Tok Pisin is the most prevailing common language in Papua New Guinea. It was originally an English lexifier pidgin language and has developed as the virtual universal lingua franca in this multilingual country where over 850 indigenous languages are spoken today (Nekitel 1998). The term Tok Pisin covers a large number of varieties due to the various social and linguistic backgrounds of its speakers. Traditionally, the rural varieties which are spoken in Coastal and Island areas are regarded as mainstream Tok Pisin and previous studies have mainly focused on these varieties. However, since the social and linguistic situation in the country has continuously changed and the language contact between Tok Pisin and both substratum languages and the superstratum language, English, continues, the varieties which were regarded as “non-standard” seem to play an important role, especially in the context of language contact and language shift today. Therefore, with respect to the roles that “non-standard” varieties play and their features, many gaps still remain. Most studies have focused on standard varieties. In order to fill in the gaps, this study will address the issues of language contact and language shift in Tok Pisin, mainly focusing on two “nonstandard” varieties. One is Highlands Pidgin which is spoken mainly in the Highlands area of the country. Because of the increase of emigrant population from Highlands to other regions, it seems that Highlands Pidgin impacts on other regional varieties of Tok Pisin. First, the characteristics which have been considered to be Highlands features are reconsidered by reanalysing previous studies and examining the author’s primary data. Then the role that Highlands Pidgin plays in the current language situation in Papua New Guinea is discussed. The other “non-standard” variety considered here is the anglicised variety. It has been pointed out that Tok Pisin is currently undergoing “decreolisation”, that is, it is gradually losing its own features and assimilating to English. However, the degree of the anglicisation can very with situations, speakers and topics and, although earlier studies provide many important findings, few recent studies have been undertaken. Thus, the degree of anglicisation is examined according to each linguistic component including phonology, morphology, lexicon and syntax based on primary data. As one of the parameters of anglicisation, code switching between Tok Pisin and English is also examined using the Matrix Language-Frame model proposed by Myers-Scotton (1993). Following the analysis of the two varieties, some sociolinguistic considerations are provided in order to capture the situation in which language contact and language shift take place. In conclusion, based on the author’s observations and analysis, this study proposes the argument that there is little reason to rule out the “non-standard” varieties and that Tok Pisin has been a language completely distinct from English, which supports Smith’s (2002) viewpoint. Also, it illustrates a description of current Tok Pisin which coexists with English. Whether the situation continues or not in the future is open to question; however, the structural features of Tok Pisin and its remarkable vitality which are revealed here can inform the study of language contact, language shift and language maintenance. / http://proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/login?url= http://library.adelaide.edu.au/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=1374814 / Thesis (M.A.) - University of Adelaide, School of Humanities, 2009

Tok Pisin is the most prevailing common language in Papua New Guinea. It was originally an English lexifier pidgin language and has developed as the virtual universal lingua franca in this multilingual country where over 850 indigenous languages are spoken today (Nekitel 1998). The term Tok Pisin covers a large number of varieties due to the various social and linguistic backgrounds of its speakers. Traditionally, the rural varieties which are spoken in Coastal and Island areas are regarded as mainstream Tok Pisin and previous studies have mainly focused on these varieties. However, since the social and linguistic situation in the country has continuously changed and the language contact between Tok Pisin and both substratum languages and the superstratum language, English, continues, the varieties which were regarded as “non-standard” seem to play an important role, especially in the context of language contact and language shift today. Therefore, with respect to the roles that “non-standard” varieties play and their features, many gaps still remain. Most studies have focused on standard varieties. In order to fill in the gaps, this study will address the issues of language contact and language shift in Tok Pisin, mainly focusing on two “nonstandard” varieties. One is Highlands Pidgin which is spoken mainly in the Highlands area of the country. Because of the increase of emigrant population from Highlands to other regions, it seems that Highlands Pidgin impacts on other regional varieties of Tok Pisin. First, the characteristics which have been considered to be Highlands features are reconsidered by reanalysing previous studies and examining the author’s primary data. Then the role that Highlands Pidgin plays in the current language situation in Papua New Guinea is discussed. The other “non-standard” variety considered here is the anglicised variety. It has been pointed out that Tok Pisin is currently undergoing “decreolisation”, that is, it is gradually losing its own features and assimilating to English. However, the degree of the anglicisation can very with situations, speakers and topics and, although earlier studies provide many important findings, few recent studies have been undertaken. Thus, the degree of anglicisation is examined according to each linguistic component including phonology, morphology, lexicon and syntax based on primary data. As one of the parameters of anglicisation, code switching between Tok Pisin and English is also examined using the Matrix Language-Frame model proposed by Myers-Scotton (1993). Following the analysis of the two varieties, some sociolinguistic considerations are provided in order to capture the situation in which language contact and language shift take place. In conclusion, based on the author’s observations and analysis, this study proposes the argument that there is little reason to rule out the “non-standard” varieties and that Tok Pisin has been a language completely distinct from English, which supports Smith’s (2002) viewpoint. Also, it illustrates a description of current Tok Pisin which coexists with English. Whether the situation continues or not in the future is open to question; however, the structural features of Tok Pisin and its remarkable vitality which are revealed here can inform the study of language contact, language shift and language maintenance. / http://proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/login?url= http://library.adelaide.edu.au/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=1374814 / Thesis (M.A.) - University of Adelaide, School of Humanities, 2009

Varieties of German are spoken all over the world, some of which have been maintained for prolonged periods of time. As a result, these transplanted varieties often show traces of the ongoing language contact as specific to their particular context. This thesis explores one such transplanted German language variety – Springbok- German – as spoken by a small subset of German Lutherans in South Africa. Specifically, this study takes as its focus eight rural German communities across two South African provinces, KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga, which were founded in the second half of the 19th century. The study employs a broadly ethnographic approach and integrates participant observation with interviews and (limited) questionnaire data. On the one hand, it addresses issues of language maintenance and shift, and on the other, presents findings from an analysis of grammatical features, that is morphosyntactic and syntactic features, of this particular German language variety. The thesis explores the domains where speakers continue to make use of German, by discussing practices at home, within the church and community, and at school. It also briefly considers German media consumption. The findings reveal that the home and the church/community constitute the strongholds of German language maintenance, although intermarriage is having an increasing impact on these patterns. Changes in the demographics of the communities, e.g. out-migration of younger speakers and barely any in-migration, are also shown to be detrimental to the continued survival of German in this region. Conceptualising these communities as ethnoreligious ones where (Luther) German functions as a ‘sacred variety’ (cf. Fishman, 2006a) helps to account for the prolonged maintenance patterns as exhibited by the communities. The study explores how the communities are shaped by their German Lutheranism and a 19th century understanding of Volkstum, and how this resulted in an insistence on preserving the German language and culture at all costs. This is still transparent today. This study also seeks to provide new insights into the structure of Springbok- German, and, for this purpose, explores a number of (morpho)syntactic features, including case marking, possessive constructions, word order, and infinitive complements. Although the overall findings indicate that Springbok-German is (still) relatively conservative, there are clear indications of emerging structural changes. While reduction in the case system, for example, is not as advanced as in other transplanted German varieties, the accusative/dative distinction is becoming increasingly blurred. Changes are also apparent in possessive constructions and word order. In this context, the study considers the fundamental question of the role language contact plays in such situations, i.e. whether the respective changes can plausibly be attributed to contact with Afrikaans and/or English, or whether they are best seen as the result of language-internal tendencies. The conclusion follows that it is difficult to ascertain the precise role of external influence vs. internal developments. The developments in Springbok-German are best seen as resulting from a combination of both, shaped furthermore by the social conditions as prevalent in this particular language contact setting.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This dissertation documents the emergence of a new language, Light Warlpiri, in the multilingual community of Lajamanu in northern Australia. It then examines the acquisition of Light Warlpiri language, and of the heritage language, Lajamanu Warlpiri, by children. Light Warlpiri has arisen from contact between Lajamanu Warlpiri (a Pama-Nyungan language), Kriol (an English-based creole), and varieties of English. It is a Mixed Language, meaning that none of its source languages can be considered to be the sole parent language. Most verbs and the verbal morphology are from Aboriginal English or Kriol, while most nouns and the nominal morphology are from Warlpiri. The language input to children is complex. Adults older than about thirty speak Lajamanu Warlpiri and code-switch into Aboriginal English or Kriol. Younger adults, the parents of the current cohort of children, speak Light Warlpiri and code-switch into Lajamanu Warlpiri and into Aboriginal English or Kriol. Lajamanu Warlpiri and Light Warlpiri, the two main input languages to children, both indicate A arguments with ergative case-marking (and they share one allomorph of the marker), but Lajamanu Warlpiri includes the marker much more consistently than Light Warlpiri. Word order is variable in both languages. Children learn both languages from birth, but they target Light Warlpiri as the language of their everyday interactions, and they speak it almost exclusively until four to six years of age. Adults and children show similar patterns of ergative marking and word order in Light Warlpiri. But differences between age groups are found in ergative marking in Lajamanu Warlpiri - for the oldest group of adults, ergative marking is obligatory, but for younger adults and children, it is not. Determining when children differentiate between two input languages has been a major goal in the study of bilingual acquisition. The two languages in this study share lexical and grammatical properties, making distinctions between them quite subtle. Both adults and children distribute ergative marking differently in the two languages, but show similar word order patterns in both. However the children show a stronger correlation between ergative marking and word order patterns than do the adults, suggesting that they are spearheading processes of language change. In their comprehension of sentences in both Lajamanu Warlpiri and Light Warlpiri, adults use a case-marking strategy to identify the A argument (i.e. N+erg = A argument, N-erg = O argument). The children are not adult-like in using this strategy at age 5, when they also used a word order strategy, but they gradually move towards being adult-like with increased age.

The striking similarities between Old English (OE) and its neighbour Old Frisian (OFris)—including aspects of phonology, morphology, and alliterative phrases—have long been cause for comment, and often for controversy. The question of whether the resemblance was caused by an immediate common ancestor (Anglo-Frisian) or by neighboring positions in a dialect continuum/Sprachkreis has been hotly disputed using phonological and toponymic evidence, but not in recent years. Consensus in the nineties fell in favour of the dialect continuum, and there the issue has largely rested. However, recent finds in archaeology, history, and genetics argue that the case requires a second look. Developments in grammaticalization theory and contact linguistics give us new tools with which to investigate. Are the similarities between OE and OFris due to an exclusive shared ancestor, or are those languages merely part of a dialect continuum, with no closer relationship than that shared with the other early West Germanic dialects? And are there any reliable criteria to separate out inheritance-based similarities from those that are spread by contact? Shared developments seem, primo facie, to be evidence of shared inheritance, but there are other possible explanations. Parallel drift after separation, convergent development, or coincidence might be the cause of any shared feature. In this paper, I discuss recently proposed methods of distinguishing inheritance from drift and contact, focusing on how morphosyntax can help explore the shared history of OE and OFris. While grammaticalization processes often lead to cross-linguistic similarities, the fact that OE and OFris display a cluster of grammaticalizations not found in other early West Germanic dialects may be significant. The exclusive developments under investigation include aga(n) ‘have’ > ‘have to’ and the present participle as verbal complement. By comparing the forms, meanings, and distribution of these grammaticalized forms in the OFris corpus to that of their cognate forms in OE, I show that the two languages probably diverged from one another substantially later than they diverged from Old Saxon and Old Low Franconian.

The thesis provides a corpus-based study of the development of Irish English modal verbs from the fourteenth to the twentieth centuries in comparison to mainland English. More precisely, it explores the morpho-syntax of CAN, MAY, MUST, SHALL and WILL and the semantics of BE ABLE TO, CAN, MAY and MUST in the two varieties. The data of my study focuses on the Kildare poems, i.e. fourteenth-century Irish English religious poetry, and a self-compiled corpus consisting of personal letters, largely emigrant letters, and trial proceedings from the late seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. The analysis of the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries is further compared to a similar corpus of English English. The findings are discussed in the light of processes associated with contact-induced language change, new-dialect formation and supraregionalization. Contact-induced language change in general, and new-dialect formation in particular, can account for the findings of the fourteenth century. The semantics of the Irish English modal verbs in this century were mainly conservative in comparison to English English. The Irish English morpho-syntax showed an amalgam of features from different dialects of Middle English in addition to some forms which seem to be unique to Irish English. The Irish English poems recorded a high number of variants per function in comparison to a selection of English English religious poems, which does not conform to predictions based on the model of new-dialect formation. I suggest that this might be due to the fact that the English language had not been standardized by the time it was introduced to Ireland, and thus the need to reduce the number of variants was not as great as it is suggested to be in the post-standardization scenarios on which the model is based. In seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Ireland, increased Irish/English bilingualism caused the formation of a second-language (L2) variety of English. In the nineteenth century the bilingual speakers massively abandoned the Irish language and integrated into the English-speaking community. As a result, the varieties of English as spoken by the bilingual speakers and as spoken by the monolingual English speakers blended and formed a new variety altogether. The use of modal verbs in this new variety of Irish English shows signs of colonial lag (e.g. in the development of a deontic possibility meaning for CAN). Additionally, the subtle differences between BE ABLE TO and CAN in participant-internal possibility contexts and between epistemic MAY and MIGHT in present time contexts were not fully acquired by the L2 speakers, which resulted in a higher variability between the variants in the new variety of Irish English. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the use of modal verbs converged on the patterns found in English English, either as a result of linguistic accommodation in the case of informants who had migrated to countries such as Australia and the United States, or as a result of supraregionalization in the case of those who remained in Ireland.

Andská španělština jako produkt kontaktu s kečuánštinou a ajmarštinou Andean Spanish as a product of contact with Quechua and Aymara Disertační práce Vedoucí práce: Vlastimil Rataj 2014 prof. PhDr. Bohumil Zavadil, CSc. Abstrakt Andská španělština je varianta španělštiny používané v andských oblastech od jižní Kolumbie po severozápadní Argentinu a vznikla jako produkt kontaktu s místními indiánskými jazyky, kečuánštinou a ajmarštinou. V této práci, na základě kvalitativního zpracování části korpusu získaného při terénním výzkumu v jižním Peru (Cuzco), analyzuji některé typické rysy místní andské španělštiny, srovnávám je s kečuánštinou a snažím se prokázat, zda se jedná o transferenci z kečuánštiny. V úvodních částech je přehled klasifikace americké španělštiny v andských zemích, základní informace o místních indiánských jazycích a popis kečuánské gramatiky srovnávaný se španělštinou. V závěru práce je přehled studovaných jevů. Klíčová slova: andská španělština, španělština, kečuánština, jazykový kontakt, Cuzco, Peru Abstract Andean Spanish is a variety of Spanish used in Andean region from south Colombia to south-west Argentina, and it emerged as a product of contact with local Amerindian languages, Quechua and Aymara. In this thesis, based on a qualitative analysis of a part of a corpus obtained during a...

Due to a long history of contact with other tongues, Algerian Arabic and Maltese have massive borrowings from French and Italian respectively. In the aim of exploring the influence of linguistic contact on the types of loan adaptation in these two historically related dialects, this study analyzed a linguistic corpus of noun loans. The effect of language contact is better observed through a comparative study of the phonological and morphological change each language has undertaken. The study investigated French noun loans in Algerian Arabic, and Italian noun loans in Maltese. It specifically focused on gender, number (singular and plural) and the definite article as a means of defining the noun loans. The analysis has revealed that Maltese and Algerian Arabic both adapted the loans phonologically but also borrowed new foreign phonemes. Morphologically, they mostly preserved the noun loans genders, used the native patterns to make them plural and the article -al in the case of Algerian Arabic ,-il in the case of Maltese to make them definite. Algerian Arabic used the native patterns / a:t/, the broken plural or the collective /-ja/ plural. Maltese used the native /-jiet/ and the broken plural, however, contrary to Algerian Arabic, Maltese has also borrowed Italian plural patterns making the loan plural patterns unpredictable. The linguistic consequences of borrowing on these languages have made of Algerian Arabic a case of diffusion and of Maltese a case of diffusion and loss. Maltese has borrowed new phonemes but has lost a few native ones, notably the emphatic and velar fricative sounds, still in use in the other Arabic dialects. Algerian Arabic borrowed new phonemes but retained the native phonemes. Borrowing could not be the only factor that has ultimately rendered Maltese to be no longer considered an Arabic dialect and has made Algerian Arabic not obvious to other Arabic speakers, yet it has reinforced it. Contact with the foreign language Italian and loss of contact with the mainstream Arabic dialects was another major factor that rendered Maltese a unique Semitic variety alien even to the closest North African dialect.

Egypt in the early Byzantine period was a bilingual country where Greek and Egyptian (Coptic) were used alongside each other. Historical studies as well as linguistic studies of the phonology and lexicon of early Byzantine Greek in Egypt testify to this situation. In order to describe the linguistic traces the language-contact situation left behind in individuals' linguistic output, this thesis analyses the syntax of early Byzantine Greek texts from Egypt. The primary object of interest is bilingual interference in the syntax of verbs, adverbial phrases, discourse organising devices and formulaic sections. The thesis is based on a corpus of Greek and Coptic private letters on papyrus, all of which date from the fourth to mid-seventh centuries, originate from Egypt and belong to bilingual, Greek-Coptic, papyrus archives. The data is analysed with a particular focus on three interrelated questions: (1) What kinds of deviations from the standard pattern appear and to what extent can language-internal confusion account for them? (2) How are instances of language-internal confusion and bilingual interference distributed over the selected syntactic domains? (3) Do deviations from the standard accumulate in certain letters or archives belonging to the corpus and do they correlate with additional indicators of bilingualism such as code-switching or circumstantial information about writers? In addition to answering these questions, the thesis seeks to explain the observed distributions. The results obtained from this study suggest that bilingual interference is linked to the way writers assimilated structures. In fact, there is a marked difference between deviating syntactic structures in non-formulaic and formulaic contexts. The study further suggests that bilingual interference does not affect every domain of syntax to the same degree. The degree of complexity of the syntactic structure in question as well as the degree of divergence from the corresponding Coptic structure seem to play a role.

abstract: This thesis investigates similarities in the diachronic sound changes found in Eastern Old Japanese dialects and in Ryukyuan languages and tests a hypothesis of language contact. I examine three sound changes attested in the Eastern Old Japanese corpus of Kupchik (2011). These three are denasalization of prenasalized obstruents, the fortition of the labial glide [w] and prenasalized / simple voiced fricative [(n)z], and the irregular raising of Eastern Old Japanese mid vowels. Extralinguistic and linguistic evidence is presented in support of a hypothesis for language contact between 8th century Ryukyuan speakers and Eastern Old Japanese speakers. At present, many assumptions bog down any potential evidence of contact. However, cases where reconstructed Ryukyuan could have donated a form into EOJ do exist. With future research into early Ryukyuan development and the lexicons, phonologies, and syntactic patterns of Ryukyuan languages, more can be said about this hypothesis. Alongside testing a hypothesis of language contact, this thesis can also be viewed as an analysis of Eastern Old Japanese spelling variation of the three changes mentioned above. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis English 2015