Journal of Language Contact最新文献

The article deals with the northern Swahili dialect Bajuni. It is viewed as a language peninsula rather than island, attached to neighbouring and related dialects to the south but jutting north into Somali-speaking areas. It is currently severely endangered, having been largely replaced by Somali in Somalia, and Swahili in Kenya during the late twentieth century, so it is regarded essentially as a historical language peninsula. It is treated under these headings: geography and population; history; political, sociocultural, and economic context; linguistics; regularity/complexity/stability; contact phenomena; sociolinguistics; language use and attitudes; networks.

The article deals with Miini, spoken in the town of Brava. Some regard it as a northern Swahili dialect, others view it as a closely related language. The town and its speech form have existed for probably a millennium. During most of that period it flourished, surrounded by a community or communities speaking southern Somali dialects. When the Somali central government collapsed in 1991 it was invaded and occupied by the Habr Gidir clan, part of the larger Hawiye group. Most inhabitants who could left. It is currently severely endangered, having been largely replaced by Somali. It is treated under these headings: geography and population; history; political, socio-cultural, and economic context; linguistics; regularity/complexity/stability; contact phenomena; sociolinguistics; language variation; language use and attitudes, language and education; networks.

The Anii language of Togo and Benin is surrounded by essentially unrelated languages because the ancestors of the current speakers migrated into their modern territory within the last few centuries. This paper presents what is known about the cultural history and current social context of the Anii people and argues that Anii is a progressive language island despite a social situation that is different from that of many traditional language islands. The analysis of Anii linguistic structures (including comparisons with related languages and the presentation of relevant dialect differences) provides further support for the analysis of Anii as a language island. Much of the data, particularly the comparative analyses, presented here have never been previously available to scholars. This paper thus sheds new light on a little-known language with a complicated history that is not yet well understood, as well as potentially expanding the definition of the term ‘language island’.

Among the many language islands produced by the expansion of Songhay out of the middle Niger valley, Korandje stands out for its geographical isolation and linguistic divergence. Confined since perhaps 1200 CE to a single Algerian oasis well over a thousand kilometres from any other Songhay-speaking community, its speakers have extensively reshaped their language and identity under the influence of North African norms, while nevertheless keeping the former clearly distinct. Yet, following the socioeconomic and political changes of the 20th century, the survival of Korandje is now in doubt, as speakers increasingly adopt speech norms and linguistic ideologies negotiated outside the oasis.

This article treats the Bantu language Temi, sometimes called Gitemi or Sonjo. The Temi language island is 125 kilometres from the nearest Bantu community and completely surrounded by historically hostile Maasai communities. As far as we know, Maasai were preceded by other non-Bantu communities for most of the last millennium. Community and language are both in good shape: in 1928 the population was 2,500, at Tanzanian independence in the 1960s it was 5,000, and now it is over 30,000. It is treated under these headings: geography and population; history; political, sociocultural, and economic context; linguistics; regularity/complexity/stability; contact phenomena; sociolinguistics; language use and attitudes; networks.

The Sandawe language community in Tanzania is surrounded by languages from different African language families, yet retains a special distinctiveness in this context by virtue of its unusual phonology and its status as a relic of the original inhabitants of the area. It is also noteworthy how long the Sandawe situation has endured and how this has been possible. This paper examines the reasons for the Sandawe community’s situation and its continued survival. The description of the Sandawe situation takes in its history and the question of its linguistic classification. The sociocultural features of the community and the typological features of the language are then considered, particularly in comparison with the surrounding communities and their languages, as well as possibly related languages in southern Africa. Finally, the status of Sandawe as a linguistic island is discussed, with reference to different definitions of the concept.

The fact that body-part reflexives (bpr s) are widespread in Romance-lexifier pidgin, creole and mixed (pcm) languages of the Atlantic area has usually been accounted for in terms of substratum influence from West African languages, in which such reflexives are common. However, this approach does not explain why bpr s are also frequently found in Romance-lexifier pcm languages like Zamboanga Chavacano and Malacca Creole, which lack a demonstrable African substrate, are spoken outside the Atlantic area and are in contact with languages that lack bpr s. Drawing on cross-linguistic as well as historical corpus data, this paper argues that the source of bpr s in these languages should be traced back to the late-medieval and early-Renaissance lexifiers. More specifically, it is proposed that speakers of Romance-lexifier pcm languages identified, recapitulated and replicated reflexive-like uses of words such as ‘body’ and ‘head’ in the lexifiers. A number of bridging contexts is argued to have fostered these processes.

French in Burundi offers an interesting case of language contact: speakers have Kirundi as their first language and French imported during the colonial era was the variety spoken in Belgium, which does not share all the features of reference French. In this study, we analyze a corpus of 12 speakers (including 4 women; mean age 38.5) producing different speaking styles collected according to the methodology of the Phonologie du Français Contemporain project: word reading, text reading, and free narration. The results of the pronunciation analysis concern vowels, consonants and schwa. We identify eight pronunciation features that differ from reference French. In addition, we analyze for each one the possible interferences with Kirundi or with Belgian French. In conclusion, we discuss which of these features can be considered pan-African.

Considerable research has concerned the influence of Papua New Guinea’s Oceanic languages on the development of the pidgin/creole Tok Pisin, but little research has considered linguistic influence in the opposite direction. This paper adds to both bodies of research by investigating whether the colexification of ‘enough’, ‘able’ and ‘until’ in Papapana (Oceanic) and Tok Pisin results from internal or contact-induced change. Such a colexification is unattested/rare cross-linguistically therefore I argue that language contact is responsible. The Tok Pisin verb inap ‘enough, able’ grammaticalised as the preposition/subordinator ‘until’ because of semantic extensions by Oceanic language speakers whose languages demonstrate overlapping polysemies. The Papapana verb eangoi colexifies ‘enough’ and ‘able’ (common cross-linguistically), but the colexification with the lexicalised adverb eangoiena ‘able’ and grammaticalised preposition/subordinator eangoiena ‘until’ is pattern replication modelled on Tok Pisin. Based on areal data, I propose a tentative semantic map for enough, contributing to research on cross-linguistic colexification.