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Language Contact: An Introduction
On the Flathead Reservation in northwestern Montana, the sixty remaining fluent speakers of Montana Salish, most of them elderly, speak their language only to each other, changing to English when outsiders or younger tribal members are present. The Aleuts who used to live on Bering Island off the east coast of Russia speak Russian in addition to their native Aleut. The Republic of Singapore, an island nation of just 238 square miles, boasts four official languages. Language contact is everywhere: no nation has a completely monolingual citizenry and many have more than one official language.
Sarah G. Thomason documents the linguistic consequences of language contacts worldwide. Surveying situations in which language contact arises, she focuses on what happens to the languages themselves: sometimes nothing, sometimes the incorporation of new words, sometimes the spread of new sounds and sentence structures across many languages and wide swathes of territory. She outlines the origins and results of contact-induced language change, extreme language mixture--which can produce pidgins, creoles, and bilingual mixed languages--and language death. The book concludes with a brief survey of language endangerment.
Complete with lists of additional readings and references as well as a glossary for students new to the subject, this textbook is a richly documented introduction to a lively, fast-developing field.
Sarah G. Thomason documents the linguistic consequences of language contacts worldwide. Surveying situations in which language contact arises, she focuses on what happens to the languages themselves: sometimes nothing, sometimes the incorporation of new words, sometimes the spread of new sounds and sentence structures across many languages and wide swathes of territory. She outlines the origins and results of contact-induced language change, extreme language mixture--which can produce pidgins, creoles, and bilingual mixed languages--and language death. The book concludes with a brief survey of language endangerment.
Complete with lists of additional readings and references as well as a glossary for students new to the subject, this textbook is a richly documented introduction to a lively, fast-developing field.
240 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
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October 11, 2008
Sarah G. Thomason's LANGUAGE CONTACT: An Introduction is a textbook for undergraduates. The author, professor of linguistics at the University of Michigan and an expert on certain Native American languages, surveys the phenomenon surrounding two or more languages interacting with each other.
Thomason begins with explaining how language contact happens. Students who don't know that bi- or multilingualism is the norm for most parts of the world will learn of the great bounty of languages in places like India. Thomason describes not only contact in the context of village neighbor multilingualism, but also that between a written religious language and a vernacular, and between the languages of colonial authorities and the local languages of the colony.
Thomason speaks also of "linguistic areas", i.e. Sprachbunds. Her examples include the Balkans, the Baltic, the Ethiopian highlands, South Asia, New Guinea, and the Pacific Northwest of North America. However, my enthusiasm for Sprachbund study has dimmed after reading the papers by Lyle Campbell and Thomas Stolz in the collection LINGUISTIC AREAS in the collection Matras et al. They suggest that no satisfactory definition for a language group can be reached, and it would be better just to concentrate more on the individual borrowings. Plus, Koptjevskaja-Tamm has a paper in there showing that no isogloss spans the entire Baltic, and so a "Baltic linguistic area" is an exaggeration.
For me, Thomason's coverage of the actual mechanisms of contact-induced language change was the most interesting. She presents seven mechanisms: code-switching, code alternation, passive familiarity, "negotion", second-language acquisition strategies, bilingual first-language acquisition and deliberate decision. This is sure to be enlightening even if you have previously read widely in this field.
Two full chapters are dedicated to new languages formed under contact. The first covers pidgins and creoles, benefiting from a great deal of recent research that improve on older thought about the development of languages in the colonial world. The second chapter covers "mixed languages", and is a good introduction to the debate about whether more than a couple of these really exist in the world.
Finally, the last chapter is sadly about the process of language death. Thomason lists ways in which languages dwindle to nothing, such as attrition, grammatical replacement and simple disappearance without much change.
Thomason's textbook is not perfect, but it does cover all the basics in a way that is approachable for readings with only rudimentary training in linguistics.
Thomason begins with explaining how language contact happens. Students who don't know that bi- or multilingualism is the norm for most parts of the world will learn of the great bounty of languages in places like India. Thomason describes not only contact in the context of village neighbor multilingualism, but also that between a written religious language and a vernacular, and between the languages of colonial authorities and the local languages of the colony.
Thomason speaks also of "linguistic areas", i.e. Sprachbunds. Her examples include the Balkans, the Baltic, the Ethiopian highlands, South Asia, New Guinea, and the Pacific Northwest of North America. However, my enthusiasm for Sprachbund study has dimmed after reading the papers by Lyle Campbell and Thomas Stolz in the collection LINGUISTIC AREAS in the collection Matras et al. They suggest that no satisfactory definition for a language group can be reached, and it would be better just to concentrate more on the individual borrowings. Plus, Koptjevskaja-Tamm has a paper in there showing that no isogloss spans the entire Baltic, and so a "Baltic linguistic area" is an exaggeration.
For me, Thomason's coverage of the actual mechanisms of contact-induced language change was the most interesting. She presents seven mechanisms: code-switching, code alternation, passive familiarity, "negotion", second-language acquisition strategies, bilingual first-language acquisition and deliberate decision. This is sure to be enlightening even if you have previously read widely in this field.
Two full chapters are dedicated to new languages formed under contact. The first covers pidgins and creoles, benefiting from a great deal of recent research that improve on older thought about the development of languages in the colonial world. The second chapter covers "mixed languages", and is a good introduction to the debate about whether more than a couple of these really exist in the world.
Finally, the last chapter is sadly about the process of language death. Thomason lists ways in which languages dwindle to nothing, such as attrition, grammatical replacement and simple disappearance without much change.
Thomason's textbook is not perfect, but it does cover all the basics in a way that is approachable for readings with only rudimentary training in linguistics.
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