Search

The article discusses the debate on the ontological status of creoles and mixed languages by analyzing the Berbice Dutch language formation underlying assumptions of the two-stage genesis scenario proposed by the authors. Topics include differences between traditional languages and contact languages, including pidgins, creoles, and intertwined languages; and consequence of prior pidginhood resulting in a relative lack of grammatical complexity compared to traditional languages.

Berbice Dutch was a creole language spoken in the Republic of Guyana in South America, a country first under Dutch, and later under British colonial rule. Owing mainly to Silvia Kouwenberg (A grammar of Berbice Dutch Creole, De Gruyter Mouton, 1994), we were blessed with a detailed synchronic documentation of Berbice Dutch before its demise. However, the formation of the language remains clouded in mystery: its grammar and (basic) lexicon display a seemingly unique mixture of Dutch (Creole) and Eastern Ijo, as a result of which the language is often portrayed as a challenge to existing contact-linguistic theory. In this paper, a scenario is proposed that, rather than challenging the said theory, is fully grounded in it: it will be argued that the language was a case of serial glottogenesis: a first stage of creolisation was later followed by language mixing. The paper furthermore presents hitherto unknown historical data pertaining to the arrival of Ijo speakers in Berbice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the emergence of Berbice Dutch, detailing the process of "creolization" of Dutch in Berbice and questioning the definition of creoles. Topics include arrival of the slave ship Sint Antony Galeij and the importance of timing and demographics, the antiexceptionalist position which suggests that morphological impoverishment; and evolution of language varieties and the changing definition of creoles for a reevaluation of a language.

This study investigates how learners of English process adjectival participles in both attributive and predicative positions within sentences in order to identify whether difficulties associated with participles stem from learner-specific or English-specific characteristics. A Chinese-speaking group and a mixed language group participated in Study 1 that used the target sentence in English as L2 without contextual cues. A subgroup of the Chinese participants took part in Study 2 that used target sentences with contextual cues. Results showed that the two groups' performance was different in the use of pre-nominal attributive adjectival participles after controlling for English proficiency (Study 1). Contextual cues did not facilitate Chinese learners' performance (Study 2). The target word frequency effects disappeared when contextual cues were provided. These findings suggest that the complexities of adjectival participles reside not only in the linguistic characteristics of English, but also in the learner characteristics of L1 background and English proficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study aimed to examine the speech act of correction produced by Chinese, Americans, and Chinese EFL learners. A total of 120 participants were asked to fill in a questionnaire with two major parts: a Scaled Response Questionnaire (SRQ) and a Discourse Completion Task (DCT). Elicited data were analyzed in terms of three perspectives: perception of face-threat, overall correction strategy use, and the use of external modifications. The results showed some similarities and differences between Chinese and Americans' corrections. As for the EFL learners, they exhibited their interlanguage development in the perception and overall strategy use. In addition, instances of L1 pragmatic transfer were found in the learners' use of some individual strategies and external modifications. Learners' interlanguage development and L1 socio-cultural transfer demonstrated the multi-competence of the learners. The present study suggests that further instruction should be implemented to enrich L2 learners' pragmatic repertoire for successful ELF communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The language policy of Turkey's state-run Kurdish television station (TRT Kurdî) allows for Kurdish-Turkish hybridity, which reflects common practice among Turkish Kurds (Schluter, Anne. 2014. Competing or compatible language identities in Istanbul's Kurmanji workplaces? In Kristina Kamp, Ayhan Kaya, Fuat Keyman & Özge Onursal-Beşgül (eds.), Contemporary Turkey at a Glance. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Local and Trans-local Dynamics, 125–137. Wiesbaden, Germany: Springer.) and promotes ownership among minority language speakers (Hinnenkamp, Volker. 2003. Mixed language varieties of migrant adolescents and the discourse of hybridity. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 24(1–2). 12–41.). Nevertheless, the mixing of Turkish and apparent disregard for Kurdish language rules has led some of the target audience to reject the station (Öpengin, Ergin. 2012. Sociolinguistic situation of Kurdish in Turkey: Sociopolitical factors and language use patterns. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 217. 151–180.). Such attention to form, according to (Lemon, Alaina. 2002. Form and function in Soviet stage Romani: Modeling metapragmatics through performance institutions. Language in Society 31. 29–64.) is usually reserved for minority language activists and dominant language speakers whereas marginalized minority language speakers frequently focus on function. Through semi-structured interviews with twenty politically engaged Kurdish migrants of Istanbul, the current study investigated metalinguistic criticisms about the station to deconstruct perceptions of the suitability of a hybrid Kurdish broadcasting language in relation to findings from (Lemon, Alaina. 2002. Form and function in Soviet stage Romani: Modeling metapragmatics through performance institutions. Language in Society 31. 29–64.) and (Hinnenkamp, Volker. 2003. Mixed language varieties of migrant adolescents and the discourse of hybridity. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 24(1–2). 12–41.). In contrast to (Hinnenkamp, Volker. 2003. Mixed language varieties of migrant adolescents and the discourse of hybridity. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 24(1–2). 12–41.), participants viewed linguistic hybridity on TRT Kurdî as iconic (Irvine, Judith & Susan Gal. 2000. Language ideology and linguistic differentiation. In Paul V. Kroskrity (ed.), Regimes of language: ideologies, politics, and identities, 35–84. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press.) of the Turkish state's agenda to assimilate its Kurdish population. Furthermore, the transfer of this agenda onto a sub-group within the same in-group, TRT Kurdî's producers, provided evidence of fractal recursivity (Irvine, Judith & Susan Gal. 2000. Language ideology and linguistic differentiation. In Paul V. Kroskrity (ed.), Regimes of language: ideologies, politics, and identities, 35–84. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press.). Results call for a broadening of Lemon (2002) to allow for the inclusion of a larger portion of minority language-speaking populations whose language, similar to the Istanbul-resident Kurdish community profiled in the current study, has been deeply politicized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the methodology of historical sociolinguistics, this article explores multilingualism and language contact in the mines of Potosí (Bolivia) in the colonial period. Potosí was the destination of massive migration during its economic heydays around 1610 and one of the largest cities in the Western hemisphere at the time. In the mines special codes were developed, with a specialized lexicon that contains words from different languages. This lexicon was so different that the first vocabulary of the mining language was written in 1610, and many have followed from that date onward. Quechua most probably played a key role as intermediary language between two forms of speaking: the indigenous mining language of the free workers, yanaconas and mingas, probably a mix of Spanish and Quechua, and the language of the forced workers, mitayos, possibly a mix of Aymara and Quechua. The similarities between Aymara and Quechua must have contributed to this possibility of an intermediary language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the history of the linguistic exchange between Romani and the autochthonous languages of the Iberian Peninsula, and on the studies in this field. Over the last 600 years, Romani has entirely disappeared, leaving marks in the evolution of mixed languages, the so-called Calós. A handful of lexemes in Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan are the only remnants of a long shared history of social (and linguistic) exclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on Francoprovençal (FP) from the perspective of language contact, specifically the reciprocal effects between FP and two dialects of German (Alemannic) spoken in the Aosta region and belonging to the severely endangered Walser minority group located in Northwestern Italy. On the basis of lexical evidence we describe a complex dynamics of language contact among communities embedded in one another. We found bidirectional exchanges between FP and one Walser variety, but much less so with the other. As a result, lexical distance revealed a pattern of contact, isolation and asymmetries that contrasts with geographical distance or more general relations of sociolinguistic dominance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It was recently claimed, in the International Journal of the Sociology of Language (Issue 242) that the Bildt dialect in Friesland (Netherlands), spoken from the sixteenth century in a region reclaimed from the sea, poses a specimen of so-called "mixed languages", characterised by a split between the source language of the "grammar" (from Frisian) and that of the "lexicon" (from Dutch). This article evaluates the linguistic arguments and poses a rather different conclusion to that above. Many of the grammatical similarities between Frisian and the Bildt dialect are not the result of borrowing or imposition from Frisian, but are (a) shared innovations in Frisian and Dutch based varieties in Friesland (including the Bildt dialect) in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, (b) commonly preserved archaisms, and (c) the result of the convergence of Frisian with Dutch. It is suggested that all early-modern language varieties spoken in Friesland were part of a Sprachbund, that also comprised the vernaculars of North Holland, under the umbrella of the emerging Standard Dutch. This different linguistic interpretation makes the sociolinguistic argument of identity-driven language mixing obsolete, because such a mixing never took place. It can, however, be acknowledged that the current shape of some Dutchbased varieties in Friesland can synchronically be re-analysed in terms of being "mixed languages". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on offline and online casual interactions in the context of youth in Mongolia, on the Asian periphery, this article looks at youth mixed language practices from the perspective of ' linguascapes' in order to capture the current flows of transnational linguistic resources in relation to other social landscapes. The study seeks to contribute to current discussions of the sociolinguistics of globalization by investigating to what extent and in what way resources make up linguascapes among youth groups with different access to resources. The main implication of this study is that youth linguascapes in Mongolia are fundamentally diverse, as a result of the combination of varied transcultural resources. At the same time, these resources are unevenly distributed and unequally localized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the basis of a survey from June/July 2014, this article investigates the attitudes towards Ukrainian, Russian, and the widespread Ukrainian-Russian mixed speech in central areas of Ukraine. Although there are certain differences between areas that are differentiated by the amount of use of the three codes, all in all there are no hints at a profound language conflict. While Ukrainian is clearly preferred as the dominating language in state and society, the attitude towards Russian is not a hostile one, and there is an open-minded stance to settle questions of language politics on a more regional level. As for the Ukrainian-Russian mixed speech, which is stigmatized by many politicians and representatives of the cultural elites, the attitude towards it among ordinary people is differentiated. It includes two aspects: Whether it is seen as a menace to culture, and whether it is seen as convenient in daily life. While there are respondents who either approve or reject this code in both aspects, there also more than a few who evaluate it positively in the one, but negatively in the other dimension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bildts is a speech variety spoken by around 10,000 persons as a first or second language in the province Fryslân, in the north of the Netherlands. It is commonly claimed to be a dialect of Dutch containing some Frisian loan words. This article provides an analysis of Bildts based on a comparison of Bildts with its source languages: Frisian on the one hand and specific dialects of the province of South Holland on the other hand. It argues that Bildts combines a core lexicon mainly derived from Hollandic dialects with a grammar mainly derived from Frisian. However, the core lexicon also contains some Frisian words and the grammar has to some extent been levelled. The precise mixture is not easily described, let alone accounted for, in most models of language contact. Our approach combines sociological-historical information with linguistic factorisation in order to arrive at a plausible view of how Bildts came into existence. It is argued that Bildts is a mixed language, comparable to better known cases such as Ma'á, spoken in Tanzania, and that the specific nature of the mix involved the mutual accommodation of two groups of speakers: a group of mother tongue speakers of Frisian who acquired Bildts as a second language and a group of balanced bilingual speakers of Bildts and Frisian. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The tradition of classical rhetoric coined the term barbarolexis for the use of hybrid language and considered it a grammatical defect that should be avoided. The literature of the high Middle Ages inherited this perception, but paved the way for the consideration of multilingualism as a stylistic feature and for the production of bilingual Latin-Romance texts. Troubadour lyrics used multilingualism as a means of raising the artistic profile of poetry, a practice begun by Occitanian troubadours, who used multilingualism to indicate which Romance languages were worthy of attaining the status of literary languages. And in their wake, the Galician Portuguese incorporated fragments of Occitanian, French or Latin into their songs ( cantigas), as a means of reasserting the artistic and aristocratic nature of their poetry. The growing favour enjoyed by multilingualism in the literature of the time should be linked to the development of the social class of the clergy, who had the monopoly of Latin and the written word, but who were also capable of expressing themselves in several languages and of placing this linguistic competence at the service of the incipient royal chancelleries. The rise of the clerical spirit therefore prompted a change in the negative perception of multilingualism, which until then had been associated with the myth of the Tower of Babel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A mixed-language phenomenon such as language shift has been acknowledged to constitute one of the hallmarks of the manuscripts in which the members of the City of London livery companies recorded their financial transactions during the late medieval period. Despite these texts having been studied by scholars in very diverse disciplines, inconsistencies pertaining to the exact date when some companies shifted from Latin and/or French to English as their official language of record keeping have prevailed in the literature. This article is intended to shed light on the evolution over time of language shift in different livery companies, by revisiting the two single studies which, albeit marginally, have so far touched on this topic (Heather Creaton's [1976] edition and translation of the London Mercers' Wardens' Accounts and Lisa Jefferson's [2003] edition and translation of the London Goldsmiths' Wardens' Accounts and Court Minutes), and by contrasting each perspective with linguistic information from first-hand sources. I conclude that there remains a need for a much more consistent and focused approach to the issue of language shift in the City of London livery companies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article investigates the influence of Russian on the inflectional morphology of Belarusian-Russian and Ukrainian-Russian mixed speech, which are widespread in Belarus and Ukraine. The data come from two corpora of spontaneous family conversations in mixed speech collected at seven locations in each country. The analysis focuses exclusively on phenomena of verb inflection. The common supposition in contact linguistics that the more regular (more 'natural') structures of one of the two contact or donor languages become established in the mixed variety can be only conditionally confirmed. Common forms of Standard Russian and Ukrainian (or Belarusian) dialects, instead, are wide-spread in the corpus. In general, verb inflection is more resistant to the results of language contact than noun inflection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Yi people of southwest China constitute the country's seventh largest minority group. Due to constant interaction between local Yi and Han Chinese, the Yi language and local varieties of Chinese have intermingled, forming a new code-mixing language which residents refer to as Tuanjie hua. To investigate its distinctive characteristics, as well as its social and psychological implications, we conducted a field trip to Xichang City in Sichuan Province and the nearby counties and villages where Yi people and Han people live in close proximity to each other. Our research reveals that more Yi people than Han people speak Tuanjie hua, that they use it mainly in informal situations, and that use of the variety is negatively correlated with speakers' educational levels. These results suggest that use of Tuanjie hua is constrained by a number of social factors: power, policy, education, intensity of contact, and social situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Light Warlpiri is a mixed language, with Warlpiri and Aboriginal English/Kriol as its sources. It was developed by a group who received codeswitched input in a baby talk register from when they were young. The innovating group conventionalized the input they received and developed morphosyntactic structures beyond those in the input. The development of Light Warlpiri shows that commonly occurring processes in language contact situations, codeswitching and re-analyses of existing forms, play an important role in the extreme outcome of the development of a mixed language, through a two-part process: a) an adult group directed codeswitched speech to children, and b) the children conventionalized and expanded the morphosyntactic structures they heard. The new code is an in-group language and did not emerge in order to indicate a new dual-cultural identity, but since its development it has come to signal the identity of young Warlpiri from Lajamanu. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports findings from a survey on language usage in Belarus, which encompasses bilingual Belarusian and Russian. First, the distribution of language usage is discussed. Then the dependency of language usage on some sociocultural conditions is explored. Finally, the changes in language usage over three generations are discussed. We find that a mixed Belarusian-Russian form of speech is widely used in the cities studied and that it is spoken across all educational levels. However, it seems to be predominantly utilized in informal communication, especially among friends and family members, leaving Russian and Belarusian to more formal or public venues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gurindji Kriol is a mixed language spoken in northern Australia. It is derived from Gurindji, a Pama-Nyungan language, and Kriol, an English-lexifier creole language. Despite these clear sources, Gurindji Kriol contains grammatical systems which are not found in Gurindji or Kriol, for example asymmetrical serial verb constructions. The origin of these constructions is unclear given that Kriol only contains a very limited set of serial verb constructions and they are not found in Gurindji. The development of asymmetrical serial verb constructions is examined and it is suggested that they are a product of the more restricted Kriol serial verb construction developing and expanding under the influence of the Gurindji complex verb. The formation of this construction was a part of the more general genesis of the mixed language which was derived from code-switching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the use of both Belarusian and Russian language in Belarusian works of fiction. The use of the interlanguage Trasianka, which is a combination of Belarusian and Russian, is discussed and its function as a stylistic device in belles-lettres is examined. The author contends that use of Transianka is in part a reaction of litterateurs and artists to sociopolitical and sociodemographic changes in Belarus. Use of Transianka to portray social irony and political satire is considered.

Criticizing has been a rather under-represented speech act in interlanguage pragmatics (ILP) literature. Native speakers (NSs) find this speech act challenging, often needing to pre-plan how to perform it (Murphy & Neu 1996). Thus, it can be expected that second-language (L2) learners will also experience considerable difficulty. This paper reports a study of the pragmatic strategies used by Vietnamese learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) when criticizing in English with a view to shedding light on the pragmatic properties of this under-researched act. Interlanguage data were collected from 36 adult learners via a peer-feedback task, a written questionnaire, and a retrospective interview. First and second language baseline data were collected from two respective groups of 12 Vietnamese NSs and 12 NSs of Australian English, via the same peer-feedback task and questionnaire. Results showed that the English language learners criticized in significantly different ways from the Australian NSs in terms of their preference for realization strategies, their choice of semantic formulae, and their choice and frequency of use of mitigating devices. A number of interplaying factors might explain these differences: learners' limited L2 linguistic competence and lack of fluency, which seemed to load their processing capability under communicative pressure, their lack of L2 pragmatic knowledge, and the influence of L1 pragmatics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between group and individual has been explored within the variationist paradigm. In L1, group patterns of variation are replicated by the individual. Second language acquisition research is concerned with the individual learner, but second language acquisition variationist researchers tend to group learners. Little empirical evidence exists that such grouping is valid, given the importance of individual variation. This article investigates whether it is meaningful to group learners. This is a longitudinal, quantitative study of the acquisition of variation by Irish speakers of French L2 over three years, of which one is a year abroad experience. Participants are five advanced learners, twenty years old, with five years of French classes at secondary school and two at university. A computer (Varbrul) analysis shows similar patterns in group and individual, in the deletion of ne. Theoretical implications are that it is legitimate to apply group standards to individual speakers and that native speaker variation acquisition is linked to a prolonged stay in the native speaker community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous investigations of the variable marking of past time by the L2 learner have given rise to a number of hypotheses which predict the patterns of acquisition and use of past time markers in interlanguage (IL). However, given the complicity between their predictions, it has been previously noted that hypotheses such as the aspect and discourse hypotheses can be supported with the same data. In an attempt to distinguish between the effects of such multiple constraints in advanced French IL, this paper presents quantitative findings to suggest that no single factor exclusively outweighs another, but rather, the factors ‘interact’ in their effect, such that the causes of aspectuo-temporal variation are not singular, but indeed multiple. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is no support for Trudgill's thesis. There are languages with exceptionally high numbers of consonants that are spoken by large groups, sometimes by millions as a second language. A pilot survey of contact languages (pidgins, creoles, and mixed languages) does not reveal unusual numbers of phonemes. Non-creole languages that have simplified their verbal infection due to contact and second language learning appear not to decrease phoneme numbers either. Even most mixed languages that arose among fully bilingual groups fail to show exceptionally high numbers of consonants, even though some may display more complicated structures than their component languages. There is no correlation between language contact and phoneme inventories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the preference for and use of politeness strategies (direct and indirect) by native speakers and advanced non-native speakers of Spanish when declining an invitation (role-play) in three levels of social status (equal and unequal [higher and lower]). Thirty subjects participated in the study (15 males and 15 females): 10 Latin American speakers of Spanish (SPN-SPN), 10 Americans speaking Spanish (ENG-SPN), and 10 Americans speaking English (ENG-ENG). The variables of gender, education, age, and Spanish dialect were controlled. Significant differences were observed between the SPN-SPN and the ENG-SPN groups in six strategies: Alternative, Set Condition, Hedging, Promise of Future Acceptance, Solidarity, and Positive Opinion. Results suggested that there is a high degree of interlanguage variation in the use of and preference for refusal strategies among the ENG-SPN group. Regarding the preference for direct strategies, the ENG-ENG group was more direct than the SPN-SPN group; the ENG-SPN group exhibited an intermediate frequency of directness. It was noted that the preference for direct strategies was conditioned by the social status of the situation. Positive and negative transfer of these strategies was also attested. As for the transfer of L1 sociocultural knowledge, the subjects' performance and verbal reports showed that the lack of L2 sociocultural knowledge was a crucial factor afflicting the advanced non-native speakers' interlanguage. Pedagogical implications for the L2 classroom are also suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study define pragmatic characteristics of the Russian-Hebrew interlanguage of complaint and investigates its cultural origins. Complaints performed by throe groups (Israelis, Russians, and Russian immigrants to Israel) were analyzed. The results show that the politness strategy of the interlanguage is hybrid, since the immigrants' use both Russian and Hebrew mitigating strategies. However, since the immigrants' linguistic and cultural resources in a target language are limited, they use indicators of politeness to a much lower extent than the two groups of native-speakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Treating interlanguage as language contact results in an explanatory account of second-language acquisition (SLA). The proposed model is informed by three sets of assumptions. First, lexical structure is composed of levels or substructures; the relevant levels are lexical-conceptual structure, predicate-argument structure, and morphological-realization patterns (Talmy 1985; Jackendoff 1990; Myers-Scotton and Jake 1995). Second, the distinction between content and system (i.e. functional) morphemes, developed in the matrix language frame model of intrasentential code switching (Myers-Scotton 1993), determines how lexical items can contribute to building the interlanguage grammatical system. Two types of system morphemes are recognized: conceptually "activated" system morphemes and structurally assigned system morphemes (Bock and Levelt 1994; fake and Myers-Scotton 1996,). Finally, the matrix-language and embedded-language distinction structures interlanguage. In SLA an INTENDED matrix language, the target language, and a DE FACTO matrix language, the developing linguistic competence, are recognized. The L1 acts as an embedded language. Interlanguage structures are projected by lexical substructures of the three linguistic systems in contact. Principles structuring language contact and the nature of the grammatical elements projecting lexical structure determine what types of grammatical structures each system can contribute and how they are combined into a developing composite matrix language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A publication dealing with language contact and change ends with the statement that "the field remains chaotic in that it combines concepts from different descriptions. The is no hope for unification, but perhaps the possibility of greater awareness of what are the common theme and issue." Although the assessment strikes a rather discouraging note, linguists endeavoring to reconcile relevant data with diverging interpretations cannot but continue their search for at least a modicum of uniformity and order. It is the intention of the author of this article to discuss few key issues such as scholarly attitudes and discuss some selective data in the light of the interlanguage hypothesis. The author also looks into the role of translation in language contact.

This article discusses on creole languages. It is generally accepted that creole languages, consistent with the relatively small vocabularies they employ, and also with the fact that they are oral languages used mainly in face-to-face communication, are heavily dependent on the extralinguistic context. Creole sentences can be disambiguated only by contextual clues of some kind or other. Undoubtedly, ambiguity can be found in all languages. What distinguishes creole, however, is the dominance of ambiguity in the system of communication provided by the language. It is well understood that in a very general and universal way, the extralinguistic context defines the understanding of all forms of reference, putting emphasis on the referential aspects of situational context. It is also recognized that as far as human communication is concerned, sociocultural factors are inseparable from the physical world, or from reference in the most general sense. However, subsequent developments in the study of sociocultural contexts and their role in communication have thrown light upon such issues as the goals, purposes and attitudes of speakers, how speakers signal the latter in language, and how and why references achieve selection and relevance in discourse.

The article examines the range of sociolinguistic variation exhibited by children residing in Hawaii along a decreolizing speech continuum. The immediate setting is a multiethnic, socially mixed suburban neighborhood in the city of Hilo in Hawaii. The larger setting is the island chain of Hawaii. All the children are local. They are participating in the later stages of decreolization. Overlapping in ranks occurred for all variants, and it became clear that codes of speakers were distinctive only when viewed as complexes of variants and when compared with codes of other speakers. When all speakers were considered, ranking correlation for most pairs of variables was at the .001 level or better. Results were similar when the criterions ranking for the other ten variants was the rank for deletion be before a progressive. However, when only the eight consistently midscale speakers were considered, ranking correlation was of much lower statistical significance. In another study, the term code shifting has been chosen to denote the often very limited changes which occur as the subjects move toward one or another of the dialectal poles by increasing the number of target-code variants and the frequencies of such variants, sometimes over the course of a whole conversation and sometimes for brief turns of talk.

This article discusses some recently proposed views about the origins of pidgin and creole languages, pointing out how a careful clarification of assumptions concerning the individual and social nature of language may lead to an understanding of the real points at dispute. Among the theoretical constructs which involve the distinction between individual and group are Saussure's langue/parole dichotomy, Chomsky's distinction between competence an d performance, and the idea of language as a code. Attempts to explain pidginization as learning with inadequate input, or as identical with arrested language learning by speakers such as Schumann's Alberto, or as the same as children's early language, can be seen not to be explanations of pidginization at all, since they deal only with performance. Pidgins are social facts, languages which can be described in terms of competence. Rather, these hypotheses may explain why the utterances which were the input to pidgin speakers' development of a new, distinct code may have been highly aberrant from the point of view of the normal performance of native speakers of the standard language base. The relation between cocoliche-type situations and pidgins is less clear.

This article attempts to extend the empirical scope of studies on mixed languages, particularly code-mixing in Kannada. The specific functions of the mixing of Perso-Arabic and Kannada can not be adequately explained without reference to the history of language contact between Persian, Arabic and Kannada. The earliest record of contact between Karnataka and Persia goes back to 627 A.D. In that year, there was an exchange of ambassadors between the Kannada king Pulikesi and his Persian counterpart, Khusru II. There is also evidence of trade contact with the Arabs from around this period onwards. In marked contrast with the mixture of Perso-Arabic elements, the mixing of English with Kannada is considered a matter of prestige, a mark of education, urbaneness and sophistication. In addition to role identification, code-mixing also performs the function of register identification. In a multilingual community, the use of different languages in different functional settings results in each language being associated with a particular register of science and technology, allopathic medicine, higher level administrative bureaucracy, modern literary criticism etc., while Sanskrit is associated with religious worship, traditional philosophy and aesthetics, indigenous medicine, among other.

Belize, the new Central American nation in the heart of the Caribbean Basin, between Mexico in the North, and Guatemala in the West and South, is a small, internally self-governed British colony of approximately twice the size of Jamaica. The complexity of the language situation in Belize has a considerable impact on all levels of Belizean society, and there is an urgent need for socio-linguistic investigations into problems of bilingualism and often multilingualism. Aspects of language choice and language status will have to play a complementary role in a presentation of the linguistic data. This article tackles on methodological problems that arise from the postulate of a relationship to the English base.

This article examines Slavic-Roumanian linguistic contacts. The questions of Slavic-Roumanian interlingual contacts undoubtedly do not belong to an unimportant and uninteresting sphere of Linguistic Balkanology and Carpathology. In the course of history, these contacts led to different Slavic-Roumanian interferences at all levels of language. These manifest themselves in the following way: 1) the impact of the Slavic language-systems on the system of Roumanian, and; 2) the impact of Roumanian on various structural forms in the Slavic languages.

The article presents a report from the 11th intercultural communication and learning conference on European multilinguality, mixed languages, and cultural hybridity on May 31 and June 1, 2013 hosted by the Slavic linguistics department of the Technische Universität Dresden university in Dresden, Germany. Topics of presentations delivered included portrayals of new Russian architecture in German mass media, compliments and praise in business communications, and the use of the online hybrid language podonki.

This section presents an overview of articles about bilingualism and language contact in the American Southwest.