Language contact

Key takeaways

Language contact belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Language contact to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Language contact from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Language contact occurs when speakers of two or more languages or linguistic varieties interact with and influence each other. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics. Language contact can occur at language borders, between adstratum languages, or as the result of migration, with an intrusive language acting as either a superstratum or a substratum. When speakers of different languages interact closely, it is typical for their languages to influence each other. Intensive language contact may result in language convergence or relexification. In some cases a new contact language may be created as a result of the influence, such as a pidgin, creole, or mixed language. In many other cases, contact between speakers occurs with smaller-scale lasting effects on the language; these may include the borrowing of loanwords, calques, or other types of linguistic material. Multilingualism has been common throughout much of human history, and today most people in the world are multilingual. Multilingual speakers may engage in code-switching, the use of multiple languages in a single conversation. Methods from sociolinguistics (the study of language use in society), from corpus linguistics and from formal linguistics are used in the study of language contact.

Borrowing

Borrowing of vocabulary items

The most common way that languages influence each other is the exchange of words. Much is made about the contemporary borrowing of English words into other languages, but this phenomenon is not new, and it is not very large by historical standards. The large-scale importation of words from Latin, French and other languages into English in the 16th and the 17th centuries was more significant. Some languages have borrowed so much that they have become scarcely recognisable. Armenian borrowed so many words from Iranian languages, for example, that it was at first considered a divergent branch of the Indo-Iranian languages and was not recognised as an independent branch of the Indo-European languages for many decades.

Borrowing of other language features The influence can go deeper, extending to the exchange of even basic characteristics of a language such as morphology and grammar. Newar, for example, spoken in Nepal, is a Sino-Tibetan language distantly related to Chinese but has had so many centuries of contact with neighbouring Indo-Iranian languages that it has developed noun inflection, a trait that is typical of the Indo-European family but rare in Sino-Tibetan. Newar has also absorbed grammatical features like verb tenses. Also, Romanian was influenced by the Slavic languages that were spoken by neighbouring tribes in the centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire not only in vocabulary but also phonology. English has a few phrases, adapted from French, in which the adjective follows the noun: court-martial, attorney-general, Lake Superior.

Direction of influence

Linguistic hegemony A language's influence widens as its speakers grow in power. Chinese, Greek, Latin, Portuguese, French, Spanish, Arabic, Persian, Sanskrit, Russian, German and English have each seen periods of widespread importance and have had varying degrees of influence on the native languages spoken in the areas over which they have held sway. Especially since the 1990s, the Internet, along with previous influences such as radio and television, telephone communication and printed materials, has expanded and changed the many ways in which languages can be influenced by each other and by technology.

Non-mutual influence Change as a result of contact is often one-sided. Chinese, for instance, has had a profound effect on the development of Japanese, but Chinese remains relatively free of Japanese influence other than some modern terms that were reborrowed after they were coined in Japan and based on Chinese forms and using Chinese characters. In India, Hindi and other native languages have been influenced by English, and loanwords from English are part of everyday vocabulary.

Mutual influence In some cases, language contact may lead to mutual exchange, but that may be confined to a particular geographic region. For example, in Switzerland, the local French has been influenced by German and vice versa. In Scotland, Scots has been heavily influenced by English, and many Scots terms have been adopted into the regional English dialect.

Outcomes of language contact

Language shift

The result of the contact of two languages can be the replacement of one by the other. This is most common when one language has a higher social position (prestige). This sometimes leads to language endangerment or extinction.

Stratal influence

When language shift occurs, the language that is replaced (known as the substratum) can leave a profound impression on the replacing language (known as the superstratum) when people retain features of the substratum as they learn the new language and pass these features on to their children, which leads to the development of a new variety. For example, the Latin that came to replace local languages in present-day France during Ancient Rome times was influenced by Gaulish and Germanic. The distinct pronunciation of the Hiberno-English dialect, spoken in Ireland, comes partially from the influence of the substratum of Irish. Outside the Indo-European family, Coptic, the last stage of ancient Egyptian, is a substratum of Egyptian Arabic.

Creation of new languages: creolization and mixed languages

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Language contact

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Language contact claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Language contact before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Language contact ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Language contact

In research: Language contact appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Language contact in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Language contact is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Language contact, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Language contact outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

How to study Language contact in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Language contact means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Language contact out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Language contact in simple terms?

Language contact occurs when speakers of two or more languages or linguistic varieties interact with and influence each other. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics.

Why does Language contact matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Language contact?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Language contact.