to be structurally the same. What ‘structurally the same’ stands for exactly is contingent upon the analyst’s descriptive framework─that is, on 1 Concerning the terms “replica language” and “model language”, see Heine & Kuteva (2005, 2006). 2 Note that the term ‘isomorphism’ has received a range of applications in linguistics; it is used especially in language-internal analysis for one-to-one mappings between linguistic form and meaning (see, e.g., Croft 2003). The way the term is used in contact linguistics in general and in the present paper in particular differs from the former applications in that it is strictly comparative in nature, relating to comparisons between languages (or dialects) in contact. 756 On Isomorphism and Formulas of Equivalence in Language Contact how categories are defined in that framework. The second notion is translational equivalence. It concerns the bilingual behavior of speakers (or writers) and hearers (or readers) in the translation of concepts or contents from one language into another. Equivalent categories are those that are regularly used in translation work as corresponding to one another between the two languages concerned. Accordingly, if we find that speakers regularly translate category Mx of language M by using category Rx in language R, then we will say that this is an instance of translational equivalence between Mx and Rx─irrespective of the grammatical structure of the categories concerned. 1.1 Equivalence in translation work Obviously, the notion “translation(al) equivalence” is relevant in particular to translation theory, and in fact quite some research has been done on it (see Catford 1965, Uwajeh 2007, and Singh 2008), even if in some of the works the term is discussed controversially (see Leonardi 2000). Important for our purposes is that the information sent from the source language to the target language be “equal in value”, and that a number of levels of equivalence are distinguished, where each level targets a different “degree of equivalence” (Uwajeh 2007): (a) Conceptual equivalence (sameness of conceptual units), (b) Propositional equivalence (sameness of thought patterns), (c) Thematic equivalence (sameness of subject matter), and (d) Contextual equivalence (sameness of context variables). There is reason to assume that the conceptual and communicative behavior underlying translation work, i.e. that of a translator, is similar to that characterizing the behavior of speakers in language contact who aim at establishing equivalence between the model and the replica language. Let us refer to these speakers as the contact speakers. Both concern language use and, hence, are accessible to analysis via established linguistic methodology, and both relate to the interaction of different languages (more precisely, of people speaking different languages). Accordingly, the analysis of translations offers a rich field to the contact linguist─a field that has so far not yet really been exploited. But there are also differences. First, the setting of participants involved in the two kinds of situations is different:3 in translation work, the translator acts as a kind of “filter” in bridging a communication gap between sender and receiver; in contact 3 Our concern here is with typical situations; it goes without saying that there is a range of variations where our generalizations do not necessarily apply. 757 Bernd Heine situations, by contrast, there are only two participants, namely sender and receiver. Second, translators are bound to produce a translation of some specific information from source language to target language while contact speakers are not: the latter may, but need not, establish equivalence, while they are not bound to produce some specific translation. And third, whereas translation work is planned activity, the activity of contact speakers may, but need not, be planned. What this suggests with reference to the subject matter discussed in this paper is that research on contact-induced replication can benefit greatly from findings made in “translatology” (i.e. translation studies) but that the two should be kept apart since they are concerned with clearly contrasting processes. 1.2 Searching for equivalence We may illustrate the behavior of people aiming at achieving equivalence between two Indo-European languages in contact with the following example taken from Verschik (2008:72). The example relates to the situation of language contact in Estonia, where the minority language, Russian, represents the weak code or, as we will say here, the replica language and the national language, Estonian, the strong code4 or model language. Speakers of the Slavic language Russian in Estonia have created a number of replica constructions on the model of the Baltic language Estonian, and the following is one instance of such constructions (Verschik 2008:73). In Estonian, nominal modifiers precede their nominal heads, that is, there is modifier-head (possessor-possessee) order, whereas Russian has the opposite order. There appears to be a fairly stable pattern that Estonian Russians were found to use in responding to the contrasting order in their version of Russian: since adjectives precede their head nouns in Russian, Estonian Russians tend to draw on their [adjective - noun] construction to present the head noun as a relative adjective modifier, thereby replicating the modifier-head order of nominal possession in Estonian. Thus, where a monolingual Russian (R) might say something like (1a), Estonian Russians (ER) would use (1b) on the model of Estonian (E) (1c). While being compatible with Russian syntax, (1b) would not be used by monolingual Russians. 4 The terms “weak code” and “strong code” are employed in the insightful discussion in Verschik (2008:83ff.).

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