Syllabus
* Selected references:
ADAMOU, Evangelia a Yaron MATRAS, ed. The Routledge handbook of language contact. London: New York, 2021.
BAKKER, Peter a Yaron MATRAS, ed. Contact languages: a comprehensive guide. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, [2013]
CREVELS, Emily Irene a Pieter MUYSKEN, ed. Language dispersal, diversification, and contact: a global perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.
DARQUENNES, Jeroen, Joe SALMONS a Wim VANDENBUSSCHE, ed. Language contact: an international handbook. Volume 1. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, [2019]
DRINKA, Bridget. Language contact in Europe: the periphrastic perfect through history. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017
GRANT, Anthony P., ed. The Oxford handbook of language contact. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, [2019]
HICKEY, Raymond, ed. The handbook of language contact. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, c2010.
CHAMOREAU, Claudine - Isabelle LÉGLISE, ed. Dynamics of contact-induced language change. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2012
MATRAS, Yaron. Language contact. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, [2009].
WIEMER, Björn, Bernhard WÄLCHLI - Björn HANSEN, ed. Grammatical replication and borrowability in language contact. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2012
* Online sources: https://wold.clld.org/
Annotation
This seminar focuses on the highly interesting and attractive phenomenon of language contact. The students will be acquainted with relevant primary and secondary sources (e. g. handbooks of historical and comparative linguistics and etymological dictionaries), and will learn how to work with these, as well as how to make use of the various, up-to-date online resources and databases. The course will address the causes of language contact and the way it impacts the various (phonological, morphological, and syntactical) levels of language. In so doing, the mechanisms and principles of language contact will be explained. Various phenomena accompanying language contact (such as the borrowing of lexemes, whole grammatical structures and even contact-induced change in word order) will be discussed from the diachronic as well as the synchronic point of view and will be illustrated with selected cases from ancient and present-day Indo-European languages. During the course, students will also acquire knowledge of the functioning of processes and linguistic phenomena which play a substantial role in language contact. Emphasis will be placed on the analysis of primary texts, and on the application of theories on languages which will be picked in advance. Examples will be drawn primarily from the Indo-European languages, but students will be encouraged in their exploration of the phenomenon of language contact from a maximally crosslinguistic perspective. Plan of the course:
1. Introduction to the subject and the available literature (handbooks, dictionaries, grammars), online databases and other sources and resources.
2. Causes and impacts of language contact
3. Nature and mechanisms of language contact
4. Types and levels of language contact
5. Borrowability scale
6. Sprachbund (classification, evolution, selected examples)
7. Creole and pidgin languages (origins and formation)
8. Language contact on the phonological and phonetic level (e. g. adaptation of loanwords)
9. Language contact on the lexical level (Wanderwort, Kulturwort, etc.)
10. Borrowing of grammatical structures
11. Changes in syntax caused by language contact
12. Language contact in ancient Indo-European languages: case study I (Anatolian-Greek contact in the Late Bronze Age)
13. Language contact in modern Indo-European languages: case study II (Romani) Requirements Attendance at classes (2-3 absences allowed) and preparation are of course required. In addition, the participants should select a topic and make a short presentation (10-15 min.) during the course of the semester. There will be an oral examination at the end of the course.