Journal of Language Contact最新文献

This article contributes to the study of a productive morphosyntactic mechanism in a peculiar type of linguistic variety, the Russian language of Odessa (OdR). This variety was born as a lingua franca in the city of Odessa soon after its foundation, implying the massive acquisition of the Russian language in a nonnative way in its initial stages. Afterwards, it was transmitted to successive generations as a native variety, albeit preserving some of the initial traits. One of the most characteristic traits of OdR is the leveling of argument marking not in favor of accusative/nominative cases, as expected, but in favor of genitive marking. The use of genitive case, i.e., differential genitive case marking on subjects and objects instead of nominative/accusative, is partially present in most Slavic languages. However, in OdR, genitive case spread massively to a wide range of new syntactic positions. We show that the reason for this extension lay in (i) the confluence of different languages and dialects, which involved incomplete acquisition by many inhabitants of the city and notably Yiddish speakers, and (ii) the transmission of innovative traits through bilingual speakers, who followed specific language-internal rules operating also in Child Russian.

A precolonial language contact event between languages in the Nguni group of the Bantu family and extinct undocumented languages in the Khoekhoe branch of the Khoe family left an enduring impact on the linguistic landscape of South Africa. isiXhosa and isiZulu gained a massive lexis of Khoekhoe loanwords that remains understudied. Prior research has focused primarily on the behaviour of click consonants during loan, and more general descriptions of phonological and morphological adaptations are lacking. This paper describes some general adaptive processes, with the especial aim of facilitating the improved detection of loanwords. By comparing the extant Khoekhoe-branch languages Nama, Damara, and Kora with the loaned Khoekhoe-branch material preserved in isiXhosa and isiZulu, details of the phonology and morphology of the undocumented Khoekhoe donor languages are inferred. Finally, comparative material from the Kalahari-branch languages in the Kwadi-Khoe family is also introduced to compensate for lacunae in the historical linguistic record.

Contact and areal studies of kinship terminologies have by now received too little attention in social anthropology and linguistics. To fill in one of numerous research gaps, we investigated kinship terminologies of the Circum-Baltic (CB) area. We discovered many heterogeneous overlapping micro- and macro-convergences belonging to different temporal strata and contact situations. This was especially the case with loanwords, whereas certain calques had a wider spread covering most of the CB area. It suggests that semantic patterns may be more prone to borrowing than lexical items. The analysis of structural properties showed that CB kinship terminologies combine both West European and East European/West Asian strategies. It indicates that CB kinship terminologies indeed possess a marked combination of properties. However, most of them are shared with their neighbours, which confirms that the CB area is a Contact Superposition Zone as suggested in Koptjevskaja-Tamm and Wälchli (2001).

Noun pluralisation has been of paramount importance in typological studies, considering a wide range of varieties in different languages. This study examines the relationships between Classical Arabic, Turkish, and Cukurova Arabic – an Arabic dialect spoken in the Eastern Mediterranean region (Antakya, Adana, and Mersin) in Turkey – in the context of noun plurality inflection. In fact, considering Cukurova Arabic-Turkish relations, the latter affects the former more extensively – as a consequence of political and social situations. In other words, Cukurova Arabic codecopies Turkish elements in almost all linguistic levels (e.g., phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics). What is more, time passes against Cukurova Arabic because code-copying tends to disconnect itself from Syria-Lebanon Coastal Dialect Groups of which Cukurova Arabic is a part, and even brings it to the point of extinction. The devastating effect of Turkish on Cukurova Arabic needs to be elaborated on. However, code-copying at all linguistic levels was hardly delved into but morphological code-copying features were, in general, analyzed. A qualitative method was used while collecting the data collected through participatory observation, field note, and natural recording. By specifying morphological code-copying, the study remained limited to the disconnection of quantification in grammaticalization in Cukurova Arabic from Classical Arabic, and the effects of plurality typology in Turkish on Cukurova Arabic. In line with this explanation, regular plurality inflections in Cukurova Arabic (cäm>ü’l-sǟlim, particularly regular feminine inflections operated with +ǟt / +ât suffixes) are increasing, and irregular cases (cäm>ü’l-mükässär) are replaced by regular of which. The complex quantity category in Classical Arabic is represented as a simpler aspect inCukurova. This change is experienced through the effect of the plural suffix +lAr in Turkish and quite simply of plurality typology. The study yields evidence of a transition from complex quantification to a simpler system of pluralisation in Cukurova Arabic.

This paper investigates object marking strategies in Circum-Baltic languages and beyond, using a sample of 103 predicates from 30 Western Eurasian languages from the BivalTyp database. The study aims to identify areal clusters in object marking and evaluate the relevance of the Circum-Baltic linguistic area in this context. It finds that while most Circum-Baltic languages dissolve into larger, genealogy-driven clusters, areal signals are present, particularly with Lithuanian merging with Slavic languages due to genitive-taking predicates. German deviates from the larger Germanic cluster, merging with Latvian and Hungarian without a specific marking strategy driving this alignment. The results suggest that the concept of a linguistic area is less effective for describing object marking relationships around the Baltic Sea, in contrast to the Balkan linguistic area, where cross-linguistic clusters of object marking strategies do align with the linguistic area. Additionally, the paper discusses large-scale trends, such as comitativity prominence and the comparison of observed object marking strategy distributions with the predicted Zipf distribution.

The Dolgan language is a Turkic variety, closely related to Sakha but differing from it due to contact, primarily with Evenki (Tungusic). We analyze the linguistic identity of translocal Dolgan communities in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) in the Anabar District, which is home to a minority of the larger group of Dolgan people. Linguistically, Anabar Dolgan is best classified as a northern Sakha variety with significant lexical borrowings from Tungusic. Anabar Dolgans consider it a separate language, and see themselves as speaking Dolgan, Sakha, or a mixture of the two. Their strong sense of Dolgan identity comes from an attachment to language, culture, and territory, an identity reinforced by social ties with and ongoing migrations to and from the Taimyr Dolgan-Nenets District, home to the majority of Dolgans. Data come from sociolinguistic questionnaires, structured interviews, and linguistic elicitation with 50 respondents, and a subset of open-ended interviews.

The paper analyses on the basis of new fielddata the transformations of kinship terminologies in three Even dialects which have come about through cultural and linguistic contacts. We investigate two possible sources of change. First, the adaptation of kinship terminology to the ways of subsistence, such that, e.g., hunting and gathering cultures preferably use one, while herding cultures prefer other types of kinship systems, with the corollary that shifts in subsistence type can lead to shifts in the kinship terminology. Second, linguistic and cultural convergence, whereby in multilingual groups either one group adapts its terminology to the system of the dominant group or, in the situation of symmetrical multilingualism, both groups change their kinship systems to accommodate to each other. We argue that both causes, the cultural and the linguistic ones, are at work in the Even communities investigated in the paper.

In addition to canonical noun incorporation, Chukchi exhibits other kinds of incorporating morphology that are consistent with polysynthesis but have seldom been considered as part of a unified morphological phenomenon. This paper examines different patterns of incorporation in Chukchi across time and asks: what are the useful loci of variation for typological comparison, how do these distinct patterns emerge diachronically, and how do these features spread in contact? I consider the existing documentation of Chukchi from the early 20th century through the present, including modern data which exhibits some novel patterns. Consistent with previous investigations of Chukchi in contact (Bogoras, 1922; de Reuse, 1994; Pupynina and Aralova, 2021), I demonstrate that the effects Chukchi has had on other languages is greater than the reverse: many morphological phenomena in Chukchi are internally-motivated and emerge from speakers’ reliance on incorporation as a discourse strategy. Specifically, I provide a unified analysis of incorporation across the nominal and verbal domains, valency-changing derivational morphology, and inflectional morphology built on the morpheme -in(e), which I argue functions as a generic underspecified noun in the language. In the realm of language contact, I propose a cline to model patterns in the borrowing of derivational phenomena like incorporation, and present shared patterns in Chukchi, Central Siberian Yupik, and Even which support this cline. Finally, I examine data from Chukchi as it is spoken today and argue that the historical linguistic ecology of northeastern Siberia has made it possible for incorporation to remain highly productive even with significant shift to Russian.

Chaplinski Yupik (also often referred to as Siberian Yupik), a critically endangered Eskimo language spoken on the Bering coast in the north-eastern Siberia, shows numerous traces of language contact with Chukchi. A striking example is Chaplinski Yupik personal names, a significant part of which have Chukchi origin. In this study Chaplinski Yupik names are analyzed based on the genealogies of Chaplinski Yupik people compiled in 1970–1980s. The article focuses on phonological and grammatical adaptation of Chukchi names in Chaplinski Yupik. The case of personal names clearly reflects the history of Chukchi-Yupik language contact in the area – from an asymmetrical contact situation (the knowledge of Chukchi was common among Yupik speakers but not vice versa) and regarding Chukchi as a more prestigious language to a gradual loss of Chukchi-Yupik bilingualism by the end of the 20th century.

The paper deals with recent contact-induced changes in the grammar of two languages of the Lower Kolyma tundra, Tundra Yukaghir (TY) and Lower Kolyma Even (LKE). The morphosyntax of these languages has undergone a rather strong influence from Sakha in the course of the 20th century. The investigation focusses on the structural copying of Sakha patterns into TY and LKE, which resulted in the emergence of several new categories, in particular, the future imperative, the necessitive based on the future participle with or without proprietive marking, evaluative morphology, and contrastive markers deriving from the converbs of the copula verb. In addition, the TY system of differential object marking has changed under the influence of Sakha. These phenomena are interpreted against their historical and sociolinguistic settings, specifically, the types of multilingual situations in the region. The ramifications of the findings for the theory of language contact are also discussed.