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Aims and Objectives/Purpose/Research Questions: The present paper aims to situate Macaronic Latin, a peculiar type of linguistic mixture that was used in literary works in early modern Europe, within the context of phenomena such as code-switching and borrowing, as well as mixed and constructed languages. The main objective is to see whether and how it can be compared to various instances of linguistic structures originating from more than one source language. Design/Methodology/Approach: After a description of its historical background and sociolinguistic features, main linguistic traits of Macaronic Latin are sketched and, finally, compared to other language contact phenomena, with particular reference to the fusion hypothesis. Data and Analysis: The main data for the analysis are sixty samples from macaronic works belonging to eleven language pairs. The analysis shows that mixed words in Macaronic Latin have properties of both borrowings and loans, being very similar to nonce formations. When compared to mixed and constructed languages, Macaronic Latin shows peculiarities that set it apart from either group. Findings/Conclusions: Although individual structural aspects of Macaronic Latin align its individual aspects with various outcomes of linguistic contact, the sociolinguistic pattern of its creation and later development make it a rather untypical case of linguistic mixing. Originality: Latin served as the main language of learned communication in medieval and early modern Europe; yet, this paper is the first study devoted to putting it in the context of mixed language debate. Significance/Implications: The study suggests that the preservation of the widespread use of a language with no native speakers requires sociolinguistic forces so strong so as to override many trends of what has been established as regular linguistic development. This implies that in investigating such cases we might need a modified research methodology and an extended terminology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: In this introductory article, we advance a unified framework for analysis and interpretation of transfer of overt linguistic structure in language contact situations. Our goal is to demonstrate that fusion, a process whereby results of bilingual practices become grammaticized and conventionalized (see Auer 1999, 2014), is a gradient phenomenon, which applies to a large spectrum of language contact phenomena. Our additional objective is to situate the contributions to this special issue in the context of this approach. Design: The article defines fusion as a central concept underlying the proposed framework, identifies the basic dimensions of fusion and showcases its various outcomes by reviewing extensive contact linguistics literature and the contributions to this special issue. Data and Analysis: In our analysis of contact linguistic phenomena, we draw on available linguistic descriptions of pertinent contact varieties and bilingual practices. We examine these phenomena in terms of fusion and in relation to its three basic dimensions. Findings: This article shows that fusion, being a gradient multifaceted phenomenon, should be analyzed along the following dimensions: (a) the amount of structure affecting the receiving language, (b) the degree of sedimentation of bilingual patterns, (c) the degree of fusional compartmentalization. Significance: The present article identifies and describes manifold outcomes of fusion in terms of three basis dimensions. These dimensions enable one to distinguish fused lects from language mixing and other bilingual phenomena and need therefore be incorporated in future linguistic descriptions and analyses of fused lects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: This article describes an unusual result of language contact occurring in North-Central Australia, where extensive long-term contact between speakers of the genetically unrelated Jingulu and Mudburra has resulted in a high degree of lexical borrowing, with little if any change to syntactic or morphological structure in either language. What is particularly unusual about this borrowing is that it is bidirectional, with almost equal numbers of words being borrowed from Jingulu into Mudburra as vice versa. This situation mirrors that of converted languages, where two varieties have come to share a grammar through contact, but retain separate lexicons. Design/methodology/approach: We use a comparative database to establish the direction of noun borrowings between these languages. Data and analysis: The comparative database consists of 871 nouns shared by Jingulu and Mudburra and also includes 571 corresponding nouns from a number of geographically and phylogenetically neighbouring languages: Wambaya, Gurindji, Jaminjung, Jaru, Warlmanpa and Warumungu. Findings/conclusions: We show that for nouns alone, Mudburra and Jingulu share 65% of their forms. What makes the Jingulu-Mudburra situation even more unusual is the relatively balanced bidirectional nature of borrowings, with 32% of shared nouns originating in Mudburra and 24.5% from Jingulu (for the remaining 43.5%, direction of borrowing could not be determined). Originality: We suggest that that this situation of bidirectional borrowing represents a hitherto unreported type of language hybridisation scenario, which we dub 'lexical convergence'. Significance/implications: We claim that this unusual situation is the result of long-term cohabitation of the two groups, a shared cultural life and relative socio-political equality between the two groups. We venture that these may be requisite to the sort of extensive bidirectional borrowing and maintenance of individual grammatical systems found in lexical convergence more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims and Objectives: The aim of this study is to examine the language processing mechanisms involved when young children bring structural innovations into their community way of speaking, as part of conventionalising code-switching practices to become a mixed language. Approach: The study takes a qualitative approach to the analysis of child language acquisition and adult speech data in two contexts. Data and Analysis: The study analyses naturalistic and spontaneous speech data of children and adults speaking the mixed language, Light Warlpiri, and adults older than that age group who do not speak the new mixed language. It compares an innovative auxiliary form in Light Warlpiri to child non-target speech in English with data taken from the Child Language Data Exchange System corpus. Findings: The findings are that the Light Warlpiri-speaking children used processes of re-analysis that are commonly found in child first language acquisition in other contexts to re-analyse elements of the verbal input, but because of the sociolinguistic context they created an innovative structure. Originality: The study is the first to directly compare processes of innovation in language contact with those of non-target structures in monolingual child language acquisition, identifying the same processes in each. It is also the first to show that a dramatic structural change from a linguistic perspective may be a small, incremental change from a child learner's perspective. Significance/Implications: The significance of the study is that until now processes of innovation in language contact situations have been thought by many to differ in quality from those in monolingual child language acquisition contexts. This study shows that the child language acquisition processes are the same in each situation, but different sociolinguistic contexts lead to different outcomes for the communities' ways of speaking. It also shows that children do not bring in new structure that is not motivated by their input; rather, they make small changes to the input they receive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What exactly happens to a mixed language’s system in a multilingual contact setting? This study aims to investigate the interactions between speakers’ exposure to, frequency of, and proficiency in four languages (English, Tagalog, Hokkien, and Mandarin) and their influences on the why-fronting only wh-question system of Lánnang-uè, a mixed language used by the metropolitan Manila Lannangs. It also aims to test the validity of the assertion that symbiotic mixed languages are more likely to be in flux.The Lánnang-uè speakers participated in production and acceptability experiments.Likelihood to front (production) and responses to a 7-point Likert-type scale (acceptability) were the dependent variables for several Bayesian linear mixed-effects models with age, frequency of language use, and language proficiency as primary fixed effects, sociolinguistic factors (e.g., attitudes, identity) as covariates, and participant (and when appropriate, item) as a random effect.Both production and acceptability results showed that the effects of contact are numerous and far from homogeneous. They vary depending on the source language, wh-phrase type, and degree of consciousness. They corroborate the widely held belief that mixed languages are less stable in symbiotic contexts. However, this paper goes an extra step to show that this “instability” or variability is not always a consequence of contact-induced transfer. It demonstrates that when the source languages influence the stability or development of the mixed language, the effects can be diverse, encompassing aspects such as identity processes, language attitudes, structural transfer, and/or other sociolinguistic innovations.This article is one of the first studies to examine the effects of contact between multiple languages on a mixed language variable using both production and acceptability experimental data in a five-language context. It is one of the very few variationist works in the Philippines that considers the effects of multilingualism on variation and change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study reports on language mixing in two Romani communities, with a century-long presence in Finland and in Greece respectively. A quantitative analysis of free-speech data shows that verbs from the contact languages, Finnish and Turkish, are systematically inserted into a dominant Romani speech with their respective Finnish and Turkish tense, mood, aspect, and person morphology. The insertion in language A of non-integrated single words from language B is atypical for classic code-switching and borrowing, but is a well-known mechanism in the creation of mixed languages. Unlike mixed languages, however, where no single dominant language can be identified, Romani is the main component in the corpora under study. We suggest that this type of Romani language mixing illustrates an early stage of mixed language formation that did not develop into an independent mixed language, owing to changes in the sociopolitical settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recent discovery of research on bilingualism is that a bilingual’s two languages are both active during online speech production and comprehension. Speakers may manage the interference that arises from possessing two simultaneously active languages by inhibiting the language that is task inappropriate or enhancing the activation of the language they intend to use. These accounts were assessed by examining the consequences of earlier use of a language on the current use of another language and by determining whether such consequences are modulated by task demands. Unbalanced bilinguals for whom two languages coexist served as participants. Evidence indicated that the consequences of earlier use depend on task demands that modulate the interplay between inhibition and facilitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In bilingual contact environments, personal pronoun systems are relatively impervious to replacement or borrowing. Several Creole languages contain hybrid personal pronoun paradigms, but the language contact environments that resulted in creolization and mixed pronominal systems are no longer in effect, and the mechanisms of pronominal replacement remain unknown. The present analysis is based on data from Zamboangueño Chabacano, a variety of Philippine Creole Spanish that has already undergone at least one set of pronominal replacements in its history, substituting Spanish-derived plural pronouns with pronouns taken from Philippine languages. Due to recent migration, Zamboangueño Chabacano is now in contact with Tagalog, and younger speakers are incorporating the Tagalog second-person singular respect-neutral pronoun ikaw into the Chabacano system. The insertion of ikaw restores the respectful–respect-neutral pronominal distinction originally present in Spanish and found in Philippine languages but lacking in Chabacano. The ease with which a Tagalog pronoun is entering Chabacano is attributed to long-standing popular views that Zamboangueño Chabacano is already a mixed-up language—often regarded as “broken Spanish”—devoid of its own grammar and therefore readily susceptible to any and all intrusions. The use of ikaw as an in-group marker among Zamboangueño youth further aids the addition of the Tagalog pronoun to the Chabacano paradigm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does it take bilinguals longer to process mixed-language information? This study explores, in two reaction time experiments, the hypothesis that there is only a cost to language switching when the switch is unexpected in the context. Prior to the experiments, an on-line language test and a linguistic background questionnaire were employed to select the bilingual participants. In experiment 1, the subjects, who were Mandarin Chinese-Taiwanese bilinguals, were led to think that Mandarin Chinese was the contextually appropriate language, and were slower to respond on a language switch trial. In experiment 2, the participants were led to think that both languages were contextually appropriate, and were not slower to respond on a language switch trial. The data support Grosjean's language mode hypothesis on the mixed-language processing cost, and show that the cost is a result of context rather than an inevitable consequence of a switch. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recurrent theme in the literature on trilingual language use is the question of whether there is a specific ‘trilingual competence.’ In this paper we consider this question in the light of codeswitching patterns in two dyadic trilingual conversations between a mother and daughter conducted in (Lebanese) Arabic, French, and English. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of codeswitching in both conversants shows that, despite the fact that both subjects are fluent in all three languages, uses of switching are significantly different for mother and daughter across a number of features, including relative frequency of different switch types, and the incidence of hybrid constructions involving items from two or more languages. The subjects appear to display qualitatively distinct profiles of competence in the trilingual mode. This in turn leads to the conclusion that the facts of trilingual language use are best characterized in terms of ‘multicompetence’ (Cook, 1991). The paper concludes with some further reflections on the uniqueness of trilingual language use (an ‘old chestnut’ in trilingualism research, cf. Klein, 1995). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]