Language Contact Flashcards
What is a creole?
A language variety arising out of a situation of language contact (usually involving more than two languages). This variety is normally the first language of some community or group of speakers, and/or used for the entire range of social functions that a language can be used for.
What is creolisation?
The process by which a pidgin becomes the first language of a group of speakers. The term also refers to the linguistic outcomes of the expansion of the pidgin into a wider range of social functions.
What is dialect levelling?
Reduction of differences distinguishing regional dialects or accents; one possible outcome of contact between speakers of different varieties
What is ethnolinguistic vitality?
Demographic, social and institutional strength of a language and its speakers
What is globalisation?
The increased contact between people of different social and linguistic backgrounds across broad swathes of geographical space; commonly portrayed as a recent phenomenon and strongly associated with new communication technologies
What is a gravity model?
Model of the diffusion of innovations introduced to sociolinguistics by Peter Trudgill. Social innovations (including linguistic innovations) have been observed to ‘hop’ between large population centres in a (spatially) discontinuous manner. At its simplest, the model predicts that the larger the city/town, the sooner an innovation is likely to show up there.
What is language death?
The complete disappearance of a language or dialect, but not necessarily the community
What is language planning?
The deliberate effort to influence the function, structure or acquisition of languages or language varieties within a speech community. This includes, for example, the normative work of language academies and committees, all forms of what is commonly known as language cultivation and all proposals for language reform or standardisation.
What is language shift?
A situation when a community who share a native language/dialect abandon it, and collectively shift to speaking another one
What is a lexifier?
The language that has provided most of the vocabulary to a pidgin or creole
What is a pidgin?
A language variety that is not very linguistically complex or elaborated and is used in fairly restricted social domains and for limited social or interpersonal functions. It arises from language contact, but has no native speakers. It is often seen as a precursor or early stage to a creole.
What is reallocation?
Reassignment or reanalysis of forms in contact in a systematic way, e.g., as allophonically distributed variants of a phoneme
What is vernacularisation?
The process by which a contact variety becomes used with the full range of social and personal functions served by a language of the home. The term also refers to the linguistic changes associated with the expansion of the variety in this way.
What is a wave model?
The theory that language change emanates from a single starting point and is gradually incorporated into the speech of the nearest neighbours
