Contact-induced language change

Contact-induced language change Christopher Lucas Final pre-publication version of: 2015. Co ta t-i du ed la guage ha ge . ə Bo e , Clai e a d Beth E a s eds. The Routledge Handbook of Historical Linguistics. London: Routledge, 519–536. 1. INTRODUCTION Sustained academic interest in contact-induced language change goes back at least to the late nineteenth century, when Hugo Schuchardt (1884: 5) famously opined that no language is entirely f ee of i flue e f o othe la guages es gi t kei e öllig u ge is hte “p a he . ə deed, the ubiquity of language contact has always been apparent to anyone engaged in language documentation and description. Until recently, however, the phenomenon of contact-induced change has received relatively little attention from more theoretically-oriented linguists. We can understand why this should be so if we consider the background against which modern historical linguistics developed. First of all there was the development of the comparative method by the Neogrammarians. For them it was natural that contact-induced changes should be marginalized, si e these a e e essa il o pli atio s to e a st a ted a a f o he o ki g out a la guage s genetic affiliation. Later, with the advent of structuralism in the 1920s, there was a significant shift away from the study of diachronic questions in general; and even when formal linguists began to take a serious interest in language change, starting in the 1960s and 1970s (e.g. Kiparsky 1968, Lightfoot 1979), the focus was squarely on changes that are not the result of language contact (i.e. i te all - aused ha ges . Cho sk s (1965: 3) i flue tial p oposal that li guisti theo is concerned primarily with an ideal speaker-listener, in a completely homogeneous speech- o u it dou tless had u h to do ith this fo us o i te all -caused change. It was probably also connected to a widespread perception that, in the words of Lass (1997: 209), a e dogenous explanation of a phenomenon is more parsimonious, because endogenous change must occur in any ase, he eas o o i g is e e e essa . əf pu el i te all - aused = e doge ous ha ge is in some sense logically prior to contact-induced change, then it is methodologically sound to begin with internally-caused change, and only once we have made progress in understanding the mechanisms that underlie this, to then move on to contact-induced change. Despite this relatively greater interest in internally-caused change, there is of course a large and ever-expanding descriptive literature on the synchronic outcomes of language contact in various situations. Arising out of this descriptive literature, there has also been a considerable amount of work that tries to generalize across language-contact situations, the main focus of this work being on the putative limits of contact-induced change: which linguistic elements can and cannot be o o ed see se tio fo fu the dis ussio of this te , a d in which order, and how sociolinguistic factors can act as constraints on contact-induced change. These issues are discussed in section 5, but the primary concern of this chapter is to explore the mechanisms that bring about contact-induced change, rather than the various factors that constrain it. 1  Research of this kind, which attempts to produce explanatory models of how contact-induced change occurs, remains something of a minority pursuit within historical linguistics. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that discussion of the mechanisms underlying contact-induced change ought properly to occupy a central role in any model of language change which aims at completeness. This is especially clear in light of the basic observation that intensive language contact is almost always associated with rapid and profound change, whereas, in the rare cases where languages are spoken in virtual isolation, change proceeds exceptionally slowly, even in comparison to languages with only a moderate history of contact. To illustrate this point, consider the case of Icelandic – a classic example of an isolated language. Icelandic has been extremely conservative relative to other Germanic languages. For example, Bergsland & Vogt (1962) show that at least 95% of Icelandic basic vocabulary has been retained in the approximately 1000 years since it split from Old Norse – a significantly higher percentage than in any of the mainland North Germanic languages as presently spoken. Similarly, Trudgill (2011: 20) points out that Icelandic retains a rich system of adjectival inflection, with a total of fourteen distinct case-number-gender suffixes, as compared to the five distinctions retained by standard German, and the three retained by Norwegian Bokmål. What we see here is that in Icelandic, as in other isolated languages, lack of contact is an important factor promoting conservatism. This suggests that contact must play a more important role than usually recognized in changes undergone by the many languages that have been less isolated than Icelandic. If this is correct, then it is clearly essential that we make progress in understanding how contact-induced change occurs, how it does and does not differ from internally-caused change, and how theoretical work on contact-induced and internally-caused change can be integrated into a wider framework for understanding language change in general. 2. WHAT IS CONTACT-INDUCED LANGUAGE CHANGE? To answer this question we first need to be clear about what we mean by language change in general. Unfortunately, of course, how to define language change remains a controversial issue. The basic division is between two schools of thought. On the one hand there are those who, following Chomsky and earlier writers such as Paul (1880), view the competence of the individual speaker (I- language) as the primary object of study in linguistics. On the other hand there are those who stress the so ial di e sio of la guage a d fo us thei esea h o the o de l hete oge eit (Weinreich, Labov and Herzog 1968: 100) of usage by different social groups within a speech community. The latter school naturally views language change as minimally a change common to all members of a particular subgroup of a speech community – anything less is merely individual variation, not change. The former school finds this view of change unsatisfying. In particular, they seek an explanation of how individual variation comes about: what causes the individual who first consistently produces a variant form never before observed in the speech community to make this innovation? The typical answer to this question, as set out in Hale (1998) for example, is that this individual has acquired a grammar that differs in at least this respect from the grammars of other individuals in the speech community; and the reason that this individual has acquired a grammar that is innovative in this sense is that s/he has been exposed to primary linguistic data (PLD) that is sig ifi a tl diffe e t to that hi h p e ious a ui e s e e e posed to. Fo this a uisitio ist school it is the acquisition of an innovative grammar by at least one individual that constitutes 2 change. The subsequent acquisition of similarly innovative grammars by individuals in the same spee h o u it is the usuall efe ed to as diffusio . It follows from the above that there will be two correspondingly distinct views on what constitutes contact-induced change. From the acquisitionist perspective, change is contact-induced he the i o ati g a ui e s PLD o tai s ele e ts hi h a e ot onsistent with the natively acquired grammars of older speakers of the same language, and when these elements owe their existence to some form of bi- or multilingualism (henceforth bilingualism) among the speakers cont i uti g to the a ui e s PLD.1 From the so iohisto i al pe spe ti e, o the othe ha d, a contact-induced change has occurred whenever the whole of some subgroup of a speech community has adopted a speech habit which owes its existence, again, to the presence of some form of bilingualism in that community. Although these two views clearly differ in important ways, what distinguishes contact-induced from internal change is in fact identical on either view: the presence of bilingualism in a speech community has an effect on the usage of some subset of that community. Acquisitionist approaches will then want to stress that change will only have occurred once this altered usage has led to at least one altered grammar being acquired natively (i.e. by a child), while sociohistorical approaches will seek to explain the social stratification of this usage and the dynamics of its diffusion (among adolescents and adults). But a proper understanding of how language contact can serve as the input to change must, on either view, begin by exploring the different mechanisms by which various types of bilingualism can affect usage. 3. THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF BILINGUALISM AND THE CHANGES THEY CAUSE The best known and most widely cited approach to contact-induced change is that of Thomason and Kaufman (1988). They distinguish two basic types of contact-induced change according to whether the language undergoing change has been maintained or shifted to by a speech community: o o i g a d i te fe e e th ough shift . Bo o i g, fo Tho aso a d Kauf a , is the i o po atio of fo eig featu es i to a g oup s ati e la guage speake s of that la guage: the ati e la guage is ai tai ed ut ha ged the additio of the i o po ated featu es : , hile i te fe e e th ough shift takes pla e he a g oup of speake s shifti g to a ta get la guage fails to lea the ta get la guage pe fe tl : . As e ide e of the i po ta e of this distinction, Thomason and Kaufman emphasize that situations of maintenance and shift are 1 The focus of this chapter is on changes that are caused by contact between languages that are mutually unintelligible to monolingual native speakers of each. This is not to imply that contact between mutually intelligible dialects of a single language does not also cause change – it certainly does (e.g. Trudgill 2004). An account of dialect contact must, therefore, occupy a prominent place in any theory of contact-induced change that aims at completeness. The main difficulty though, and the reason I omit discussion of dialect contact in this hapte , is that it is o ea s lea hat e ea the te diale t . O the o e ha d the e is the notorious difficulty of distinguishing between dialects and languages (recall the famous statement, usually attributed to Max Weinreich, that a language is a dialect with an army and a navy). Even if we ignore socio- political factors, the criterion of mutual intelligibility is not unproblematic: many related language varieties will be neither wholly intelligible nor wholly unintelligible to native speakers of each. On the other hand, from an I- language perspective, two grammars are either identical or not, meaning it is hard to see how a distinction can be made on this basis between dialect contact and variation within a single speech community. Ultimately it might be seen as a welcome consequence of this kind of approach that the distinction between internally and externally-caused change disappears, but we will not pursue that possibility further here. 3 characteristically (though not inevitably) associated with different types of contact-induced change (see section 5 for more detail on this point). It is far from clear, however, that the question of whether or not a community happens to maintain its ancestral language is really crucial to understanding what causes contact-induced change, and why it might manifest itself in various ways in different contact situations. In the last decade, Winford (2005, 2007 etc.) and various other authors have advocated viewing contact-induced change in terms of an alternative framework – that of Van Coetsem (1988, 2000). In o t ast to othe app oa hes, Va Coetse s f a e o k is ot ased o so iologi al o epts su h as maintenance versus shift, or power and prestige, but on the idea of cog iti e do i a e : hi h of t o o o e la guages i a i di idual o o u it s epe toi e is, i so e se se, og iti el p i a . Ho to gi e do i a e a app op iate, p e ise defi itio is dis ussed elo . Fo o it is sufficient to say that, in most ases at least, speake s ill e do i a t i thei ati e o fi st language (L1), and non-dominant in any languages acquired after childhood (L2s). This focus on dominance is motivated by appreciation of the point made above: that an essential method for understanding how contact-induced change takes place is to investigate how usage of one language is affe ted a i di idual s k o i g a othe . We ill see elo that, hile e tai ele e ts of Va Coetse s f a e o k a e ope to uestio , the otion of dominance, properly defined, forms a key part of the explanation of why bilingualism can cause usage that deviates from what would be e pe ted, eithe i te s of a i di idual s g a ati al o pete e, o the p io o s of a spee h community. In Va Coetse s te i olog the o e te fo i flue e f o o e la guage o a othe is t a sfe . T a sfe is f o the sou e la guage “L to the e ipie t la guage ‘L . Va Coetse then distinguishes between two main types of transfer, depending on hethe the age t s of transfer (i.e. the first speakers in a community to produce a particular contact-induced usage) are dominant in the RL or the SL. If the agents of transfer are dominant in the RL, then we have o o i g . əf the a e do i a t i the “L, e ha e i positio . Neithe of these last t o te s o t a sfe a e o igi al to Va Coetse of ou se, a d the have been used in numerous different ways in the literature, sometimes as vague semi-technical terms, sometimes with precise definitions that differ in important respects from the definitions that Va Coetse gi es the . This is pe haps lea est fo the te o o i g . As e ha e see , Tho aso a d Kauf a use o o i g i efe e e to o ta t-induced changes, which are not the esult of shift, to a la guage that is ai tai ed. This is uite disti t f o Va Coetse s use of the te , though i p a ti e ost ha ges hi h eet Tho aso a d Kauf a s ite io fo o o i g ill also eet Va Coetse s. But see Wi fo d 2005 for critical discussion of more o t o e sial ases . Mo e ge e all , o o i g is e f e ue tl used asuall si pl to ea contact-induced change of any sort. Clearly, then, there is a significant risk of confusion inherent in any use of this te . Be ause of this, Va Coetse also i t odu es the te s t a sfe u de ‘L age ti it a d t a sfe u de “L age ti it as u a iguous s o s fo his uses of o o i g a d i positio , espe ti el . As so ofte , the e is a t ade-off here between non-ambiguity and concision. In the rest of this chapter I will generally prefer the concise terms, but will always use the a o di g to Va Coetse s defi itio s. One of the most salient subtypes of borrowing (transfer under RL agentivity) is what Matras and “akel all atte epli atio , that is, the t a sfe of hole le i al ite s sou d–meaning pai i gs f o the “L to the ‘L. The t aditio al te fo su h t a sfe ed ite s is loa o ds . As is well known, once an SL lexical item begins to occur in the context of RL usage, it typically does so in 4 an adapted form that conforms to the phonological and morphological characteristics of the RL. For example, the Arabic noun faylasūf philosophe is a loa of the G eek o d filosofos, but it has been adapted to fit the root-and-pattern morphology that is typical for Arabic lexical items, giving the oke plu al falāsifa. Various phonological adaptations are also apparent. For example, the lack of a mid back vowel in the (standard) Arabic three-vowel system means that Greek /o/ is variously ealized as /a/ a d /ū/. The ubiquity of this kind of lexical borrowing, even in speech communities with very low levels of bilingualism (i.e. very strong RL-dominance), seems principally to be a function of the general human capacity to entertain novel concepts which then need terms that refer to them. When, as is often the case, a novel concept is introduced to one culture through contact with another, and therefore comes with a pre-existing label, it is unsurprising that this label is often retained, albeit with the kinds of adaptations just illustrated. For further reading on lexical borrowing, see e.g. Brown (1999) and Haspelmath and Tadmor (2009). The most obvious and widespread manifestation of imposition (transfer under SL agentivity) is phonological: what is known to non-li guists as fo eig a e t . A o ete e a ple: speake s ho are dominant in Greek will frequently substitute an alveolar fricative for the English postalveolar fricative (which is lacking in the phonemic inventory of standard Greek), thus pronouncing the word shops [sɒps] instead of [ʃɒps]. Phonological imposition of this sort seems to be a function of the low adaptability in adults of the neurophysiological systems responsible for speech production. Van Coetsem (1988: 27– ites Walsh a d Dille : o this poi t: Lo -order processes such as pronunciation are dependent on the early maturing and less adaptive macroneural circuits, which makes foreign accent difficult to overco e afte hildhood. E te si e dis ussio of pho ologi al imposition can be found in Van Coetsem (1988, 2000). For a detailed case study on Yiddish, see Louden (2000). Imposition clearly also has manifestations beyond the domain of phonology. Unlike with bo o i g, i positio of a le i al o s ta ti atu e te ds to fall u de Mat as a d “akel s headi g of patte epli atio – cases of transfer where it is not concrete lexical material that is transferred but more abstract structural elements. An example from the lexicon–syntax interface is given in (1) , where a speaker who is dominant in English assumes that the thematic role of SOURCE for the French verb emprunter to o o is a ked ith the p epositio de rather than the standard French à on the model of English to borrow from somebody. (1) *Je l ai emprunté de mon ami. I it-AUX.1SG borrow.PTCP from my friend Intended: ə o o ed it f o f ie d. (French) It is intuitively clear that cases such as this, where the syntactic properties of individual lexical items are imposed, are the result of SL-dominant speakers extrapolating (incorrectly) from a perceived equivalence between an RL item and an SL item. SL-dominant speakers will often have sufficient exposure to RL lexical items to perceive them as translation equivalents of SL items, but insufficient exposure to acquire all aspects of their morphosyntax. In such cases it is natural for these speakers to assume that the apparently equivalent items are identical in all respects, until such time as they are exposed to salient evidence to the contrary. For an overview of the extensive literature on syntactic imposition in L2 acquisition, see Gass (2008: 89–155). 5  While the dominance relations of the agents of change in the above examples are not in doubt, the status of the examples of imposition as genuine changes is of course controversial, given the discussion in section 2. In fact, these examples would probably not be considered cases of change either by the acquisitionist school (since no native grammar has been acquired) or the sociohistorical school (because unless these usages are characteristic of a whole well-defined subgroup of a speech community then they merely reflect idiolectal variation, not change). This raises the issue of the appropriate kinds of case studies for illustrating the different types of contact-induced change. Ideally, we would select only well-established historical developments which uncontroversially instantiate change in grammars and diffusion throughout a speech community, but for which we also have detailed information on the sociolinguistic background of the agents of change. Occasionally cases studies that come close to meeting these criteria can be found, for example among nineteenth- and twentieth-century immigrant communities to the US (e.g. Salmons and Purnell 2010). Usually, however, historical changes that are clearly instantiated in the grammars of whole communities of speakers tend to have occurred sufficiently long ago that even basic information on the sociolinguistic background of the changes is lacking, and must be inferred, meaning accounts of such changes are necessarily rather speculative. Even the question of whether or not contact played a role in the changes may be hard to answer with confidence. In practice, therefore, except in straightforward cases of lexical borrowing of the matter-replication type, it makes sense to base our understanding of the mechanisms of contact-induced change on contemporary experimental research into the effects of bilingualism on language usage and processing, which produces examples of the sort illustrated in (1). Although the data from these kinds of studies necessarily represent potential, rather than actual changes, they have the advantage of providing us with full details on the nature, causes and sociolinguistic background of the innovative usages observed. If we assume the Uniformitarian Principle (see Labov 1972: 161), we are then justified in analysing well established historical changes using the same methodology, with the proviso that this analysis will have to be based on reasonable assumptions about the dominance relations of the agents of change, rather than certain facts. Before we consider some more case studies with this in mind, we first need to interrogate fu the the o ept of do i a e dis ussed i detail in Lucas 2009, 2012): is it or is it not identical to ati e ess , the property of a language having been acquired from birth and throughout childhood? Van Coetsem (2000: 52) explicitly denies that it is, suggesting instead that dominance relations are determined by p ofi ie , which usually aligns with nativeness, but need not always. However, since Van Coetsem does not provide a definition of proficiency , the implications of his position are hard to assess. What seems uncontroversial is that, in ordinary cases, L1s have quite different effects on L2s than L2s have on L1s. The key question, then, is whether the acquisition of g eate p ofi ie gi e a app op iate defi itio of that te i a L2 than an L1 can ever lead to the basic character of knowledge of an L2 to coming to resemble that of an L1, and vice versa. The empirical evidence overwhelmingly points to a negative answer to this question, except perhaps in extremely rare cases. This can be seen from numerous studies of L2 acquisition (e.g. Johnson et al. 1996, DeKeyser 2000). To take one example, Abrahamsson and Hyltenstam (2009) showed that, of a large group of L2 speakers of Swedish who considered their knowledge and usage of Swedish to e ati elike , o l a s all i o it of those hose a uisitio of “ edish ega afte the age of 12 were judged to be nativelike by actual native speakers; and when the Swedish of these potentially nativelike L2 speakers was subjected to a battery of tests across a range of linguistic domains, none of them performed in the range observed for actual native speakers. The study also 6 identified 10 early L2 acquirers of Swedish (whose exposure began before age 12 but not at birth) who were apparently nativelike, and even among these only two performed within the actual native- speaker range on all tests. The extreme rareness of nativelike L2 ability, especially when L2 acquisition begins after early childhood, suggests that the nature of acquisition and the type of knowledge it leads to are fundamentally distinct for L2s versus L1s. What the best explanation is for this finding is a topic of ongoing debate (see e.g. de Bot 2006, Meisel 2011 for two viewpoints). Turning to L1s, here we need to ask whether it is possible for an L1 not only to become temporarily less accessible than an L2 (which it clearly can), but actually to change its basic ha a te . ə othe o ds, a a speake s k o ledge of thei L , as opposed to thei a ilit to deploy that knowledge o a pa ti ula o asio , e o e so att ited that it o e losel ese les typical L2 knowledge than typical L1 knowledge? Here again the answer seems to be negative. This is perhaps most strongly suggested by the various studies (Ås 1962, Fromm 1970, Footnick 2007) which have investigated the effects of hypnosis on individuals who seemed to have undergone such profound levels of attrition that they professed, apparently honestly, to having lost all ability to speak or comprehend their L1, which they had not used since childhood. Remarkably, these individuals displayed ordinary nativelike ability in both production and comprehension when under hypnosis, suggesting that the apparent loss of L1 knowledge was in fact just a temporary, if profound, lack of accessibility. If the basic knowledge of an L1 is preserved even in such extreme cases of attrition as these, it is reasonable to assume that this is also the case in more typical cases of L1 attrition. (For further discussion of L1 attrition at both the individual and community level, see e.g. Schmid 2002, Köpke 2004, Stolberg and Münch 2010.) Given these conclusions, it seems appropriate, contra Van Coetsem, to see dominance as equivalent to nativeness in all cases. On this basis we can then distinguish four different types of transfer that may occur as a result of three different types of bilingualism on the part of the agents of change (see Figure 1). The first two have already been discussed: borrowing is when the agents of change are dominant in the RL (i.e. the RL is their L1 and the SL is their L2), and imposition is when the agents of change are dominant in the SL (i.e. the SL is their L1 and the RL is their L2). The third type of change is also brought about by speakers for whom the changing language is an L2, but it does ot i ol e t a sfe . Follo i g Lu as , ə gi e this t pe of ha ge the la el est u tu i g : changes that a speaker makes to an L2 that are the result not of imposition but of interpreting the L2 input in a way that a child acquiring an L1 would not. Finally, we have changes made to an RL by speakers for whom both the RL and the SL are L1s, that is, speakers who have undergone the simultaneous acquisition of two native languages (2L1 acquisition). Clearly, for such individuals the distinction between borrowing and imposition breaks down. Since these kinds of changes typically affect both L1s of such individuals, a common consequence is that the languages tend to become more similar in various ways. The phenomenon of languages in contact becoming more similar over time is t pi all alled o e ge e . Here, I extend this label to changes brought about specifically by 2L1 individuals. Examples and discussion of each of these four types of change are given in the following section. 7  Figure 1. Four types of contact-induced change 4. FOUR TYPES OF CONTACT-INDUCED CHANGE 4.1 Borrowing beyond loanwords There is no doubt that loanwords are the most salient effects of borrowing, but does borrowing take place in linguistic domains other than the lexicon? Clear phonological examples are difficult to find, though the spread of uvular [R] in many urban varieties of Romance and Germanic languages in the past few centuries might perhaps qualify (note that this likely also involves some cases of independent parallel development, however; see Trudgill 1974, King and Beach 1998). In the case of syntax, it is somewhat easier to find probable-looking historical examples, as well as cases of potential syntactic change under RL agentivity from the L1 attrition literature. An example of the latter comes from a study of Turkish–English bilinguals with L1 Turkish, who lived in North America, by Gürel (2004). The study investigated transfer from English in the domain of p o o i al i di g , that is, o-referentiality. In Turkish, the third-person pronoun o cannot be co- efe e tial ith ou d a othe efe i g e p ession in the same clause. The same is approximately true for English: (2) Johni likes him*i/j a lot. In fact, the binding properties of English pronouns are more complex than this. English pronouns can be bound by referring expressions in the same clause when they are possessive: (3) Johni likes hisi/j father. When they occur in an embedded clause they can, at least when nominative, also be bound by a referring expression in a matrix clause: (4) Johni promised hei/j would be on time. The Turkish pronoun o cannot be bound in either of these contexts: it can only ever be co-referential with a referring expression in a previous sentence. Gürel found, however, that in two listening tasks 8 designed to test the interpretation of o, her bilingual subjects frequently interpreted o as co- referential with a referring expression in the same clause – in exactly the contexts in (3) and (4) where this is possible in English – whereas control subjects who were monolingual in Turkish never did. Although Gürel did not conduct any production experiments in this study, we may reasonably assume that these Turkish–English bilinguals are at least as prone to interpreting o in this way when speaking Turkish as they are when understanding it. This, then, is a clear example of syntactic transfer from an L2 into L1 usage. Even if it is unlikely to represent a permanent alteration to these i di iduals asi k o ledge of thei L , the fa t that this ha ge i usage is o se ed a oss a number of individuals with the same dominance relations means that it is a plausible candidate for being represented in the grammars acquired by a new generation of Turkish speakers exposed to this usage. As an example of a well-established historical instance of syntactic borrowing, consider the case of Yiddish dos-sentences, exemplified in (5), described by Prince (2001). (See Lucas 2012 for further discussion). (5) Dos hot Leyb gezen Eriken this.NEUT AUX.3SG Leonard.NOM see.PTCP Erika.ACC ət s Leo a d that sa E ika. (Yiddish; Prince 2001: 268) This construction, which is introduced by an expletive demonstrative pronoun and which has a similar information-structural function to a cleft construction in English, is not found in the High German varieties from which Yiddish developed. It does, however, have a direct analogue in various Slavic languages, including Polish, from which this construction has most likely been transferred: (6) To Leonid izdiał E kę this.NEUT Leonard.NOM see.PST.MSG Erika.ACC ət s Leo a d that sa E ika. (Polish) Historically, use of Yiddish in Poland and other Slavic-speaking countries was almost totally restricted to Jewish communities, for whom it was an L1. Yiddish was very rarely acquired as an L2 by L1 speakers of other languages from outside these communities, since Yiddish speakers were almost always bilingual, using the local Slavic languages for out-group communication. Since the agents of change in the innovation of dos-sentences will have been L1 speakers of Yiddish, this seems to be a fairly clear-cut case of syntactic borrowing. (But see section 4.4 for discussion of changes initiated by speakers with multiple L1s). 4.2 Imposition There is often a correlation between historical instances of imposition and language shift, but shift is not necessary for changes due to imposition to spread throughout a particular speech community. As noted in section 3, whenever L2 acquisition takes place, phonological imposition is almost guaranteed to occur. Where a significant proportion of a speech community acquires some level of o pete e i a L , a d this p o ess e te ds o e se e al ge e atio s, a sta le lo al a iet of that language can develop, and some younger members of the speech community may in fact acquire this new variety as an L1. This scenario can often be observed in colonial and postcolonial 9 settings, for example in Malta. Following 160 years of British colonialism, a very large proportion of the inhabitants of Malta speak the local variety of English (88% according to 2005 census data; Bonnici 2010: 62). Although Maltese English is reported to be the main language spoken at home for 6% of the population (Bonnici 2010: 63), there are no indications that widespread shift to English will occur in this community in the medium term. Nevertheless, the effects of imposition from Maltese to English are apparent in various linguistic domains. Examples from the realm of phonology include the imposition of obligatory word-final devoicing, and imposition of the basic rule of penultimate stress, manifested in, for example, [s n.tɪ.ˈ iː.t ] and [ɪn.dɪ.ˈkeɪ.t ] (Vella 1995). Loanwords are difficult to distinguish from instances of codeswitching, but there are clear examples of the transfer of syntactic properties from Maltese lexical items to their perceived equivalents in English. For example, Maltese English features a durative use of the verb stay which takes a VP complement, as in (7). (7) [ə] do t ha e the patie e to sta eadi g a agazi e. (Maltese English; Bonnici 2010: 71) This appears to be the result of identification of English stay with Maltese qagħad to sta , stop , which can function duratively in exactly the same way: (8) No għod nipprova nikteb bi lsien ieħo stay.IMPF.1SG try.IMPF.1SG write.IMPF.1SG in languages other ə keep t i g to ite i othe la guages. (Maltese; Vanhove 1993: 155) In other cases, however, the social upheaval caused by colonialism has led to language shift; and in certain instances where shift has been particularly rapid (and various other conditions obtain, see Arends et al. 1995), pidginization and creolization are the result. Pidgins and creoles are often treated as both synchronically and diachronically exceptional. It is not hard to see why they might be considered exceptional from a phylogenetic point of view: many (e.g. Holm 1988) have argued that the input to creoles from their substratum languages is so great that it is not accurate to simply classify them as daughters of their lexifier languages. Nevertheless, the mechanisms of change which lead to the genesis of pidgins and creoles should not be viewed as distinct from those operative in less e t e e o ta t s e a ios Wi fo d . Fo e a ple, ele ifi atio , hi h Lefe e identifies as the key process in creole formation, is the same phenomenon of lexico-syntactic imposition arising via identification of RL and SL lexemes that we observe in non-creole contact languages such as Maltese English. Another important type of syntactic imposition is the SL-influenced reanalysis of RL structures on the part of SL-dominant individuals. This process can be observed in the development of bipartite negation in dialectal Arabic, putatively as a result of contact with Coptic (see Lucas and Lash 2010 for full details). Coptic is the name given to the latest stage of the Ancient Egyptian language, the last speakers of which shifted to Arabic some time near the beginning of the second millennium CE. Lucas and Lash argue that the presence in Coptic of the bipartite negative construction, ə … a , illustrated in (9), meant that native speakers of Coptic were predisposed to find evidence for a parallel construction when they acquired Arabic as an L2, in a way that children acquiring Arabic as an L1 would not have been. 10  (9) n ti-na-tsabo-ou an e-am nte NEG 1SG-FUT-teach-them NEG on-hell ə ill ot tea h the a out hell. (Coptic; Lucas and Lash 2010: 389) While the variety of Arabic that these Coptic speakers were exposed to would have expressed negation with a single, preverbal negator ā, as found, for example, in Syrian Arabic today (10), the frequent co-occurrence of negative ā with the word ši (or an unreduced form šayʾ), meaning either a thi g o at all , ea t that ati e Copti speake s a ui i g A a i as a L ea al sed this latter item as the second element of a bipartite negative construction. This innovative bipartite construction, whose second element is usually a reduced enclitic -š, as illustrated in (11), subsequently diffused into varieties of Arabic spoken from Palestine to Morocco. (10) al-lon ā ḥa ēt-a say.PST.3MSG-to.them NEG love.PST.1SG-her He told the : ə did t fall i lo e ith he . (Syrian Arabic; Brustad 2000: 284) (11) ā afa t-iš īd-i NEG raise.PST.1SG-NEG hand-my ə did t aise ha d. (Egyptian Arabic; Brustad 2000: 284) While this reanalysis could, in principle, also have been made by children acquiring Arabic as an L1 in monolingual situations, this does not in reality seem to have occurred. In fact, it is a priori less likely that L1 acquirers would make such a reanalysis, not just because they have no particular expectation that negation should be expressed by a bipartite construction, but also because, as discussed in section 3, L1 acquisition is inherently more likely than L2 acquisition to result in a grammatical competence that closely matches that of other L1 speakers of the same language (see Lucas 2009: ch.2 for further discussion). 4.3 Restructuring It is well known that L2 usage (and the knowledge that underlies it) can be target-deviant in ways that do not involve straightforward transfer from the L1, and cannot therefore properly be called imposition. Often, but not always, these kinds of non-i positio ha ges, he e alled est u tu i g , involve a reduction in complexity of one kind or another. A classic example of this in the domain of morphology is the reduction, regularization or total elimination of verbal inflection in creoles. For example, Owens (1991: 17) points out that Nubi, a creole language spoken in South Sudan and Uganda, lacks any kind of verbal inflection, despite the rich system of verbal inflection found both in Nu i s le ifie la guage, “uda i A a i , a d i the Niloti la guage Ba i, hi h is a p o a le substrate. (Another possible substrate, the Central Sudanic language Mamvu, lacks verbal inflection but has a complex system of verbal tone classes, which were also not transferred to Nubi; see also Trudgill 2011: 44–45). In phonology it is usually difficult to distinguish restructuring from imposition. For example, it is very common for crosslinguistically unusual phonemes to be eliminated from a la guage s i e to i L a ieties of that la guage, as a e see f o the loss of i te de tal fricatives in many World Englishes (Deterding 2010). But whether this should be seen as restructuring or imposition of the lack of this phoneme from the various SLs involved is debateable. 11  Syntactic restructuring, by contrast, is often clearly identifiable, at least in the case of potential changes described in the L2 acquisition literature. For example, Håkansson et al. (2002) describe the ase of L speake s of “ edish lea i g Ge a as a L . “ edish a d Ge a a e oth e - se o d V la guages, ea i g that the e ust al a s o up the se o d positio i a ai clause, while various ele e ts a o up the fi st positio . Despite this, Håka sso et al. s su je ts routinely produced ungrammatical structures such as in (12), in which the verb occupies the third position in the clause, even though simply transferring the V2 rule from their native Swedish would have resulted in target-like German. (12) Dann er waschen der Schlange then he wash the snake The he ashes the s ake. (L2 German; Håkansson et al. 2002) Identifying uncontroversial historical cases of syntactic restructuring is difficult, because one can never rule out the possibility that such changes are in fact purely internally-caused. One famous but highly controversial example is the change from object–verb to verb–object order in Old and Middle English embedded clauses. Weerman (1993) and Trips (2002) make the case that this was a contact-induced change, with the agents being L1 speakers of Old Norse acquiring English as an L2. Since Old Norse most likely also had object–verb order in embedded clauses, this would have been a case of restructuring rather than imposition. (For further discussion of this change, including a defence of the contact analysis from various criticisms, see Lucas 2009: 146–149). 4.4 Convergence The final type of contact-induced change to be discussed is convergence. Clearly it is possible for languages in contact to become more similar to one another through borrowing and imposition (though proba l ot est u tu i g , ut he e ə use the te o e ge e to efe spe ifi all to changes that are brought about by individuals with two L1s, who are therefore not dominant in either the RL or the SL for a given change. There might in fact be some doubt as to whether such individuals can be agents of contact- induced change at all. There is little evidence, for example, that 2L1 acquisition, in itself, leads to any permanent transfer between the two grammars acquired (de Houwer 2005). The extent to which the usage of 2L1 individuals differs for each of their languages relative to their monolingual peers is highly variable, however, and depends on whether at a particular moment they are in a monolingual o ili gual ode (Grosjean 2004). If, for example, a 2L1 individual is interacting with monolingual peers in their generally monolingual speech community, the 2L1 individual will be in a strongly monolingual mode, and their usage is therefore likely to be indistinguishable from that of monolinguals. Individuals in such situations are thus unlikely to be the agents of contact-induced change. On the other hand, in speech communities where 2L1 acquisition is the norm, speakers will very often be in a strongly bilingual mode and some degree of mutual influence on the usage of the L1s involved is to be expected. Where this situation is stable over several generations or longer, convergence will be the result. Interestingly, convergence rarely seems to target phonology (e.g. Ross 2007, Trudgill 2011; but see also Epps 2011), but can have far reaching effects on morphosyntax, including basic word order. A good example of this discrepancy comes from the Arabic dialect of Bukhara, Uzbekistan, discussed 12 by Ratcliffe (2005). The phonology of this dialect has generally been conservative, for example preserving the crosslinguistically rare pharyngeal and pharyngealized consonants. By contrast there have been significant word-order changes, bringing Bukhara Arabic typologically closer to the neighbouring Turkic language, Uzbek, which is strongly head-final, and moving it further from other Arabic varieties, which are strongly head-initial. For example, an existential verb in Bukhara Arabic always follows the subject (13), the opposite of the order found in other Arabic dialects (14). (13) fat faqīr kō a poor be.PST.3MSG The e as a poo a ... (Bukhara Arabic; Ratcliffe 2005: 143) (14) aku fad āḥid faqīr EXST a one poor The e as a poo a ... (Baghdadi Arabic; Ratcliffe 2005: 144) More strikingly, Bukhara Arabic makes frequent use of a head-final relative-clause construction, which is again unknown in other Arabic varieties, but standard in Uzbek: (15) fi ide-h ō uf ūš-u in hands-his standing hawk-his his ha k, hi h as sitti g o his a (Bukhara Arabic; Ratcliffe 2005: 144) (16) kitɔb oqiyɔt-gan yigit book read-PTCP youth the ou g a ho is eadi g a ook (Uzbek; Ratcliffe 2005: 144) As noted in section 3, there is often too little information on the sociolinguistic background of a change such as this one for us to be certain which of the four types of transfer just discussed underlies it. In particular, it can be very difficult to distinguish instances of borrowing (transfer from an L2 into an L1) from convergence (transfer from one L1 to another), since we will rarely be certain whether individuals who are long dead had two L1s, or an L1 and L2. We should be clear then, that these changes to Bukhara Arabic could well have been due to borrowing, while the development of Yiddish dos-sentences (section 4.1) might have been an instance of convergence. That said, it is possible, as various scholars have argued, that purely linguistic facts about a contact-induced change can shed additional light on the mechanisms that produced it. This issue is discussed in the following section. 5. LINGUISTIC CONSTRAINTS ON TRANSFER As noted in section 1, a large proportion of the theoretical literature on language contact to date, especially work from before the 1990s, has primarily been concerned with proposing or rejecting purely linguistic constraints on what can and cannot be transferred, and in what order. (For a survey, see Curnow 2001). Although some scholars still maintain that loanwords are the only type of directly contact-induced change that exists (e.g. King 2000), the majority of historical linguists now agree with Thomaso a d Kauf a : that as fa as the st i tl li guisti possi ilities go, a li guisti featu e a e t a sfe ed f o a la guage to a othe la guage. ət is also idel 13 agreed that there are no genuinely universal implicational constraints of the kind proposed by Moravcsik (1978), whereby, for example, function words are supposedly only ever be transferred to a language after content words (see Campbell 1993 for counter examples). There is no doubt, however, that there are valid generalizations of this sort to be made, as long as we bear in mind that they are not exceptionless. For example, Haugen (1950) suggests that nouns are in general more often transferred than verbs; and the data in Haspelmath and Tadmor (2009) provides solid evidence that this is correct, even though a handful of languages show the opposite tendency (at least among basic vocabulary). A related line of investigation seeks to associate particular sub-types of transfer with certain linguistic domains rather than others. He e ə ill fo us o Va Coetse s , otio of the sta ilit g adie t . The asi idea ehi d the sta ilit g adie t is that e tai li guisti do ai s s ta a d pho olog a e o e sta le tha othe s the le i o . The sta ilit of s ta and phonology should be understood relative to the dominance relations of the agents of change: RL- dominant speakers supposedly preserve the syntax and phonology of the RL, meaning that syntactic and phonological borrowing are unexpected; SL-dominant speakers, on the other hand, supposedly preserve the syntax and phonology of the SL, meaning that syntactic and phonological imposition are expected. Conversely, the instability of the lexicon means that it is supposedly not preserved during transfer: lexical change to the RL by RL-dominant speakers is expected, whereas lexical change to the SL by SL-dominant speakers is not expected. If we understand this idea simply as a way of expressing an empirical generalization, it seems plausible, especially when coupled ith Tho aso a d Kauf a s i sight that diffe e t intensities of contact are required for transfer from different domains to take place. It is clearly correct, for example, that in speech communities with very low levels of bilingualism the only contact-induced changes that occur to the L1s of those communities are lexical borrowings. Even in communities with extensive knowledge, and intensive use, of an L2, phonological borrowing seems to be rare (but not nonexistent – see section 4.1). However, contrary to what the stability gradient would lead us to expect, syntactic borrowing seems to be fairly commonplace in such communities. Regarding imposition, there is no doubt that many aspects of phonology are very commonly i posed e e speake s ho a e highl p ofi ie t i othe espe ts! ; a d, i ge e al, le i al imposition does seem to be rare, though certain discourse markers such as English erm/um are frequently imposed, perhaps because speakers assume them to be paralinguistic and universal. The issue of syntactic imposition is more complex, however. We have already seen that imposition of syntactic aspects of lexical items, such as the selectional properties of verbs as in (1), is indeed commonplace, but matters are less clear-cut for more abstract elements of syntax. For example, while subtle aspects of word order such as the relative position of verbs and adverbs are routinely subject to imposition (White 1991), we saw in section 4.3 that the order of subject, object and verb is not necessarily imposed. In fact, such basic elements of word order seem to be very rarely transferred by L2 acquirers, except in the very earliest stages of L2 acquisition, meaning that this kind of transfer is very unlikely to result in a word order change that spreads throughout a whole speech community (Siegel 2003). The obvious explanation for the rareness of imposition of basic word order versus more subtle aspects of word order is salience: almost every sentence an L2 acquirer is exposed to presents them with evidence of basic word order in the L2. The same is clearly not true of adverb/verb order. These dis epa ies i the p e ale e of i positio ithi s ta hi h is, after all, an ill- defined umbrella term for a range of heterogeneous grammatical phenomena) suggest that stability 14 is not the appropriate metaphor for understanding why certain linguistic domains are more likely to be targeted by one of the four subtypes of contact-induced change than they are by the others. Instead, we should seek to explain these generalizations with reference to the cognitive processes associated with L2 acquisition, L1 attrition (i.e. reduced accessibility of L1 knowledge), new concept formation, and so on. And the fact that it is apparently at least possible for both borrowing and imposition to target any linguistic domain means that we should be wary of using purely linguistic facts to diagnose which transfer type was operative in a historical contact situation. Instead, this diagnosis should always be based on whatever information we have, or can infer, about the dominance relations of the agents of change. 6. SUMMARY This chapter has presented an overview of contact-induced language change, with a focus on the various mechanisms that underlie it. In section 1 we looked at why contact-induced change has not al a s ee a p i a fo us of li guists atte tio s, despite its i po ta e as a sou e of li guisti change. In section 2 we discussed the two major viewpoints on what constitutes language change in general, concluding that, from either perspective, what is distinctive about contact-induced change is that it originates in bilingualism-induced variation in usage. In section 3 we explored the distinction between SL- and RL-agentivity, and examined the evidence in favour of associating dominance rigidly with nativeness. In section 4 we looked at case studies of borrowing, imposition, restructuring and convergence, and in section 5 we discussed the question of purely linguistic constraints on transfer. The basic contention that underlies the whole chapter is that we can best understand why contact-induced change takes place by examining how and why bilingualism affects usage in individual speakers. FURTHER READING Thomason and Kaufman (1988): Seminal work on the theory of language contact. Van Coetsem (1988, 2000): First author to seriously consider the cognitive mechanisms underlying contact-induced change. Winford (2005): A i flue tial appli atio of Va Coetse s f a e o k to a u e of controversial contact situations. Haspelmath and Tadmor (2009): The results of a groundbreaking project to assess lexical transfer in basic vocabulary crosslinguistically. Lucas (2012): ‘e e t atte pt to i teg ate Va Coetse s i sights ith acquisitionist theories of language change. REFERENCES Abrahamsson, Niclas & Kenneth Hyltenstam. 2009. Age of onset and nativelikeness in a second language: Listener perception versus linguistic scrutiny. Language Learning 59, 249–306. Arends, Jacques, Pieter Muysken & Norval Smith. 1995. Pidgins and creoles: An introduction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 15 Ås, Arvid. 1962. The recovery of a forgotten language through hypnotic age regression: A case report. The American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis 5, 24–29. Bergsland, Knut & Hans Vogt. 1962. On the validity of glottochronology. Current Anthropology 3, 115–53. Bonnici, Lisa Marie. 2010. Variation in Maltese English: The interplay of the local and the global in an emerging postcolonial variety. 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