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Language Contact and Individual Multilingualism
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Language Contact and Individual Multilingualism

A special issue of Languages (ISSN 2226-471X).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 August 2021) | Viewed by 11337

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Esther Rinke

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Modern Languages, Institute for Romance Languages and Literatures Goethe University Frankfurt, 60629 Frankfurt, Germany
Interests: grammar of Romance languages; diachronic linguistics; language contact and multilingualism; syntactic variation; language acquisition
Dr. Gabriel Martínez Vera

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Modern Languages, Institute for Romance Languages and Literatures Goethe University Frankfurt, 60629 Frankfurt, Germany
Interests: syntax; semantics; discourse; bilingualism; cross-linguistic variation; Andean languages; Romance languages

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Research on language contact and its effects on the linguistic systems of the languages involved often appears unrelated to the discussion about cross-linguistic influence as investigated in studies on individual bilingualism. We believe that these two lines of research actually belong closely together: if language contact is supposed to have an influence on the language system(s), it seems a prerequisite that the languages are not only in contact on a societal level but, crucially, in the mind of the individual speaker (Meisel et al. 2013. Hence, proposals concerning contact-induced language change or innovation have to be plausible from the perspective of what is known about cross-linguistic influence in the bilingual speaker (Polinsky & Scontras 2020; Sánchez 2003; Poplack & Levey 2010). In a similar vein, studies on cross-linguistic influence in bilingual speakers can profit from the numerous studies on the effects of language contact (Appel & Muysken 2005, Silva-Corvalán 1994). For instance, alleged cases of cross-linguistic influence in bilinguals should consider what is known about contact-induced language change that has taken place in typologically similar or different contact situations in the present and the past (Rinke, Flores and Barbosa 2018).

This Special Issue invites contributions relating language contact and individual bilingualism. We are interested in submissions providing original data (e.g., corpus data or experimental data) and (formal) theoretical analyses. The Special Issue is open for contributions on a variety of linguistic phenomena (phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic phenomena) and different typological language pairings.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 400-600 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the guest editors ([email protected]; [email protected]) or to the Languages Editorial Office ([email protected]). Abstracts will be reviewed by the guest editors for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer-review.

The tentative completion schedule is as follows:

  • Abstract submission deadline: 15 May 2021.
  • Notification of abstract acceptance: 31 May 2021.
  • Full manuscript deadline: 31 August  2021.

References:

Appel, R. & P. Muysken (2005): Language Contact and Bilingualism. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

Meisel, J. M., M. Elsig & E. Rinke (2013): Language Acquisition and Change. A Morphosyntactic Perspective, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Polinsky, M. & G. Scontras (2020): “Understanding heritage languages”, Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 23(1), 4–20.

Poplack, S. & S. Levey (2010): “Contact-induced grammatical change: A cautionary tale”, In: P. Auer & J. Schmidt (eds.), An international handbook of linguistic variation, pp. 391–418. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Rinke, E., Flores, C. & P. Barbosa (2018): “Null objects in the spontaneous speech of monolingual and bilingual speakers of European Portuguese”, Probus, International Journal of Latin and Romance Linguistics 30 (1), 93-120.

Sánchez, L. (2004): Quechua-Spanish Bilingualism. Interference and convergence in functional categories. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Silva-Corvalán, C. (1994): Language contact and change: Spanish in Los Angeles. Oxford: Clarendon.

Prof. Dr. Esther Rinke
Dr. Gabriel Martínez Vera
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Languages is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • language contact
  • bilingualism
  • multilingualism
  • language change
  • language acquisition
  • linguistic variation
  • phonology
  • morphology
  • semantics
  • syntax
  • attrition
  • heritage languages

Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

15 pages, 716 KiB  
Article
Gender Agreement in a Language Contact Situation
by Liliana Sánchez, José Camacho, Elisabeth Mayer and Carolina Rodríguez Alzza
Languages 2022, 7(2), 81; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7020081 - 30 Mar 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2936
Abstract
Gender agreement between determiners and nouns, and gender agreement between third-person clitics and their referents, are notoriously difficult to acquire by bilingual speakers who lack them in their first language, or in one of their first languages. We present a study that explores [...] Read more.
Gender agreement between determiners and nouns, and gender agreement between third-person clitics and their referents, are notoriously difficult to acquire by bilingual speakers who lack them in their first language, or in one of their first languages. We present a study that explores the differences between gender agreement between a determiner and a noun and gender agreement between clitics and antecedents or doubled DPs among Shipibo-Spanish speakers. The oral production data that were elicited from 17 adult Shipibo-Spanish bilinguals by using a picture-based narration task show a notable difference in the agreement patterns between nouns and determiners, and between clitics and their antecedents/doubled DPs. Similar patterns are found among five Spanish-Shipibo bilinguals who were living in the same contact situation. While the participants consistently marked strong gender agreement within the DPs, a lack of gender specification was found in the agreement between clitics and antecedents or doubled DPs in the clitic-doubling and dislocated structures. These results are not unexpected as they mirror the results from previous work, where the clitic gender does not systematically match the antecedent gender, especially with feminine antecedents or doubled DPs. Furthermore, this study confirms previous evidence that the gender-specific clitics, lo/la, have been replaced by the invariable clitic, le, in contexts where agreement with a doubled DP or an antecedent is expected. In contrast, there is evidence of agreement between determiners and nouns in this group of bilinguals. These facts allow us to conclude that, although gender is present in Shipibo-Spanish bilingual speakers’ grammar, it is largely absent and is not operative in Shipibo-Spanish speakers’ clitic agreement in oral production. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Language Contact and Individual Multilingualism)
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17 pages, 1780 KiB  
Article
Language-Internal Reanalysis of Clitic Placement in Heritage Grammars Reduces the Cost of Computation: Evidence from Bulgarian
by Tanya Ivanova-Sullivan, Irina A. Sekerina, Davood Tofighi and Maria Polinsky
Languages 2022, 7(1), 24; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7010024 - 29 Jan 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2502
Abstract
The study offers novel evidence on the grammar and processing of clitic placement in heritage languages. Building on earlier findings of divergent clitic placement in heritage European Portuguese and Serbian, this study extends this line of inquiry to Bulgarian, a language where clitic [...] Read more.
The study offers novel evidence on the grammar and processing of clitic placement in heritage languages. Building on earlier findings of divergent clitic placement in heritage European Portuguese and Serbian, this study extends this line of inquiry to Bulgarian, a language where clitic placement is subject to strong prosodic constraints. We found that, in heritage Bulgarian, clitic placement is processed and rated differently than in the baseline, and we asked whether such clitic misplacement results from the transfer from the dominant language or follows from language-internal reanalysis. We used a self-paced listening task and an aural acceptability rating task with 13 English-dominant, highly proficient heritage speakers and 22 monolingual speakers of Bulgarian. Heritage speakers of Bulgarian process and rate the grammatical proclitic and ungrammatical enclitic clitic positions as equally acceptable, and we contend that this pattern is due to language-internal reanalysis. We suggest that the trigger for such reanalysis is the overgeneralization of the prosodic Strong Start Constraint from the left edge of the clause to any position in the sentence. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Language Contact and Individual Multilingualism)
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21 pages, 1542 KiB  
Article
Paradigmatic Uniformity: Evidence from Heritage Speakers of Spanish
by José Camacho
Languages 2022, 7(1), 14; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7010014 - 13 Jan 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2161
Abstract
Subject-verb agreement mismatches have been reported in the L2 and heritage literature, usually involving infinitives, analyzed as default morphological forms for fully specified T-heads. This article explores the mechanisms behind these mismatches, testing two hypotheses: the default form and the surface-similarity hypotheses. It [...] Read more.
Subject-verb agreement mismatches have been reported in the L2 and heritage literature, usually involving infinitives, analyzed as default morphological forms for fully specified T-heads. This article explores the mechanisms behind these mismatches, testing two hypotheses: the default form and the surface-similarity hypotheses. It compares non-finite and finite S-V mismatches with subjects with different persons, testing whether similarity with other paradigmatic forms makes them more acceptable, controlling for the role of verb frequency. Participants were asked to rate sentences on a Likert scale that included (a) infinitive forms with first, second and third person subjects, and (b) third person verbal forms with first, second and third person subjects. Two stem-stressed verbs (e.g., tra.j-o ‘brought.3p.past’) and two affix-stressed verbs (e.g., me.ti-o ‘introduced.3p.past’), varying in frequency were tested. Inflectional affixes of stem-stressed verbs are similar to other forms of the paradigm both phonologically and in being unstressed (tra.j-o ‘brought.3p.past’ vs. trai.g-o ‘bring.1 p.pres’), whereas affixes of affix-stressed verbs have dissimilar stress patterns (me.ti-o ´introduced.3p.past’ vs. me.t-o ‘introduce.1p.pres’). Results show significantly higher acceptability for finite vs. non-finite non-matching, and for 1st vs. 2nd person subjects. Stem-stressed verbs showed higher acceptability ratings than affix-stressed ones, suggesting a role for surface-form correspondence, partially confirming previous findings. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Language Contact and Individual Multilingualism)
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29 pages, 1019 KiB  
Article
Scalar and Counterfactual Approximatives: Investigating Heritage Greek in the USA and Germany
by Despina Oikonomou, Vasiliki Rizou, Daniil Bondarenko, Onur Özsoy and Artemis Alexiadou
Languages 2022, 7(1), 11; https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7010011 - 10 Jan 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2484
Abstract
Approximative constructions present special interest for acquisition due to the counterfactual and scalar inferences they give rise to. In this paper we investigate the acquisition of Greek approximatives by heritage speakers in Germany and the USA. We show that while in English and [...] Read more.
Approximative constructions present special interest for acquisition due to the counterfactual and scalar inferences they give rise to. In this paper we investigate the acquisition of Greek approximatives by heritage speakers in Germany and the USA. We show that while in English and German there is a single lexical item encoding counterfactuality and scalarity, in Greek there are two lexical items which, as we show, have different interpretations. In view of this difference, we test whether the crosslinguistic differences and the interface nature of approximative constructions affect their representation in heritage language. We present a production study and a comprehension study of approximative constructions. Our findings suggest that the two heritage groups do not diverge from the monolingual group in the domain of approximative constructions. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Language Contact and Individual Multilingualism)
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