Linguapax
Call for Book Chapters: Language Contact, Change, Maintenance & Loss
Deadline: February 28th, 2011
Advances in modern transportation systems, communication technology and
increase in migration has meant that speakers of different languages
interact closely, hence it is typical for their languages to influence each
other. The influence could be as common as the exchange of words or what is
termed vocabulary borrowing in the literature. It can also go deeper,
extending to the exchange of even basic characteristics of a language such
as morphology and grammar. Nepal Bhasa, for example, spoken in Nepal, is a
Sino-Tibetan language distantly related to Chinese, but has had so many
centuries of contact with neighbouring Indo-Iranian languages that it has
even developed noun inflection, a trait typical of the Indo-European family
but rare in Sino-Tibetan. It has absorbed features of grammar as well, such
as verb tenses. In some cases, the result of the contact of two languages
can be the replacement of one by the other. This is most common in
asymmetric relationship between languages, and sometimes leads to language
endangerment or extinction. It must also be added that language contact can
also lead to the development of new languages when people without a common
language interact closely, developing a pidgin, which may eventually become
a full-fledged Creole language through the process of creolization. A prime
example of this is Saramaccan, spoken in Suriname, which has vocabulary
mainly from Portuguese, English and Dutch, but phonology and even tones
which are closer to African languages.
We are therefore inviting papers from researchers investigating such
phenomena, adopting varied perspectives and approaches ranging from the
sociological to grammatical paradigms or a fusion of both ends of the
paradigmatic spectrum.
For more information and submission guidelines click here