OCT. 17TH
STRUCTURAL
CONVERGENCES
LET’SREMEMBER
• BILINGUALISM -> TWO TYPES
A BASIC CONCEPT
LET’SREMEMBER
• BILINGUALISM -> TWO TYPES
• -> PROMOTES VARYING DEGREES OF LEXICAL BORROWING
• BUT WHAT ABOUT STRUCTURAL BORROWINGS?
A BASIC CONCEPT
SPANISHINLOSÁNGELES
• SILVA-CORVALÁN (1994) STRUCTURAL CHANGES IN SPANISH DUE TO
ENGLISH INFLUENCE.
• CHARACTERISTIC OF VARIETIES OF SPANISH SPOKEN BY BILINGUAL
SPEAKERS IN SPANISH AND ENGLISH.
• THIS DOES NOT REPRESENT ANYTHING NEW TO SPANISH SYNTAX
SPANISHINLOSÁNGELES
•LA SPANISH:
•SE LO DIO P’ATRAS (para atrás)
•TO-HIM IT SHE GAVE BACK
•GEN. SPANISH:
•SE LO DEVOLVIÓ
•TO HIM SHE RETURNED IT
•In Spanish “atrás” means only behind, but in LA it has acquired the meaning
of “back” due to literal translation
SPANISHINLOSÁNGELES
• LA SPANISH:
• CUANDO NO TENGO NADA QUE HACER, JUEGO MÚSICA
• WHEN I HAVE NOTHING TO DO, I PLAY MUSIC
• GEN. SPANISH:
• CUANDO NO TENEGO NADA QUE HACER, TOCO MÚSICA
• In spanish music is not played, is “touched”
SPANISHINLOSÁNGELES
• What do we mean, then, by saying “structural changes” but not borrowing syntactic
structures from English?
• LA SPANISH: mi padre es seis pies
• ENGLISH: my dad is six feet
• GEN. SPANISH: mi padre mide seis pies (my dad measures six feet)
SPANISHINLOSÁNGELES
• What do we mean, then, by saying “structural changes” but not borrowing syntactic structures from
English?
• LA SPANISH: mi padre es seis pies
• ENGLISH: my dad is six feet
• GEN. SPANISH: mi padre mide seis pies (my dad measures six feet)
• LA SPANISH: y tu carro que compraste, ¿cómo te gusta?
• ENGLISH: and the car that you bought, how do you like it?
• GEN. SPANISH: y el carro que compraste, ¿te gusta?
SPANISHINLOSÁNGELES
• What do we mean, then, by saying “structural changes” but not borrowing syntactic structures from English?
• LA SPANISH: mi padre es seis pies
• ENGLISH: my dad is six feet
• GEN. SPANISH: mi padre mide seis pies (my dad measures six feet)
• LA SPANISH: y tu carro que compraste, ¿cómo te gusta?
• ENGLISH: and the car that you bought, how do you like it?
• GEN. SPANISH: y el carro que compraste, ¿te gusta?
• STRUCTURAL CHANGES -> ALTERATIONS OR SHIFTS IN THE ORGANIZATION IN THE
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ELEMENTS.
FRENCH/ENGLISHCONTACTONPRINCEEDWARDISLAND
FRENCH/ENGLISHCONTACTONPRINCEEDWARDISLAND
• English has in
fl
uenced Acadian French spoken in the island.
• Heavy lexical borrowing, like in all varieties of French in Canada
• BUT also function items!
• Prepositions
• Wh- words
• Adverbial particle back
• THIS HAS LED TO STRUCTURAL CHANGES IN PEI FRENCH
FRENCH/ENGLISHCONTACTONPRINCEEDWARDISLAND
• VERB + PREPOSITION COMBINATIONS
• Ender up; Finer out; Hanger around
FRENCH/ENGLISHCONTACTONPRINCEEDWARDISLAND
• VERB + PREPOSITION COMBINATIONS
• Ender up; Finer out; Hanger around
• ENGLISH-ORIGIN PREPOSITIONS WITH VERBS OF FRENCH ORIGIN
• Parler about (talk about); Aller on (go on); Faire up (make up)
FRENCH/ENGLISHCONTACTONPRINCEEDWARDISLAND
• VERB + PREPOSITION COMBINATIONS
• Ender up; Finer out; Hanger around
• ENGLISH-ORIGIN PREPOSITIONS WITH VERBS OF FRENCH ORIGIN
• Parler about (talk about); Aller on (go on); Faire up (make up)
• FRENCH PREPOSITION OCCURRING WITH VERBS OF ENGLISH ORIGIN
• Crasher dans (crash into); Picker su (pick on); Lander su (land on)
BALKANSPRACHBUND
• Sprachbund ->
BALKANSPRACHBUND
• Sprachbund -> Convergence situation of linguistics. Where a group of languages
share areal features resulting from proximity and language contact.
• These languages can be genetically unrelated or distant related, but
the sprachbund characteristics might give a false appearance of
relatedness
BALKANSPRACHBUND
BALKANSPRACHBUND
• Primary languages of the Sprachbund include
• Albanian (albanoid language)
• Greek (hellenic language)
• Romanian (romance language)
• Bulgarian (slavic language)
• Macedonian (slavic language)
• Serbo-Croatian (slavic language)
• Judezmo or Judeo-Espanol (romance language)
• Romani (Indo-Aryan language)
• Turkish (turkic language)
BALKANSPRACHBUND
• Primary languages of the Sprachbund include
• Albanian (albanoid language)
• Greek (hellenic language)
• Romanian (romance language)
• Bulgarian (slavic language)
• Macedonian (slavic language)
• Serbo-Croatian (slavic language)
• Judezmo or Judeo-Espanol (romance language)
• Romani (Indo-Aryan language)
• Turkish (turkic language)
BALKANSPRACHBUND
• 800 - 1700 A.D. -> Prolonged contact among the language groups
• Contact due to -> war, conquest, trade, animal herding
• Invasions from Slavs -> long period of migration across language boundaries ->
multilingual communities
Wh
a
ts the ba ckground to this?
BALKANSPRACHBUND
• 800 - 1700 A.D. -> Prolonged contact among the language groups
• Contact due to -> war, conquest, trade, animal herding
• Invasions from Slavs -> long period of migration across language boundaries ->
multilingual communities
• GREEK -> High Language across these communities -> Important factor in the
di
ff
usion of linguistic features
Wh
a
ts the ba ckground to this?
BALKANSPRACHBUND
• 800 - 1700 A.D. -> Prolonged contact among the language groups
• Contact due to -> war, conquest, trade, animal herding
• Invasions from Slavs -> long period of migration across language boundaries -> multilingual communities
• GREEK -> High Language across these communities -> Important factor in the
di
ff
usion of linguistic features
• BYZANTINE CIVILIZATION + GREEK ORTHODOX CHURCH
• Greek seems to have been the source of, or vehicle for, many of the di
ff
used
features.
• Greek, nevertheless, was also the recipient in some cases. The picture is up
to debate.
Wh
a
ts the ba ckground to this?
BALKANSPRACHBUND
• Full details on this contact situation are still unknown.
• However, LINGUISTIC CONSEQUENCES can be seen.
• Phonology: Balkan languages absence of suprasegmental features such as
length and nasalisation in vowel articulation
• MORPHOLOGY: post-posed enclitic de
fi
nite article (all languages except Greek
and Turkish)
Consequencesinmorphology
• Post-posed enclitic de
fi
nite article (all languages except Greek and Turkish)
• Noun Noun+Article Meaning
Bulgarian voda Voda-ta Water
Romanian lup lup-ul Wolf
Albanian shok shok-u Comrade
Consequencesinmorphology
• Merger of dative and genitive cases in Albanian, Bulgarian, Greek and Romanian
• Merger of locative and directional expressions in Bulgarian, Greek and Romanian
• Greek: stin eláda (In Greece / Into Greece)
Consequencesinsyntax
• Use of redundant personal pronouns to cross-index direct or indirect animate
objects
• Romanian: I-am scris lui John
• To-him I wrote him John (I wrote to John)
Consequencesinlexicalitems
• Borrowing of single lexical items such as
• Greek Dromos > Alb. Dhrom; Bulg. Drum; Rom. Drum
• Turkish Boya > Alb. Boje, Bulg. Boja, Greek boyá
Consequencesinlexicalitems
• Borrowing of single lexical items such as
• Greek Dromos > Alb. Dhrom; Bulg. Drum; Rom. Drum
• Turkish Boya > Alb. Boje, Bulg. Boja, Greek boyá
• NUMERALS 11 - 19 ARE EXPRESSED BY COMBINATIONS WHOSE LITERAL MEANING IS
“ONE ON TEN, TWO ON TEN…) not found in modern greek, but occurring in medieval greek.
• Albanian një% -mbë%- dhjetë  
• Bulgarian edi(n)-na-deset
• Romanian un-spre-zece (<*unu-supre-dece)
Consequencesinlexicalitems
• Calques on idiomatic expressions
• “Without a doubt” is expressed by “without order”
• Albanian: pa tjetër
• Bulgarian: bez drugo
• Greek: xorís álo
• The expression “whether one VERB or not” is conveyed by the structure “VERB-not-VERB”. Greek could have
been the source of this pattern
• Bulgarian: pie ne pie “whether one drinks or not”
• Greek:
f
íji de
f
íji “whether one leaves or not”
• Romanian: vrea nu vrea “whether one wants or not
• Turkish: ister istemez “willingly or not”
BALKANSPRACHBUND
• Where does all this borrowing come from and what does it suppose?
• Sandfeld (1930) -> di
ff
usion due to borrowing from a single language (Greek) into
the other
• BUT some evidence points to asymmetrical patterns of dimension
• It has been claimed that Bulgarian is generally the recipient language in grammar,
BUT the source of phonological innovations. Especially in Romanian.
• STILL CONTROVERSIAL
BALKANSPRACHBUND
• INFLUENCE OF A PRE-EXISTING SPECH COMMUNITY ON THE LINGUISTIC
GROUPS THAT CAME TO SETTLE IN THE BALKANS?
• More likely that mutual accommodation and shift among the immigrant groups
themselves promoted the spread of features.
BALKANSPRACHBUND
• Degree of lexical and structural di
ff
usion found in most of the languages is not that
extensive
• Ongoing mixture involving European languages and native languages in colonies is
at least as extensive as in the Balkans -> Language maintenance, particularly when
the groups involved belong to quite distinct communitieS
Conclusion
EXTREMESTRUCTURALDIFFUSION
• THOMASON AND KAUFMAN (1988): “traditional prerequisite for structural
borrowing […] is the existence of a bilingual group within the borrowing language
speaker population”
• De
fi
nition of structural borrowing: “Structural interference initiates by native
speakers of the recipient language” -> vague as to the actual mechanism of change
involved in the cases
Borrowing or substr
a
tum in
f
luence?
OLDNORSEONOLDENGLISH
• England invaded by Norse-speaking Norwegians and Danes (865 - 955)
• Considerable lexical and some structural in
fl
uence from Norse -> Norse
speakers gradually shifted to English over the next 100 years, but their language
left its mark on Northern and Midland varieties of English
OLDNORSEONOLDENGLISH
• PRONOUNS: they, them, their replacing Old English equivalents hie/he:o, him/hira and
heom/hora
• QUANTIFIERS: minne “less”, seer “various” replacing OE loe:ssa, syndrig
• VARIETY OF STRONG FORMS OF VERBS: give(n), gas, geeven (TO GIVE); vs OE
jefa(n), joef, jefen
• PREPOSITIONS: til (to), fraa (from)
ADOPTED GRAMMATICAL TRAITS
OLDNORSEONOLDENGLISH
• MOTIVATIONS FOR NORSE TO AFFECT ENGLISH?
• PRESTIGE
• ECONOMIC ADVANTAGES FROM KNOWLEDGE OF THE LANGUAGE
• NORSE SPEAKERS RETAINING FEATURES OF THEIR LANGUAGE WHEN SWITCHING TO
ENGLISH
ADOPTED GRAMMATICAL TRAITS
OLDNORSEONOLDENGLISH
• Norse in
fl
uence is still pronounced in rural dialects of the north and midlands, but
has made its way to London English
• We still
fi
nd Norse survivors such as give, run, thrive, get; pronominal forms they,
them, their and functional words like though, till and again(st)
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6I4CXg1hkbs
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MU5L9rIOaqw
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luuA6bEoQIE (Scottish English)
In contempor
a
ry English
SUMMARY
• THERE IS NOT ALWAYS A CONSISTENT RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN DEGREE OF LEXICAL AND
STRUCTURAL DIFFUSSION
• IN SITUATIONS OF UNSTABLE BILINGUALISM, ONGOING SHIFT APPEARS TO LEAD TO
SOMEWHAT MORE STRUCTURAL INNOVATION IN AN ANCESTRAL LANGUAGE UNDER THREAT
FROM A DOMINANT LANGUAGE.
• INNOVATIONS ARE APPARENTLY INTRODUCED BY HIGHLY PROFICIENT BILINGUALS, ESPECIALLY
THOSE WHO USE THE DOMINANT LANGUAGE AS THEIR PRIMARY MEANS OF LEXICAL
DIFFUSSION
• IT IS NOT EASY TO PINPOINT THE PARTICULAR STRUCTURAL AND SOCIAL FACTORS THAT
REGULATE THE OUTCOME OF CONTACT SITUATIONS.
• REGARDING SOCIAL FACTORS, IR APPEARS THAT THE DEGREE OF INTIMACY OF CONTACT
DETERMINES THE DEGREE OF STRUCTURAL DIFFUSSION