Mixed Languages

Meakins, Felicity; Stewart, Jesse

doi:10.1017/9781009105965.016

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 67 publications

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“…The relative influences of genealogy and geography may not be uniform across different elements of grammar. Linguists (27,28) have suggested that language contact may have different outcomes for the verbal, pronominal, and nominal domains of grammar in contact languages. Grambank features cover many different domains of grammar (e.g., clausal, nominal, pronominal, and verbal) and thus enable us to test the generality of this claim.…”

Section: Genealogy Versus Geographymentioning

confidence: 99%

Grambank reveals the importance of genealogical constraints on linguistic diversity and highlights the impact of language loss

et al. 2023

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While global patterns of human genetic diversity are increasingly well characterized, the diversity of human languages remains less systematically described. Here, we outline the Grambank database. With over 400,000 data points and 2400 languages, Grambank is the largest comparative grammatical database available. The comprehensiveness of Grambank allows us to quantify the relative effects of genealogical inheritance and geographic proximity on the structural diversity of the world’s languages, evaluate constraints on linguistic diversity, and identify the world’s most unusual languages. An analysis of the consequences of language loss reveals that the reduction in diversity will be strikingly uneven across the major linguistic regions of the world. Without sustained efforts to document and revitalize endangered languages, our linguistic window into human history, cognition, and culture will be seriously fragmented.

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Section: Genealogy Versus Geographymentioning

confidence: 99%

Grambank reveals the importance of genealogical constraints on linguistic diversity and highlights the impact of language loss

et al. 2023

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“…However, the past decade has benefited from a surge of research in mixed language phonology that centers on the question: “What is the result of competing source language phonologies in a new mixed language?” To answer this question, phonemic conflict sites (i.e., conflicting areas of phonological convergence in the source languages’ phonologies) are compared acoustically and quantitative analyses provide important details into how sounds are treated in the mixed language. Interestingly, unlike the clear splits observed in the morphosyntax, results from acoustic studies (see e.g., Buchan, 2012; Bundgaard-Nielsen & O’Shannessy, 2019; Hendy, 2019; Jones & Meakins, 2013; Jones et al, 2011, 2012; Meakins & Stewart, accepted; Rosen, 2006, 2007; Rosen et al, 2020; Stewart, 2014, 2015a, 2015b, 2020; Stewart & Meakins, accepted; Stewart et al, 2018, 2020b) show that there is a propensity for phonological material to assimilate to the phonology of the ancestral language. In other words, “the language, which was acquired 1 originally as an L2 [second language] .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

The Effects of Language Contact on Non-Native Vowel Sequences in Lexical Borrowings: The Case of Media Lengua

Onosson

Stewart

2021

Lang Speech

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Media Lengua (ML), a mixed language derived from Quichua and Spanish, exhibits a phonological system that largely conforms to that of Quichua acoustically. Yet, it incorporates a large number of vowel sequences from Spanish which do not occur in the Quichua system. This includes the use of mid-vowels, which are phonetically realized in ML as largely overlapping with the high-vowels in acoustic space. We analyze and compare production of vowel sequences by speakers of ML, Quichua, and Spanish through the use of generalized additive mixed models to determine statistically significant differences between vowel formant trajectories. Our results indicate that Spanish-derived ML vowel sequences frequently differ significantly from their Spanish counterparts, largely occupying a more central region of the vowel space and frequently exhibiting markedly reduced trajectories over time. In contrast, we find only one case where an ML vowel sequence differs significantly from its Quichua counterpart—and even in this case the difference from Spanish is substantially greater. Our findings show how the vowel system of ML successfully integrates novel vowel sequence patterns from Spanish into what is essentially Quichua phonology by markedly adapting their production, while still maintaining contrasts which are not expressed in Quichua.

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“…Adamant advocates of what DeGraff 13 calls "creole exceptionalism" include Bakker et al, 14 McWhorter, 15 and Parkvall; 16 those of non-exceptionalism include Chaudenson, 17 Mufwene, 18 DeGraff, 19 Aboh, 20 and Aboh & DeGraff. 21 Nonetheless, these advocates and other creolists agree that creoles are hybrid language varieties (pace "Mixed Languages") 22 as underscored by the title of Aboh, 23 regardless of whether they should be considered as new nonstandard dialects of their lexifiers or separate languages altogether. 24 Correlated with this issue is the question of whether creoles evolved directly from their lexifiers, without a break in the latter's transmission, or are the creations of new languages from intermediate pidgins (as "broken language varieties" without a grammar at their incipient stage; e.g., Bickerton).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Linguistic Hybridization in the Emergence of Creoles

Mufwene

2022

Postcolon. Lit. inq

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In this article I show how ubiquitous hybridity is in cultures. It is enabled by layers of population movements and contacts since the dispersal of Homo sapiens out of Africa around 50,000 years ago. I demonstrate how hybridization has proceeded in the emergence of creole language varieties and show that the same process has also driven, for instance, the emergence and differential evolution of English and the speciation of Vulgar Latin into the Romance languages. Differences in outcomes are determined by the specificities of the contact ecologies, including population structure, differences in the demographic proportions of the populations in contact and power relations between them, as well as patterns of population growth, among other factors. I argue that hybridity is not unique to languages. It is conspicuous in other domains of culture, including cuisine, music, clothing fashions, and technologies, for example. I submit a uniformitarian approach inspired by evolutionary biology to better understand how hybridization occurs.

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Mixed Languages

Cited by 4 publications

References 67 publications

Grambank reveals the importance of genealogical constraints on linguistic diversity and highlights the impact of language loss

Grambank reveals the importance of genealogical constraints on linguistic diversity and highlights the impact of language loss

The Effects of Language Contact on Non-Native Vowel Sequences in Lexical Borrowings: The Case of Media Lengua

Linguistic Hybridization in the Emergence of Creoles

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