The present study examines the use of the Spanish imperfect progressive in Puerto Rican Spanish to determine if this construction is influenced by English, or if it is responding to internal ...grammaticalization processes as defined as the process in which a lexical item acquires a grammatical function. 33 Puerto Ricans that lived in Puerto Rico completed a sociolinguistic interview and two retell tasks. The English influence hypothesis is discarded since the results indicate that the imperfect progressive is slowly grammaticalizing as a past imperfective, which explains why it can be used with all verbs classes and to express habitual events. Pre-existing work in the field proposes that progressive constructions can develop as imperfective markers. This finding supports the present progressive hypothesis which states that it grammaticalizes from a locative to a progressive expression, and later develops a habitual meaning. Finally, it is possible that some cases of language variation and change are due to grammaticalization processes, language contact, or language contact induced grammaticalization.
This introduction to our special issue surveys some of the current work undertaken by scholars on the island of Puerto Rico and abroad that document the language forms, uses, and ideologies of ...language in the U.S. territory. We provide the “total linguistic fact” (
) of what it means to speak
and
in Puerto Rico, Census projections of language use, self-reported data and actual documented work on the form and social uses of languages. We provide the sociohistorical context of the history of both Spanish and English on the Island, language policies across time, and how these have played out and been contested in real time. Setting the scene for our special issue, we ask our readers to think critically on the status of contact languages in globalized times, ideological shifts of language practices, and the intimate ties between language and identity.
This study addresses our understanding of English loanwords in the modern Japanese language. It aims to investigate the two types of English loanwords and made-in-Japan loanwords among Malaysian ...English speakers and native Japanese. The proposed study utilized a quantitative approach to determine the understanding of two groups of speakers; 60 Japanese speakers in Japan and 60 English speakers in Malaysia. The data collection of this research was completed using two questionnaires. The two questionnaires consist of 14 sentences with these two types of English loanwords selected from Japanese textbooks and other sources. The findings reflected correct responses to the meaning of English loanwords and made-in-Japan loanwords for Japanese speakers. The English speakers showed correct responses for English loanwords, however, they were discrepancies in responses when it comes to made-in-Japan loanwords. This research breaks ground on the issue of the comprehension of English loanwords and made-in-Japan among Native Japanese speakers and Malaysian English speakers. This study incorporates the theory of language contact by Thomason (2001). The contact occurs where the mutual influence of languages happens leading to code-switching, borrowing, and loanwords formed by the social setting and the contact environment. It also employs the theory of language awareness to support second language learning and develop the learner’s comprehension. The significance of the study emphasizes English language learning benefits and the importance of the learners’ understanding of the differences between English loanwords to utilize them in vocabulary building.
Through interviews with bilingual users of Kwéyòl Donmnik (Dominica Creole), an understudied and endangered French lexifier Creole, and a questionnaire for users of English, a colonial language that ...has been in intense contact with Kwéyòl for over 200 years, this study investigates the metalinguistic knowledge members of each language community have about a selection of pragmatic markers that are cross-linguistically similar: Kwéyòl konsa ‘so’, èben ‘well’, and papa/Bondyé ‘father/God’ and English so, well, and oh my God. The study also examines Kwéyòl users' understandings of la ‘there’, a locative pragmatic marker. Participants' responses paralleled and expanded upon linguists' observations, and while there were commonalities between the two groups' self-reports, Kwéyòl users attributed greater cultural and communicative value to their markers. This research expands the limited body of work on Kwéyòl and reinforces that pragmatic markers are both procedurally meaningful and culturally embedded. It also demonstrates that, while corpus-based approaches are fruitful, richer insights can be gained by also incorporating language users' lived expertise through direct elicitation of their metalinguistic knowledge about how pragmatic markers are employed and perceived.
•Selected Kwéyòl and English pragmatic markers (PMs) are in intense contact.•Metalinguistic knowledge about PMs parallels and expands beyond corpus analyses.•Despite rich knowledge, English survey takers were more dismissive of their PMs.•Kwéyòl interviewees ascribed greater cultural and communicative value to their PMs.•Both groups report awareness of waning taboos surrounding PMs with religious roots.
Studies in language contact have identified many instances of linguistic variation and grammatical innovations introduced by speakers from multi-ethnic urban neighborhoods. This study focuses on the ...variety of Cantonese spoken by South Asian youths in Hong Kong, specifically their production and perception of Hong Kong Cantonese tones. Our findings show that the South Asian Cantonese speakers have a smaller tonal inventory than the canonical six-tone system of standard Hong Kong Cantonese and their tonal discrimination abilities are also more impoverished relative to their ethnic Chinese peers. Further analysis shows a positive correlation between tonal discrimination accuracy and tonal realization distinctness among the South Asian speakers, but not among the ethnic Chinese. These findings suggest that South Asian Cantonese speakers might have developed a distinct tone system from their ethnic Chinese peers.
The introductory paper to the special issue summarises key aspects of contact-related linguistic dynamics such as the communicative interfaces of modern complex societies, the multi-layered textual ...and discoursal repertoire of their speaker groups and the role of the speakers’ cognitive mechanisms, social identity, and interactional strategies in settings of language contact. Giving an overview of the contributions, it aims to connect classic topics of language contact research with recent theoretical and methodological approaches investigated in the papers, and to highlight interconnections and interdisciplinary links that can stimulate further research on linguistic variation and change.
Resumen
Los documentos mallorquines en castellano del siglo XVIII muestran una distinción entre 〈b〉 y 〈v〉 más estable que otros textos producidos de la Península Ibérica. El objetivo de este artículo ...es examinar la distribución de estas grafías mediante una aproximación multidisciplinar que combina un análisis diacrónico y sincrónico con métodos estadísticos, y tratar de ponerlas en relación con rasgos de la variedad actual de catalán hablada en la isla. De esta forma, se ofrece una interpretación fonética que contribuye a la caracterización de la variedad histórica del español de Mallorca y que puede ayudar a profundizar en la comprensión de los fenómenos de variación y cambio lingüísticos en una situación de contacto.
