Professional Documents
Culture Documents
LIN205 Style
Contents
Page
Introduction to the course
Study unit 1
1.1
1.2
1.3
1.4
1.5
2.6
2.7
3.6
3.7
3.8
1
2
4
7
8
10
12
15
18
20
21
Language families
23
Introduction
What is a language family?
The Indo-European language family
The comparative historical method
Language families of Africa
2.5.1 The Bantu language family
2.5.2 The Khoesan languages
A language profile of South Africa
Summary
Study unit 3
3.1
3.2
3.3
3.4
3.5
Introduction
Language change
1.2.1 Phonological change
1.2.2 Morphological change
1.2.3 Syntactic change
1.2.4 Semantic change
1.2.5 Pragmatic change
Attitudes to language change
Themes and threads
Summary
Study unit 2
2.1
2.2
2.3
2.4
2.5
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24
24
27
29
32
34
34
36
39
New words
41
Introduction
What is a word?
Borrowing
Compounding
Derivation
3.5.1 Greek and Latin derivations
Conversion, clipping, blending and acronyms
Why do languages need new words?
Summary
41
43
44
47
48
49
51
53
55
LIN2602/1/20132019
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Study unit 4
4.1
4.2
4.3
4.4
4.5
4.6
4.7
57
Introduction
Language variation in Martha's Vineyard
4.2.1 The Island
4.2.2 Labov's sociolinguistic investigation of Martha's Vineyard
Language variation in New York City
Comparison of the two studies: change from above versus change
from below
Labov's contribution
The sociolinguistic interview
Summary
58
59
59
60
65
Study unit 5
5.1
5.2
5.3
5.4
5.5
Introduction
Types of language contact
Codeswitching
5.3.1 The markedness model of codeswitching
5.3.2 Borrowing versus codeswitching
5.3.3 Codeswitching versus language mixing and mixed languages
South African case studies
5.4.1 Case study: Tsotsitaal
5.4.2 Case study: District Six
Summary
Study unit 6
6.1
6.2
6.3
6.4
6.5
6.6
7.5
7.6
7.7
7.8
(iv)
Introduction
The spread of English
Historical perspective
World Englishes
Varieties of English in South Africa
6.5.1 SAE
6.5.2 BSAE
6.5.3 SAIE
Summary
Study unit 7
7.1
7.2
7.3
7.4
Introduction
The pidgin: a language in embryo
Where are pidgins spoken?
Characteristics of pidgins
7.4.1 Vocabulary
7.4.2 Phonology
7.4.3 Morphology
7.4.4 Syntax
The birth and growth of creoles
Decreolisation: the death of a pidgin
The development of Afrikaans
Two African case studies
71
71
73
75
76
76
79
83
84
86
87
90
93
95
97
99
100
100
103
106
113
113
113
114
116
118
119
119
121
122
122
125
125
126
126
129
130
134
7.9
7.8.1 Fanakalo
7.8.2 Mauritian Creole
Summary
134
136
137
139
8.1
8.2
140
140
143
143
146
147
149
151
153
155
155
8.3
8.4
8.5
8.6
Introduction
Language shift
8.2.1 Case study: Indian languages in South Africa
8.2.2 Case study: European (immigrant) languages in South Africa
Language death
8.3.1 Structural changes in dying languages
8.3.2 Does it matter if languages die?
Language maintenance and revival
8.4.1 Case study: The revival of Malawian Chingoni
Summary
Concluding thoughts
References
Glossary
157
162
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change affects you and other people in the world, and how changes in the world have
changed language. ln order to understand the dynamics of language change it is very
important to understand the historical and social contexts in which it occurs. We have
attempted to give you all the relevant background information that is required to
understand the linguistic changes that are described here. However, it is also important
to remember that while the historical background is necessary and relevant to
understand the language changes that we will be discussing, this is not a course in
history.
The focus in this module is on how language changes over a period of time and what
causes these changes. Examples are drawn from many different languages and
language varieties around the world. While Linguistics describes language features and
phenomena that are general or found in many different languages, in this module we
always try to relate language phenomena to the multilingual context in South Africa and
other parts of Africa. Linguistic diversity in multilingual societies is a theme that we will
follow in all your study material in all your linguistics modules from first-year to third-year
level. Linguistic diversity also gives us unique perspectives into the mind because it
reveals the many creative ways in which humans organise their experience.
This module assumes that you are familiar with introductory morphology and syntax as
covered in the LIN1501 module on Grammatical patterns and principles and with basic
sociolinguistics as covered in the LIN1502 module on Multilingualism: The role of
language in South Africa. However, we will usually remind you of important definitions
covered in these two modules. You are also encouraged to use the multilingual glossary
at the end of the study guide, which has an alphabetical list of linguistic terms together
with their definitions and Afrikaans equivalents.
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your understanding and knowledge of the work and check that you are on the right track.
lt is very important to work through these tasks, not only to prepare you for assignments
and the exam, but also to help you to relate what you are studying to your own
experiences and circumstances.
Summaries and suggestions for further reading are also provided at the end of each
study unit.
(viii)
Study Unit 1
What is language change?
`When you're finished changing, you're finished.'
Benjamin Franklin (American scientist, inventor and
philosopher 17061790)
OUTCOMES
After you have worked through this study unit you will be able to
1
reanalysis
morphologisation
grammaticalisation
broadening
narrowing
semantic shift
prescriptive attitude
descriptive attitude
In a nutshell
In this first study unit you are introduced to the concept of language change. We live
in a world where everything around us is altering constantly. Language is also
subject to change and the central theme of this module is that language changes
because society changes.
In this study unit we look at some historical changes and changes in society that
have had an impact on language. We focus on all the levels of language from sound
change, through morphological and syntactic change to changes in meaning and
use. We also reflect on varying attitudes to language change.
LIN2602
1.1 Introduction
We live in a rapidly changing world. We all have to cope with change as part of our daily
lives. Alvin Toffler (1970:11) sees change as `the process by which the future invades our
lives'. In his book, Future Shock (1970:18), he has this to say about the challenges of
change:
Western society for the past 300 years has been caught up in a fire storm of
change. This storm, far from abating, now appears to be gathering force. Change
sweeps through the highly industrialised countries with waves of ever-accelerating
speed and unprecedented impact.
All around us we see changes taking place. Consider fashions in clothing. Every year
new fashions appear. If we look at the clothes that are worn this summer we see that they
are different from the clothes worn last summer, and if we look back ten years, we will see
an even bigger difference. If we were to look at the pictures of clothing in a fashion
magazine of a hundred years ago, we would see that the fashion was very different
indeed from today's fashions.
It is not only fashions in clothing that are constantly changing. If you think about popular
music, you will notice that change is taking place: today we have kwaito, RB, maskanta,
rave, rap, house and hip hop music (and probably other new styles I've never even heard
of!). Back in the 1960s it was the Beatles and Elvis, rock and roll, bopping, jiving, the
twist and the shake. Further back in the Twenties the latest dances were the charleston,
the foxtrot and the quickstep. In the 19th century the waltz took the world by storm as the
latest craze in dancing.
Even the cars we drive today are vastly different from the models we drove a few
decades ago. The popular cars of today, like the Toyota Prius, are very different from the
famous Model T Ford that was produced earlier in the 20th century. In the 19th century,
before the motor car was invented, people drove horse carriages or rode on horseback.
We live in a changing world indeed. All around us there is change change in fashion,
change in education, change in politics, change in the structure of society, change in
technology ...
The world changes constantly, and one change leads to another. All these changes
impact on our lives. Change in one area may cause change in another area. For
example, before the printing press was invented, all information was written by hand,
books were rare and only a few religious scholars could read and write. Now books are
not only printed in the hundreds of thousands, but are transmitted in new ways read out
loud on radio or CD, adapted for television, and downloaded from the internet onto cell
phones, tablets and e-books. With the computer, the internet and internet-enabled cell
phones, we now have almost immediate access to vast amounts of information. Never
before in the history of the world was so much information available in such a short
space of time. We live in an age when information is power.
The period since 1900 has seen the greatest changes in the world. In every aspect of life
sweeping changes have occurred, including world wars, the rise and fall of communism,
the end of colonialism, and the struggle for the establishment of the rights of women,
children and minority groups. Politics, religion, science, medicine, technology, education
and social structure have all been deeply affected by change and these changes have
inevitably left their mark on the language we use.
Just as other things in the world are subject to change, so language is not immune to
change. Sociolinguists believe that changes in language are closely related to the
changes around us in society. The movement of people from one place to another, the
rise and fall of different groups and civilisations, the pressures of globalisation and new
technologies, and our own efforts to continually redefine our identities all bring about
changes in language. It is this relationship between change in society and change in
language that we are going to examine in the following study units.
Task 1.1
List and briefly describe any four recent changes in your community or society. Have any
of these been reflected in language change? Think of changes such as new clothing,
new transport, new technologies, changes in politics and education, words that have
`fallen out of fashion', a change in language preference in your family or the mixing of
languages at home or at work.
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Feedback
There are no right answers to this task, but its purpose is for you to start thinking and
acting like a linguist by becoming aware of language and language change, listening to
what people are saying, and thinking about the kind of language used by the people
around you. Some of the changes you may have noticed could include the appearance
of new words to refer to new inventions or new fashions, or borrowings from other
languages spoken around you. Your community may also be speaking one language
more often or codeswitching (mixing two languages) more and more. People may be
swearing more or using language in a different way, for example when texting on their cell
phones.
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LIN2602
Courtesy of Florida Center for Instructional Technology, downloaded 18 January 2012 from http://
etc.usf.edu/clipart.
Once people had learned to record events and thoughts by means of shapes on clay or
stone, we were able to study solid evidence of past languages. Not only did writing
enable our ancestors to record history but it also enabled modern linguists to trace the
early development of languages in the world. Writing had an immense effect on the
development of civilisations. It has played a major role in the development of literature
and virtually every branch of science and technology. Writing has also had an effect on
the development of most languages. Although written language was based on spoken
language, it has gained a life of its own apart from spoken language, and in many ways
has also influenced spoken language, particularly in literate societies. The idea of what
the `correct' form of a language is, is largely derived from the fact that languages can be
written down and the written forms can be standardised. This means that, over time, the
written form develops certain norms of spelling, punctuation and grammar that are
followed and are taught in the schools. Often this standard form is taught as the sole
representative of the language and deviations from this norm are viewed as `incorrect' or
`inferior'.
Task 1.2
Here is the opening extract from the Lord's Prayer from different periods of English. You
will notice that English has changed considerably in the last thousand years (in fact, it is
hardly recognisable as English to the speaker of Modern English). Try and identify some
specific ways that the English in Examples 1, 2 and 3 is similar to or differs from Modern
English in Example 4 focus on spelling, word meanings, grammar, etc.
1
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LIN2602
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Feedback
The most obvious difference between Modern English and the Old English in Example 1
are the English letters Y (the vowel in cat) and `th', which no longer exist in Modern
English. Many of the words differ markedly from Modern English, for example FYder
`Father', gehalgod `blessed' and rice `kingdom' (but notice how similar these and other
words are to Afrikaans Vader, geheilig and ryk more on this later). There are also
significant differences in word order, for example To becume in rice (literally `Let come
your kingdom') where Modern English has Let your kingdom come and FYder ure where
Modern English has Our Father.
In Example 2, Middle English, the spelling of some words differs from Modern English,
for example oure, kingdome and heuen, but the words are generally more familiar than
they were in the Old English extract. The word order still differs, for example Come to us
i kingdome would not be grammatical in Modern English.
Example 3, Early Modern English, is fairly recognisable, although we don't use the word
hallowed any more (only Halloween, and maybe in the idiom hallowed halls). Are is now
used instead of art, who would be used to refer to people rather than which, and your
would be used instead of thy. The word order matches Modern English fairly closely.
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The sort of change that has occurred in English over the years has occurred in most
languages of the world. As we will see in this module, language change can occur to
varying degrees, from the smallest sound change to sweeping changes that turn
languages into new languages over time.
In first-year Linguistics you learnt about the various linguistic levels (see Figure 1.2
below). The phonetic or phonological level describes the sounds of language; the
morphological level looks at the smallest meaningful elements of language (e.g.
prefixes, stems and suffixes) that make up words; the syntactic level deals with word
order and grammar; the semantic level deals with meaning; and the pragmatic level
deals with the ways that language is actually used.
Morphology
Syntax
Semantics
Pragmatics
speech sounds
parts of words
grammar
meanings of
various kinds
language use
Some examples of language change at each of these linguistic levels are discussed
below.
Zulu
Catholic
ikatolika
South Africa
iSotafilika
paraffin
ipalafini
factory
ifeketili
Task 1.3
See if you can identify the sound changes from Latin to English in the following
examples:
LIN2602
Latin
English
ferre
to bear
frater
brother
pater
father
pes
foot
primus
first
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Feedback
The changes you may have noticed in the examples above include f ? b, p ? f and, if
you were looking closely, t ? th. Lists like this tell us that sound change over time is often
quite regular. By this we mean that all the examples of a particular sound changed in the
same way. All the Latin p's became English f and all the Latin d's became English t. While
most sound changes are regular, sporadic changes may also occur. These affect just
one or a handful of words without affecting the sound system as a whole. Also notice that
many of the Latin words have given rise to related English words, e.g. ferre `to carry', for
example, can still be seen in words like ferry and transfer, which relate to carrying.
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different morphological structure. Task 1.4 will give you an example of what we mean by
reanalysis.
Task 1.4
(a)
Have a look at the following early English words. Define the two words using full
sentences based on the glosses below:
naddre `poisonous snake'
napron `small skirt worn over clothes to keep clothes clean'
A naddre is a ..............................................................................................................
A napron is a ..............................................................................................................
(b) What are these words in modern English? How might this change have happened?
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Feedback
These days we refer to adders and aprons, not naddres and naprons. What happened
here was that in speech, the phrases a naddre and a napron were mistakenly reanalysed
by speakers as an adder and an apron, and as a result these words lost their initial n's.
The same happened to the Arabic borrowing naranj, which is now orange in English (but
kept its initial n in Afrikaans naartjie `mandarin orange').
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A final example of morphological change is the process known as morphologisation,
where a full word becomes a bound morpheme such as a prefix or suffix. An example of
this is the Old English word lic `like, having the characteristics of', which was used in
compound words like foederlic `father-like' and manlic `man-like'. In Modern English the
word lic has become the suffix -ly, giving us words like fatherly and manly.
Morphologisation has taken place as the -ly is now a suffix and cannot stand alone on
its own as a word. (If you have difficulty remembering the meaning of terms like bound
morpheme, prefix, suffix, etc. you may want to look back at the study guide LIN1501 on
Grammatical Patterns and Principles or consult an introductory Linguistics textbook or a
Dictionary of Linguistics.)
LIN2602
Gravedigger:
Hamlet:
Gravedigger:
Task 1.5
(a)
(b) Open a book of Shakespeare plays or any old text in your own language and
`translate' a few sentences into more modern language. Note down some of the
syntactic changes that have occurred.
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10
Feedback
Your answer to (a) might look something like this:
Hamlet:
Gravedigger:
Hamlet:
Gravedigger:
Besides the changes in word order, the pronoun thou is now you and the auxiliary verb
dost `does' is no longer used. Also note the use of the double negative none neither. This
would be considered ungrammatical in many varieties of Modern English.
In (b) the idea was for you to find your own examples. If you can not do so at this stage,
you should not be too concerned, but bear the following in mind:
1
You will find that we give many more examples of language change from different
languages as we work through this module. Examples from other languages will
always include a gloss (word-for-word translation).
2 Learn to listen to what people around you are saying. The purpose of the tasks in
your linguistics study guides is often not for you to reproduce the material that you
have read, but to acquire the skill of seeing patterns. Make notes of all the examples
that you come across of words or phrases that have changed their meaning in your
lifetime and you will eventually build up a whole set of examples that you can use to
illustrate your discussions.
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In the same way that words can be reduced to morphemes through the process of
morphologisation, words can also change their function from content words (words that
carry the main meaning in a sentence) to function words words with a purely
grammatical function. This process is known as grammaticalisation. An example is the
English word wilt, which in Shakespeare's time was a verb meaning `want':
Hamlet:
In Modern English `will' is now an auxiliary verb with a purely grammatical function,
usually to indicate intention or future tense:
He will play for Mamelodi Sundowns from next season.
Another example of a syntactic change is when a new grammatical construction enters
the language. Millar (2007:185) suggests that a completely new construction has
appeared in English in the last 20 years, where reported speech is indicated as follows:
I'm like `What's going on?'
`I asked ``What's going on?'' '
LIN2602
11
Eanred me carved
`Eanred carved me' (inscription on an eighth century gold ring)
Make sure you can identify the subject, verb and object in the sentence Eanred mec
agrof and in the corresponding Modern English Eanred carved me. SOV word order
became increasingly rare in Old English texts, while SVO patterns became more and
more frequent. This shift in word order is not unique to English. Exactly the reverse has
happened with Chinese, with a gradual shift from SVO to SOV word order. While Modern
Chinese is not consistently an SOV language, it is much more strongly SOV than its
archaic ancestor (Millar 2007:190).
12
to the flesh of animals. It has acquired a narrower, more specific meaning. Another
example of narrowing is the Sepedi word lerema, which used to mean `hunter' but now
refers to a particular person who is an expert in hunting and not just any hunter.
Semantic shift occurs when words (or lexical items) undergo a shift or change in
meaning. For example, in the Middle Ages the word bead meant `prayer'. Because of the
custom of saying repeated prayers and counting the number of prayers by means of little
wooden balls on a rosary, the meaning of bead shifted from prayer to the little wooden
balls on the rosary. Today beads are made of plastic, glass or other materials.
Apart from changes in meaning, old words may disappear from a language altogether.
The following words taken from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, written in the 16th
century, are no longer used in English today:
wot
`to know'
wherefore
`why'
fain
`gladly'
mammet
`a doll or puppet'
Task 1.6
In a language of your choice, give examples of the following lexical changes. Identify your
language and use a gloss as in the examples discussed above.
(a)
semantic shift
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LIN2602
13
(e)
Now try and decide whether the following semantic changes are examples of
broadening, narrowing, semantic shift or word loss:
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Sanction is a word that originally referred to a religious decree (from the Latin
`sanctus' meaning `holy'). In its more modern sense, sanctions are a penalty
imposed by one country upon another as a form of political power-play.
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The word robot was first recorded in about 1920, referring to a machine designed to
carry out mechanical tasks. While this sense is still in use, robot also refers to a
traffic light in South African English.
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The word riot used to refer to extravagant or outrageous `partying', as in the phrase
`riotous living'. A riot now refers to a limited demonstration of civil disobedience, e.g.
Burning tyres were used to block the highway during a riot over poor service delivery.
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Betwixt is an archaic word meaning `between'. It is no longer used in Modern
English although it survives in the fixed phrase `betwixt and between'.
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A springbok is a small Southern African antelope, the national animal of South
Africa. This word is also now used to refer to the South African national rugby team
and its players: Brian Habana will wear the Springbok rugby jersey for the last time
today.
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(f)
The table below illustrates some of the changes in meaning that occurred when
Afrikaans developed from Dutch. Do these examples illustrate broadening,
narrowing, semantic shift or word loss?
Dutch meaning
Afrikaans meaning
kombers
`soft blanket'
kombuis
`kitchen'
vlei
Feedback
In the examples in (e) above, betwixt is an example of word loss, while springbok and
robot cillustrate broadening. Sanction and riot illustrate semantic shift. In (f), the
14
examples illustrate that a semantic shift took place in many words as Afrikaans
developed from Dutch.
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LIN2602
15
Letter 1
May it please your excellency,
I beg to draw your attention to the condition of certain parts of the interior from
my own point of view as a missionary and as a devoted subject of Her Majesty
the Queen.
It occurs to me that perhaps some of the sentences in this communication may
appear at a distance to be strongly expressed. My apology, it could be due to my
sense of the magnitude of imminence of the question, which alone could have
induced me to write at all.
With every expression of respect, I remain,
Your Excellency's humble servant,
John Mackenzie.
(Letter from John Mackenzie to Sir Henry Berkly, High Commissioner for the Zulu in
South Africa 2 May 1876) HC 48/1/2
Letter 2
Chief Ellenberger,
I have received your letter of 22nd March and I was very much pleased chief to hear
you speak of the trees saying that I should look after them, which I will do. And I wish
you to help me also chief if you see anyone cutting down trees prevent him from
doing so. Say to him `Sebele says that the trees must not be cut down, that he has
forbiddin it'. Please inform the people chief. I also ask chief, that the government help
me to protect them.
Greetings chief, to you and your children.
I am Sebele, chief of Bakwena.
(Letter from Sebele chief of Bakwena to Ellenberger 7 May 1897) HC 125/12
Contrast the level of formality and politeness of these letters from a hundred years ago
with the following `letters' sent via e-mail (electronic mail) and sms (cell phone `short
message service'):
16
E-mail 1
On 2011/11/17 5:29 PM, ``Penny Sanderson'' pennys@iafrica.com wrote:
Hello this is your new class mom speaking. I've just chatted to Debbie (other new
class mom) and our first job is to organise a gift voucher for Khanyi and Kate for all
the emails and organisation and behind-the-scenes things they have done for the
class and the school this year. If you want to contribute R10 or any amount of your
choice please give it to Debbie or me by next Friday 25 November and we will make
sure both class moms get the same thing. But no obligation, only if you want to ...
Thanks
Penny
E-mail 2
On 2011/11/18 10:19 AM ndladla@mweb.co.za replied:
Fab, I will get to you today Pens, love your mail !!!! I am happy to get the voucher for
you x Nonthando
sms 1
Hey ma, I jst found out dat iv gt toastmasters 2nyt from 6 till 8. So u can cum n fetch
me n I hav 2b bak 18er. N call me wen u gt here at skul. Luv ya Mpho
Hi Mom, I just found out that I've got toastmasters tonight from 6 to 8. So you can
come and fetch me and I have to be back at 18hrs. And call me when you get to
school. Love you, Mpho
sms 2
I can't hide this from u anymore,I don't wanna hurt u,but I'm sori I have 2 tel u b4 u
hear it from sumbody else. I know it'l not sound real bt its de truth de whole honest
truth. Its not my fault don't blame me. Here it goes ... . Plz acept it with ur whole heart
xmas is over. :(
I can't hide this from you anymore, I don't want to hurt you, but I'm sorry I have to tell
you before you hear it from somebody else. I know it will not sound real but it's the
truth, the whole honest truth. It's not my fault, don't blame me. Here it goes ... Please
accept it with your whole heart, Christmas is over.
LIN2602
17
Task 1.7
(a)
Briefly explain the differences between formal letter writing that you were taught at
school and the letter writing in the e-mail and sms examples above.
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(b) Write down an example of a sms in the language that you normally use to write. If
your sms is not in English, give a gloss or word-for-word translation.
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Feedback
From these examples, one can notice clear differences in the spelling, punctuation and
writing style in the e-mail and sms communication as opposed to the formal letters.
Letters usually have a form of address like Dear X, followed by the main news and a
formal ending of some sort, like With every expression of respect, I remain, Your
Excellency's humble servant,
John Mackenzie. Conventions like capital letters for names and standard punctuation are
usually followed. E-mail can be quite formal and follow these written norms, or it can be
more sms-like as in e-mail 2, with plenty of abbreviations like ur for your, minimal or
exaggerated punctuation, and its own special symbols in the form of `smileys' such as
the sad face at the end of sms 2. The main point to note here is how the pragmatic
norms of communication have changed with the coming of new technology and the fast
pace of modern life.
__________________________________________________________________________
18
make sure that the standard language is protected from too much change. Crystal
(2010:2) reminds us that `Language belongs to everyone; so most people feel they have
a right to hold an opinion about it. And when opinions differ, emotions can run high.'
Language teachers tend to hold particularly strong opinions about how language should
and shouldn't be used. For example, you were probably told at school that you shouldn't
split infinitives. A split infinitive occurs when an adverb is inserted between the word `to'
and the verb. So, to thoroughly believe is a split infinitive, while to believe thoroughly is
not. According to Is it Good English by John o'London (1924:18):
... the English-speaking world may be divided into
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
Those
Those
Those
Those
Those
who
who
who
who
who
The school teacher's view, like (3) above, would be an example of a prescriptive
approach to language, which prescribes or dictates how people should use the
language. Crystal (2010:2) describes prescriptivism as `the view that one variety of
language has an inherently higher value than others, and that this ought to be imposed
on the whole of the speech community'. The standard form of the language is the form
that is most highly valued by prescriptivists. A prescriptive grammar book will give clear
rights and wrongs as far as grammar is concerned. As linguists, however, we prefer to
take a descriptive view of language. We don't tell people how to talk or write, but we are
very interested in how people actually do use language. Linguists therefore fall into
category (5): they know what split infinitives are, and they neither approve nor
disapprove, but they would be interested in collecting linguistic evidence of whether
people do or don't adhere to this rule in different places and contexts.
Task 1.8
Try and decide whether each of these extracts is taking a prescriptive or descriptive
attitude to language usage:
(a)
(b) I have been correcting several Scotch accents in my friend Boswell. I doubt, Sir, if
any Scotchman ever attains to a perfect English pronunciation.
(Sir Alexander Macdonald 1776)
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19
(c)
(d) In sentences like _____ did you speak to?, whom is commonly used in writing, and
in more formal styles of speech; but who is more acceptable in informal speech.
The rules which govern acceptable speech and writing are often very different.
(Crystal The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language 2010:3)
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
Feedback
Extracts (a) and (b) illustrate a prescriptive attitude with clear rules and infringements of
rules. Both suggest that there is only one way to write or speak `correct' English. Extracts
(c) and (d) take a descriptive stance they allow for variation in usage without laying
down authoritarian rules. While linguists are descriptive and not prescriptive, Crystal
suggests that both views have a place. Teachers can't teach several varieties but must
take a prescriptive view, but ideally, the prescriptive view needs to be based on
descriptive facts about current language use. The prescriptive approach `provides a
focus for the sense of linguistic values which everyone possesses, and which ultimately
forms part of our view of social structure, and of our own place within it' (Crystal 2010:3).
__________________________________________________________________________
There is a common view that language change is equivalent to a drop in standards.
Older or more conservative people react to teenage slang or new journalistic
catchphrases and conclude that their language is being abused to the point of decay.
This phenomenon repeats itself every generation, with older people bemoaning every
change as a lapse or a misuse or a result of sheer ignorance. Despite the very strong
negative attitude to change that prevails, Aitchison (2001:6) points out that there are
three possible ways for us to view language change: as slow decay, as evolution or
`survival of the fittest', or as a kind of treading water, where the language remains in a
substantially similar state despite the small aspects of the language that are changing at
any single point in time. We will return to this point later in this module.
20
There are a number of sub-themes related to this central theme. Although each study
unit may focus on a particular sub-theme, the sub-themes are threaded through all the
study units. The units are presented progressively, so that each study unit builds on the
knowledge gained in the previous study units. As we go through a journey of exploration,
the broader picture unfolds and various sub-themes are introduced at different points
and are slowly woven into our picture.
The following sub-themes are covered in the next seven study units:
.
.
.
.
Language families.
Language variation and change.
Social class: the effect of class structure on language variation and change.
Contact and change: the effect of contact between people or groups of people on
language change.
. Dominant and minority language groups: the effect of prestige, political and
economic power on language use.
. The rise of world languages and lingua francas.
. Language birth, language shift and language loss.
1.5 Summary
In this study unit we gave some thought to the way in which the world is constantly
changing, with change in one area often leading to change in another area.
Sociolinguists believe that changes in language are closely related to the changes
around us in society the movement of people from one place to another, the rise and
fall of different groups and civilisations, the pressures of globalisation and new
technologies, and our own efforts to continually redefine our identities.
Languages developed some time after the first humans appeared on earth about 40 000
years ago. Written language began much later, around 3 000 BC. Not only did writing
enable our ancestors to record history but it also enabled modern linguists to trace the
early development of languages in the world. We saw that written forms of language tend
to become standardised, with certain norms of spelling, punctuation and grammar that
are viewed as the `correct' or educated variety. We also explored how language change
can affect all the various linguistic levels: phonological, morphological, syntactic,
semantic and pragmatic.
We concluded the unit by contrasting prescriptive and descriptive approaches to
language and language change. Prescriptivists view one variety of language as having
an inherently higher value than others and see clear rights and wrongs as far as grammar
and word usage is concerned. As linguists, however, we prefer to take a descriptive view
of language, focusing in a more objective way on the varied range of usage that actually
occurs in practice.
Further reading
Aitchison, J. 2001. Language Change: Progress or Decay? (third edition). Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Crystal, D. 2010. The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Language. (third edition). New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Chapter 1 The prescriptive tradition
LIN2602
21
22
Study Unit 2
Language families
`Language is the archives of history'
Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Poet, Lecturer and
Essayist, 18031882)
OUTCOMES
After you have worked through this study unit you will be able to
1
2
3
4
5
explain the method that historical linguists use to decide whether languages are
related;
explain which types of words should and should not be used when deciding whether
or not languages are related;
match the languages mentioned in this study unit to their appropriate Indo-European,
Bantu or Khoesan families;
describe the family relationships between the 11 official languages of South Africa;
explain and illustrate the following concepts:
language family
related languages
proto-language
the comparative historical method
Romance languages
Germanic languages
Indo-European languages
Bantu languages
Khoesan languages
lingua franca
In a nutshell
In this study unit we will see that language change that continues for generations can
cause a language to diverge over time into several distinct but related languages. In
this study unit we introduce you to the idea of language families and focus our
attention on the Indo-European, Bantu and Khoesan languages, which are all
represented in South Africa. Careful comparison of vocabulary items with the same
meaning allows historical linguists to identify correspondences between certain
languages and to speculate about the common ancestor of these languages.
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23
2.1 Introduction
Current estimates put the number of languages in the region of 7 000
(www.ethnologue.com). One of the issues that makes the exact number difficult to gauge
is the difficulty of distinguishing separate languages from dialects of the same language.
Another issue is the rapid disappearance of minority languages.
We saw in Study Unit 1 that all languages are in a constant process of change. This
means that languages that have been around for centuries or even longer have changed
so much that they are no longer recognisable as the same language. Movements of
people over time leads to division into separate dialects that continue to change until
they are no longer mutually intelligible and thus become separate languages. As Millar
(2007:219) comments: `the remorseless processes of language change invariably
produce ever-greater differences between the regional varieties of a language'. The
result is that one language breaks up over time into several different languages, forming
a language family a cluster of languages that have a common parent language and
are therefore all related to one another.
Setswana
Xhosa
eagle
ntsu
ukhozi
giraffe
thutlwa
indlulamthi
drought
komelelo
imbalela
airport
These words have nothing in common except their meanings. Their forms are completely
different. This is because language is essentially arbitrary, which means that there is no
intrinsic connection between the sound of a word and what it means. In a language
family, however, most words are very similar in form because they derive from a single,
older form. Sets of similar words are an indication that two or more languages are
related and come from the same language family:
Sepedi
Sesotho
Setswana
ntshu
ntsu
ntsu
`eagle'
thutlwa
thuhlo
thutlwa
`giraffe'
komelelo
komello
komelelo
`drought'
boemafofane boemafofane
boemelafofane
`airport'
tswalelo
tswala
`to close'
kwala
These lists show that Sepedi, Sesotho and Setswana are related languages. It is
important to note that related languages do not have to have similar grammatical
structures, nor do speakers of related languages need to be genetically or biologically
24
related (McGregor 2009:304). And even in related languages, not all the words will
necessarily be similar in form.
Task 2.1
Look at the following data and identify the word that is the `odd one out' in these word
lists from related languages. Can you suggest why one of the languages has a
completely different form to the others?
Sepedi
Sesotho
Setswana
tselanathoko
pheifomente
tselanathoko `pavement'
santa
lehlabathe
motlhaba
`sand'
...............................................................................................................................................
...............................................................................................................................................
...............................................................................................................................................
...............................................................................................................................................
...............................................................................................................................................
Feedback
The odd one out in the words for `pavement' is Sesotho pheifomente, which if you say
out loud, you will realise is a borrowing from English. The same applies to Sepedi santa
`sand', which is borrowed from English/Afrikaans. Borrowing happens readily when
languages are in contact with one another, and borrowed forms need to be disregarded
when trying to establish whether languages are related or not, as these would be words
that entered the language later, superseding earlier words.
__________________________________________________________________________
One example of a language family that you may know is the family of languages known
as Romance languages, including French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and many
others. All these languages derive from Latin, the language of ancient Rome (founded in
753 BC). The political success of the Romans turned Latin into a world language
because as the armies of the Romans invaded other territories, they imposed their
language on the people they conquered. Latin was used in all the parts of the Roman
Empire and it became the dominant language of Western Europe until the end of the 5th
century AD. After the Roman Empire collapsed and was overrun by other tribes, Latin
came into contact with numerous foreign forms and began to change.
During the Middle Ages, the Roman Catholic Church continued to use Latin. All church
services and ceremonies were conducted in Latin, and it was the language spoken in
monasteries. As these places were the main centres of learning during the Middle Ages,
Latin became the language of scholars. By the 16th century Latin was used all over
Europe by scholars, diplomats and scientists.
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25
While the Classical written Latin was used in the church, the everyday spoken Latin
(lingua Romana) started to undergo changes in the former provinces of Rome. In each
province a particular dialect or variety of lingua Romana began to develop. Within a few
hundred years, speakers of Latin in Spain, France and Italy could no longer understand
one another because the dialects had changed so much. Over the centuries these
varieties of Latin developed into the various Romance languages. Now, centuries after
the Roman Empire ceased to exist, traces of Latin can still be found in French, Italian,
Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian, as well as in other languages that have developed
from Latin. By comparing the following words for the numbers 1, 2 and 3, you can see for
yourself that the following languages all stem from and are all related to Latin.
Latin
French
Italian
Spanish
Portuguese
Romanian
1. unus
2. duo
3. tres
un
deux
trois
uno
due
tre
uno
dois
tres
um
dos
trez
un
doi
trei
Task 2.2
(a)
Have a look at the following sentences, all of which mean the same thing. Three of
the five are from the language family known as Germanic. Which ones belong to the
Germanic family and which two examples are unrelated? You could also try and
guess the five languages just for fun ...
1. This is a good book.
2. Mae hwn yn llyfr da.
3. Dies ist ein gutes Buch.
4. Dit is 'n goeie boek.
5. Ez egy jo
ko
nyv.
...............................................................................................................................................
26
...............................................................................................................................................
...............................................................................................................................................
...............................................................................................................................................
...............................................................................................................................................
...............................................................................................................................................
(b) The Germanic language family probably originated some time around 500 BC in
northern Europe. What would the ancestor language of Germanic be known as?
...............................................................................................................................................
Feedback
Examples 1 (English), 3 (German) and 4 (Afrikaans) are from the Germanic language
family while 2 (Welsh) and 5 (Hungarian) are not. Many of the words are similar in these
three Germanic languages, for example book, Buch and boek. In question (b) the
ancestor language of all the Germanic languages would be known as proto-Germanic,
just as the ancestor language of the Romance languages is proto-Romance.
__________________________________________________________________________
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27
FIGURE 2.1
Simplified family tree of the present-day languages of the Indo-European language family
Proto-Indo-European
Celtic,
e.g.
Welsh,
Irish
Gaelic
Germanic
North
Germanic,
e.g.
Swedish,
Danish
West
Germanic,
e.g.
English,
German,
Yiddish,
Dutch,
Afrikaans
East
Germanic,
e.g.
Gothic
Italic or
Romance
e.g.
Spanish,
French,
Italian
Greek
Albanian
BaltoSlavic, e.g.
Russian,
Bulgarian,
Lithuanian
Armenian
IndoIranian,
e.g.
Persian,
Urdu,
Hindi,
Gujarati
The Indo-European language family consists of over 400 languages spoken from Ireland
all the way across Europe and into northern India (the diagram above represents the
language families in approximately their west-to-east distribution). Some of its branches,
like Tocharian and Anatolian, are no longer spoken and are not represented in the
diagram above. Some branches like Germanic and Indo-Iranian contain large numbers
of languages and several distinct sub-branches as indicated for the Germanic branch.
Other branches, like Greek, consist of just a single language.
28
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29
ten:decem, tooth:dens and so on. The more correspondences we find, the more
certain we become that the languages concerned are genetically related.
When we have assembled correspondences from two or more related languages,
we can begin to draw conclusions about the parent from which they sprang. ... We
take the majority verdict as our major guideline, and then check that we have not
proposed anything that is phonetically implausible. For example, a number of IndoEuropean languages have s at the beginning of certain words. English has six,
seven, sun, salt, sow (`female pig').Latin has sex, septem, sol, sal, sus and so on.
Greek, however, has an h in place of the expected s, with hex, hepta, helios, hals,
hus. Since Greek is the odd one out, we conclude that the original sound was
probably s, and that Greek changed an original s to h. We confirm that s to h is a
fairly common development (and note that the reverse, h to s, is unheard of). Our
hypothesis can therefore stand. We shall of course look for further corroborative
evidence, and amend our theory if we find any counter evidence.
What Aitchison describes here is the method known as comparative historical
reconstruction. This is one of the methods that has been used by linguists since the
nineteenth century to classify related languages and language families. According to
Harrison (2003:214), there are three major goals of comparative historical linguistics:
. To identify instances of genetic relatedness amongst languages
. To explore the history of individual languages
. To develop a theory of linguistic change.
Historical linguists view the last goal as the most important. According to Harrison
(2003:214), the kinds of questions a theory of linguistic change would try to answer
include Are there some kinds of linguistic change that are impossible or improbable? Are
some kinds more likely to happen than others? How does linguistic change begin? and
How does linguistic change move through linguistic communities? Some of these
questions will be discussed in more detail in later study units.
In the quote from Aitchison above, she mentions that in order to claim that two
languages are related, borrowing must be ruled out as the reason for similarities between
words in two languages. In practice, this is sometimes difficult to do. However Campbell
(2003:273) mentions that basic vocabulary (such as words for family members and body
parts) is less likely to be affected by borrowing than cultural vocabulary referring to the
manmade objects and cultural practices of the language group, and is therefore better
for establishing similarities than cultural vocabulary. Besides mistaking borrowed forms
for related terms, two other possible pitfalls that linguists might face when attempting
comparative historical reconstruction are illustrated by the following task.
Task 2.3
Historical linguist Doug Deep has made the following claims in the latest issue of the
South African Journal of Historical Linguistics. Do you see any problems with his claims in
(a) and (b) below?
30
(a)
The similar words for `mother' and `me' in six South African languages show that
these languages are related:
Zulu
Sesotho
Xhosa
Setswana
Afrikaans
Sepedi
`mother'
umama
mme
umama
mme
ma
mma
`me'
mina
nna
mna
nna
ek
nna
...............................................................................................................................................
...............................................................................................................................................
...............................................................................................................................................
(b) Further proof of genetic relatedness comes from the similar words for the words
`cry', `whisper' and `motorbike' in these languages.
Zulu
Sesotho
Xhosa
Setswana
Afrikaans
Sepedi
`cry'
-khala
lla
-khala/-lila
lela
huil
lla
`whisper'
-hlebeza
seba
-sebeza
seba
fluister
sebela
sethuuthuu
motorfiets
ethuthuthu
...............................................................................................................................................
...............................................................................................................................................
...............................................................................................................................................
...............................................................................................................................................
Feedback
One trap that Doug Deep has fallen into in (a) is that he has used babytalk-type words to
support his claims of alleged relatedness. You may remember from LIN1502
Multilingualism that children across the world tend to use repeated syllables containing
sounds like m, p, b, n and d in their first words as these are some of the easiest sounds
to produce. According to Campbell (2003:273):
it has been recognized for centuries that nursery formations (so-called Lallwo
rter,
the mama-nana-papa-dada-caca sort of words) should be avoided in considerations of potential linguistic affinities, since these typically share a high degree of
cross-linguistic similarity which is not due to common ancestry.
You may also have noticed that the Afrikaans term ek (and fluister and motorfiets in (b)) is
not in fact similar to the others, so Doug should not have included Afrikaans as part of
the alleged language family.
In data set (b) Doug has used onomatopoeic words where the sound of the word
imitates the thing it describes. So all the words for `motorbike' (except Afrikaans
motorfiets) imitate the repetitive engine sound and all the words for `whisper' start with
hissing (`fricative') sounds like s and hl. Onomatopoeic words for animal noises, bird
sounds and verbs referring to crying, hitting, shouting, whispering, snoring, etc. are
LIN2602
31
frequently similar across languages, simply because they attempt to replicate natural
sounds.
As with borrowed terms, babytalk words and onomatopoeic forms must therefore be
disregarded when comparing languages using comparative historical reconstruction.
This is because cross-linguistic similarities may occur in these words which are not due
to historical relatedness.
__________________________________________________________________________
Berber
Arabic
Songhay
Hausa
Fulani
Yoruba
Amharic
Igbo
Oromo
Lingala
Kongo
Niger-Congo B (Bantu)
Khoi-San
Austronesian
lag
Niger-Congo A
Chewa
Showa
Ma
Nilo-Saharan
asy
Swahili
Afro-Asiatic
Sotho
Xhosa
Afrikaans
(Indo-European)
32
Task 2.4
Have a look at the following basic words in six African languages (data from McGregor
2009:308).
Gloss
Bemba
Kanuri
Chichewa
Shona
Swahili
`woman'
umwaanakashi
umwaaume
-tatu
ameenshi
-kulu
-suma
umuti
kamu
mkazi
mukadzi
mwanamke
kwa
yaskI
nji
kura
ngIla
kIska
mwamuna
-tatu
madzi
-kulu
-bwino
mtengo
murume
-tatu
mvura
-kuru
-naka
muti
mwanamme
tatu
maji
kubwa
nzuri
mti
`man'
`three'
`water'
`big'
`good'
`tree'
(a)
(b) What does the little hyphen mean at the beginning of the words -tatu and -kulu
and -suma in Bemba?
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
Feedback
There are many resemblances between all the languages with the exception of Kanuri.
For example, the word for `three' is the same in Bemba, Chichewa, Shona and Swahili.
The word for `tree' has the letters m and t and the word for `man' has the letters mwa in
three of these four. The word for `big' is similar in all five of the languages, but this is the
only word where Kanuri is similar to the other four. If you were a historical linguist, you
could therefore tentatively group Bemba, Chichewa, Shona and Swahili together as
related languages, even if you had no knowledge of the proto-language from which
these derive.
To answer question (b), you need to reflect back to LIN1501 on grammatical patterns
and principles. The hyphen here means that the forms -kulu and -suma in Bemba are
bound morphemes, occurring as part of larger words rather than standing alone.
Because the hyphens are at the beginning, we know that other morphemes would be
attached in front of these morphemes.
__________________________________________________________________________
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33
Nguni,
including Zulu,
Xhosa, Siswati,
Ndebele, etc.
Venda
Sotho, including
Sesotho,
Setswana,
Sepedi
Tsonga,
including
Ronga,
Tonga, Tswa
Inhambane,
including
Chopi and
giTonga
...
34
Prieska, some of whom knew very little of their language. Several other San languages,
including /'Auni and Khomani were spoken in South Africa but have largely been wiped
out as their speakers were killed or merged with Afrikaans-speaking or Bantu-speaking
language groups (Traill 2002:36).
Traill (2002:29) explains some of the history of the Khoe languages in South Africa:
In the early seventeenth century there were about eleven closely similar Cape
Khoekhoe varieties spoken from the Cape of Good Hope in the west, along the
southern Cape coast and its hinterland as far east as the Fish River (Elphick
1985:51). Estimates of the number of all South African Khoekhoe (including the
Nama) in 1652 vary between 100,000 (Elphick 1985:23) and 200,000 (Wilson
1969:68). Within sixty years of that date `the traditional Khoekhoe economy, social
structure, and political order had almost entirely collapsed' (Elphick 1985:xvii), and
smallpox epidemics in 1713, 1735 and 1767 had ravaged the population, wiping
out virtually all the western Cape Khoekhoe. And within 100 years of 1652, the
western Cape Khoekhoe language had begun to disappear, being gradually
replaced by Khoe-Dutch (Nienaber 1963:97ff), and the Eastern Khoekhoe varieties
had been absorbed by Xhosa through political incorporation of the Khoekhoe
chiefdoms (Marai 1968:111).
This is the dramatic background to the extinction of the Cape Khoekhoe and the
death of their language. However, far from vanishing without a trace, the Cape
Khoekhoe have had a profound effect on the genetic features of many South
Africans. Their language has exerted an influence on the development of Afrikaans
and has extensively restructured the phonological systems of Xhosa and Zulu,
greatly enriching the lexicons of these two languages in the process.
Examples of Khoekhoe words include dagga, karos, kierie, kudu, kwagga and eina. They
became part of various varieties of Afrikaans very early on and were later borrowed into
South African English. A number of place names and words of Khoekhoe origin are given
below.
LIN2602
Gamka
Keiskamma
Tsitsikamma
`clear stream'
Karoo
`dry'
Kareedouw
35
Task 2.5
Match the languages on the left to their appropriate language families on the right.
Latin
Khoesan
Nama
Romanian
Tsonga
Xhosa
English
Bantu
/Xam
Greek
Ndebele
Indo-European
/'Auni
Hindi
Feedback
Nama, /Xam and /'Auni fall into the Khoesan family. Tsonga, Xhosa and Ndebele are
Bantu languages and Latin, Romanian, English, Greek and Hindi are Indo-European
languages.
__________________________________________________________________________
36
in the world). These include the Nama speakers in the Richtersveld, Gordonia and
Namaqualand and a handful of speakers of /'Auni and Khomani near the Kalahari
Gemsbok Park.
Because of our colonial heritage, over the past three and a half centuries a considerable
number of European languages have been brought to this country and have taken root
here in varying degrees, for example, English, Dutch, Portuguese, German and Italian.
The first 80 Dutch settlers arrived in the Cape in 1652, bringing with them various dialects
of Dutch. The Dutch settlers came into contact with the indigenous people who were
speakers of Khoe languages and owned cattle which they traded with the Dutch. As time
went on, the need for more food and supplies arose and more Dutch settlers arrived in
the country to work as farmers. Slaves were brought to South Africa from Dutch colonies
in the East to supply additional labour for these farms. Many of these slaves spoke
Malay-Portuguese, a type of pidgin Portuguese spoken by Malay speakers to
communicate with Portuguese traders, soldiers and sailors. However a simplified form
of Dutch, influenced by Malay-Portuguese, was often used as a lingua franca (language
used for communication between speakers of different mother tongues) amongst the
slaves. Gradually this variety of Dutch was adopted as the mother tongue of the slaves
and they lost the ability to speak their original mother tongues. That was the beginning of
a variety of Dutch called Cape Afrikaans (Kaapse Afrikaans). Remnants of MalayPortuguese can still be seen in present-day Afrikaans in common words such as:
baie
`much, very'
koejawel
`guava'
makou
`a type of duck'
blatjang
`chutney'
bobotie
sosatie
`kebab'
piesang
`banana'
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37
We also have small groups of speakers of a number of Indian and Asian languages.
Mesthrie (2002:161) describes the sociohistory of the Indian languages in South Africa,
from the arrival of 150 000 Indian farm workers between 1860 and 1911. Among the
languages that these workers spoke were the Indo-European language Hindi, as well as
Telugu and Tamil from the south of India (Mesthrie 2002:161). These languages were
used as home languages until the 1960s, but are being increasingly replaced with
English, though many younger speakers can still understand their heritage language and
continue to use it for cultural and religious purposes.
Task 2.6
Look at the following chart reflecting numbers of speakers of the 11 official languages in
South Africa in 2001 and answer the questions that follow:
FIGURE 2.6: First home language by number of speakers
(based on data from Statistics South Africa, 2001 Census in brief downloaded from
http://www.statssa.gov.za/census01/html/).
(a)
What are the three most spoken home languages in South Africa?
.......................................................................................................................................
(b) Which three languages have almost the same number of speakers?
.......................................................................................................................................
(c)
Which language has less than a million speakers? (Hint: there is only one)
.......................................................................................................................................
38
(d) Approximately how many South Africans speak Sepedi as a home language?
.......................................................................................................................................
(e)
Approximately how many South Africans speak a language from the Bantu
language family as their first home language? (Hint: There were a total of 45 million
people in South Africa according to the 2001 census)
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
Feedback
The three most spoken home languages in South Africa are Zulu, followed by Xhosa,
followed by Afrikaans. Sesotho, Setswana and English all have approximately the same
number of speakers with approximately 3,5 million speakers each. The only official
language with under a million speakers is Ndebele (Venda and Siswati have just over a
million each). The chart shows that there are just over 4 million Sepedi speakers (4,2
million according to the data). To answer (e) you need to know that all the South African
languages except English and Afrikaans are Bantu languages (see section 2.5.1). The
chart shows that there are about 6 million Afrikaans speakers and about 3,5 million
English speakers and a small number of speakers of unspecified `other' languages. The
hint tells you that there were 45 million people in South Africa at the time, of which 9,5
million were not Bantu language speakers. So about 35,5 million South Africans have a
language from the Bantu language family as their home language.
__________________________________________________________________________
2.7 Summary
We saw in this study unit that movements of people over time can result in languages
dividing into separate dialects that continue to change until they become separate
languages. The result is a language family a cluster of languages that have a common
parent language and are therefore all related to one another. We discussed the IndoEuropean language family, a large family of over 400 languages spoken from Ireland all
the way across Europe and into northern India. All its subfamilies, including the
Germanic, Romance, Celtic and Indic languages, are derived from a single common
ancestor language, Proto-Indo-European.
Building up a picture of the proto-language is one of the tasks of the branch of
Linguistics known as comparative historical linguistics. Because sound changes tend to
be consistent or regular rather than haphazard, sound correspondences between words
with similar meanings in two different languages suggest that the languages are related.
The more correspondences we find, the more certain we become that the languages are
genetically related. However, it is important to rule out cases of borrowing, which lead to
similar words even in unrelated languages. Babytalk and onomatopoeic words should
LIN2602
39
also be disregarded when attempting to prove genetic relatedness, since these typically
share a high degree of cross-linguistic similarity which is not due to common ancestry.
Among the African language families that we focused on were the small Khoesan family,
which is made up of three unrelated groups of languages, the Northern (e.g. Ju), Central
or Khoe (including Nama, Cape Khoekhoe etc.) and Southern families (including /Xam,
/'Auni and Khomani). Most of these languages are extinct or highly threatened. We also
looked at the very large Niger-Congo family, and in particular at the Bantu language
subfamily, which includes all the African languages spoken in South Africa. The Bantu
language family is found in the southern half of Africa, stretching from Cameroon to
Kenya and southwards to South Africa.
We concluded the study unit with a look at South Africa's multilingual language profile.
Among our 11 official languages we have nine languages belonging to the Southern
Bantu language family: Zulu, Xhosa, Sepedi, Setswana, Sesotho, Tsonga, Siswati, Venda
and Ndebele. Colonisation also left us with English and Afrikaans, a dialect of Dutch
which developed over time into an independent language.
Further reading
Aitchison, J. 2001. Language Change: Progress or Decay? (third edition). Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Crystal, D. 2010. The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Language. (third edition). New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
50
51
52
54
Families of languages
The Indo-European family
Other families
Language change
Skotnes, P. 2007. Claim to the Country: the archive of Lucy Lloyd and Wilhelm Bleek.
Johannesburg & Cape Town: Jacana and Athens: Ohio University Press.
40
Study Unit 3
New words
`Words are the leaves of the tree of language, of which,
if some fall away, a new succession takes their place.'
John French (Earl of Ypres 18521925)
OUTCOMES
After you have worked through this study unit you will be able to
1
2
3
4
derivation
inflection
conversion
clipping
blending
acronym
In a nutshell
In this study unit we will look at how and why new words emerge in languages all the
time and at some specific word-formation processes that give rise to these new
words. By creating, borrowing, combining and recombining words in new ways,
languages can be endlessly novel in the words they use to describe our continually
changing world and worldviews.
3.1 Introduction
One of the most noticeable examples of language change is the appearance of new
words in a language.In this study unit we will look at how and why new words emerge in
languages all the time. We will also look into some specific word-formation processes
that give rise to these new words.
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Read the following article on some of the new lexemes that have recently been included
in Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary for the first time:
The following new words were found on a website called Wordspy that aims to keep
track of new words. Whether these will survive long enough to become an established
part of the language and appear in future dictionary editions remains to be seen.
42
NEW
Janopause
n. The practice of abstaining from alcohol for the month of January. Also: janopause.
NEW
ineptocracy
brightsizing
n. Corporate downsizing in which the brightest workers are let go. Also: bright-sizing.
Downloaded 18 January 2012 from http://www.wordspy.com/
So where do all these new words come from? Many of them are in fact existing words
that have acquired new meanings by the process of semantic change. As we saw in
Study Unit 1, semantic change can include broadening or narrowing of an existing term
and semantic shift. For example, the word cougar in the Merriam-Webster article has
broadened from its initial meaning of `puma' (an American wild cat) to include a
secondary meaning, `a middle-aged woman seeking a romantic relationship with a
younger man', and tweet now also refers to short electronic communication `chirps' as
well as a bird's chirping. But many of the other words are completely new to English, for
example crowdsourcing and brightsizing. Before we look at some of the ways in which
words can enter a language for the first time, we need to look in more detail at what we
mean by a `word' in Linguistics.
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Task 3.1
Here are some more examples of lexemes and their associated word forms. Try and
think of three more examples from your own language and write them in below:
English
Sepedi
Zulu
DIVE
GO
CHILD
child, children
RUTA
THANDA
...............................................................................................................................................
...............................................................................................................................................
...............................................................................................................................................
Feedback
Don't forget to write lexemes in capital letters and to provide glosses for each word form
if your examples are in a language other than English.
__________________________________________________________________________
As we saw above, new lexemes in a language are created all the time, noted by ordinary
people, by websites that like to keep tabs on new usages and eventually by the
publishers of dictionaries. The first and possibly most obvious source of new lexemes is
to take these from other languages by the process known as borrowing, although of
course, these words are copied rather than borrowed with the intention of being
returned ...
3.3 Borrowing
Since about three-quarters of the world population is multilingual, people often come
across words (usually nouns) in another language that they like or find particularly useful
or that have no equivalents in their own language. They then take these words over into
their own language, either exactly as they are or with a degree of phonological
adjustment to make them easier to pronounce in the target language. For example,
English borrowed the word cougar in its original sense of `puma' from the Guarani
language of Paraguay, changing it in the process from Guarani cuguac
uarana to simply
cougar.
African language speakers in South Africa will be very aware of all the borrowed words
from English and Afrikaans that have entered their languages as a result of two centuries
44
of daily contact between language groups: Zulu and Sepedi, for example, have borrowed
words like the following:
Zulu
Sepedi
isuthikesi
`suitcase'
isudi
`suit'
ujinja
`ginger'
isositshi
`sausage'
ibandeshi
`bandage'
sutu
`suit'
lepokisi
`box'
mmasepala
`municipality'
Borrowing also occurs in the opposite direction, with Northern Sotho words like lekgotla
`a conference' or Zulu words like muti `medicine', fundi `expert' and eish `an exclamation
meaning something like ``oh dear'' entering South African English.
Afrikaans has also borrowed from many world languages as you can see from the
following examples (adapted from https://aie.ned.univie.ac.at/node/13021 and glossed):
French:
German:
Portuguese:
Khoekhoe:
Malay:
Bantu:
English speakers `have long been among the most enthusiastic borrowers of other
people's words on earth, and many, many thousands of English words have been
acquired in just this way' (Millar 2007:22). These days, English is itself a language of
prestige and borrowings are therefore pouring from English into languages like French,
German, Spanish, Italian and Japanese in vast numbers (Millar 2007:24).
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Task 3.2
(a)
Spot the English borrowings in this excerpt from a German fashion magazine. You
don't need to know any German to do this!
Retro-Kurven zu sexy Taille
Schlank schummeln: Retro-Formen treffen auf Colour-Blocking, wertvolle
Edelsteinfarben werden kontrastiert mit fro
hlichen Polka-Dots. Wir zeigen die
Highlights der Dessous-Trends im Herbst.
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
(b) Take a dictionary of your own language that mentions the origins of words as well as
their meanings. Choose a page at random and write down all the borrowed words
and the languages they come from. These will usually be indicated in some way
after the word as coming from another language, e.g. Afrikaans or [Arabic].
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
Feedback
Fashion magazines all over the world are borrowing English words like `supermodel', `in'
and `catwalk'. The German extract, although it is very short, uses English retro, sexy,
colour-blocking, polka-dots, highlights and trends. The full translation is as follows:
Retro-curves for a sexy figure
Slender alternatives: Colour-blocking highlights retro figures, precious gem colours
are contrasted with cheerful polka dots. We show you the highlights of the lingerie
trends for autumn.
For question (b), the page I chose from The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (1993)
has Tempranillo `a grape variety' from Spanish, temps `a ballet step' and temps perdu
46
`the irretrievable past' from French, tempura `food fried in a light batter' from Japanese
and temura `a method of interpreting the Hebrew scriptures' from Hebrew. The fact that
all of these are in the dictionary means that they have been borrowed and have now
come to be used as an accepted part of the English language.
A random page from Doke, Malcolm, Sikakana and Vilakazi's English-Zulu Zulu-English
Dictionary (1990) has borrowings such as -pristi from English `priest', -profetha from
English `prophet', -pulangwe from Afrikaans plank `plank', -pulani from English `plan',
-pulata from English `plate', -puluho from Afrikaans ploeg `plough', -pulupiti from English
`pulpit' and -punu from English `spoon'.
__________________________________________________________________________
3.4 Compounding
Another frequent technique for building new words is through compounding the
joining together of two or more complete words to make longer words like sandcastle,
cell phone, suntan lotion, world-class, or do-it-yourself. Compounds can be written as
single words, hyphenated or written with spaces in between, but what they have in
common is that they always combine existing full words (not morphemes) and combine
their meanings in some way to create a new concept.
. Head-initial compounds have the main element (or head) of the compound as the
first element of the compound, for example a Toyota Corolla is a kind of Toyota, where
Toyota is the head of the compound. These are rare in English, but common in other
languages. In Sepedi mothomoso `black person' is a head-initial compound formed
from motho `person' + moso `black'. In Xhosa, umninimzi `head of a homestead' is a
compound formed by combining umnini `owner' and umzi `homestead'. Umninimzi
refers to a particular kind of owner (not a kind of homestead), and umnini `owner' is
therefore the head of the compound. Another Xhosa head-initial compound is
intakomlilo (`Southern red bishop'), which refers to a kind of bird and is formed by
combining intaka (`bird') and umlilo `fire').
. Head-final compounds have the main element of the compound as the last element
of the compound. English tends to prefer head-final compounds, like tree house (a
type of house, where house is the head of the compound) and yellowwood tree (a
type of tree, where tree is the head of the compound).
. Some compounds have two heads, with both parts of the compound carrying equal
weight, e.g. bittersweet or blue-green.
. Some compounds have no head. For example, the word forget-me-not is a type of
flower, but the word flower doesn't occur in the compound at all, so there is no head.
Putt-putt is a game of miniature golf, but there is no head as the word game or golf
does not appear in the compound. The Sepedi for `donkey' is molahlwaleboya, which
literally means `discarded skin', from molahlwa `discard, throw away' + boya `skin'.
Task 3.3
Circle the heads (main elements) in the following compounds and decide whether they
are head-initial, head-final, have two heads or no head. Look at the glosses if the
compounds are in language other than English.
Italian
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47
Chinese
bok choy `Chinese cabbage' from bok `white' and choy `vegetable'
Afrikaans
Zulu
English
vacuum cleaner
English
spring clean
English
Colgate-Palmolive
Welsh
Feedback
Italian guastafeste is a compound with no head, as it refers to a kind of person who
spoils the fun. Zulu ugandaganda `tractor' is also a compound without a head as it is a
kind of machine that `treads hard' but does not include a word meaning `machine' or
`vehicle' in the compound. Since there is no head in these compounds, you didn't need
to circle anything here.
Bok choy is a kind of `choy' or `vegetable' so it is head-final, as are vacuum cleaner (a
type of cleaner) and spring clean (a type of cleaning) and Afrikaans vraagteken, which
refers to a kind of mark `teken' used for punctuation. You should have circled the final
element of all of these compounds.
Welsh brws danedd is a head-initial compound, as it refers to a kind of brws `brush'. The
head is therefore brws.
The company name Colgate-Palmolive is a compound with two equal heads, both of
which should have been circled.
__________________________________________________________________________
3.5 Derivation
Besides compounding or taking over entire terms from other languages, a very common
method for creating new words is by the process known as derivation. As you learned in
LIN1501 Grammatical patterns and principles, derivation is the process of creating new
words by adding affixes (prefixes and suffixes) to existing words. So from the lexeme
LINGUIST we can create new words such as linguistics, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics and so on. From the lexeme HUMAN we can create new words such as
humanist, humanities, humanitarian, inhuman and many more. Derivation produces
completely new lexemes with a new meaning HUMANIST, HUMANITY, HUMANITARIAN, INHUMAN. This distinguishes it from the process known as inflection where the
alternative word forms which have a purely grammatical function, such as human for the
singular and humans for the plural.
There are three other important differences between inflection and derivation:
. Derivation causes a change of meaning. A human is not the same as a humanist.
. Derivation sometimes changes the part of speech of a word, e.g. from noun to verb.
For example, human is a noun, but inhuman is an adjective meaning `cruel'. Inflection
never changes the category of a word, so human and humans are both nouns.
48
. Inflectional affixes tend to have a regular meaning. For example, the plural-s in English
always changes a singular noun into a plural noun wherever it appears. The-s in the
word creates, changes the verb create into a third person singular verb form that goes
with he, she or it. Derivational affixes are less regular in meaning. The -ist of pianist
seems to refer to `someone who competently uses' the piano, as does the -ist of
violinist and typist. But the -ist of oral hygienist doesn't refer to someone who
competently uses oral hygiene, but rather to someone who cleans their teeth to
promote oral hygiene. And a humanist can mean either `someone concerned with the
wellbeing of people' or `a person who believes in human rather than supernatural
morality' or `a student of Roman and Greek culture'. The precise meaning of the
derivational affix -ist is therefore very difficult to define and seems to have several
different meanings.
These distinctions between inflection and derivation are summarised for you in the table
below:
Inflection
Examples of
inflection
Derivation
Examples of
derivation
Inflection creates
new word forms of
the same lexeme
language ? languages.
Derivation creates
new lexemes with a
completely new
meaning.
Inflection never
changes the part of
speech of a word.
language = noun
languages =
noun
educate = verb
education = noun
Inflectional affixes
tend to have a regular meaning
The -s indicates
the plural form.
Derivational affixes
are less regular in
meaning
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49
Greek prefixes
Greek lexemes/roots
Greek suffixes
a(n)ant(i)diaexepiprotomonoditri-
ot(o)rhin(o)laryng(o)phobos
hydrobios
phonos
algesi(a)
hem(ato)
path(y)
cardi(o)
tele
cyclos
demos
kratia
-itis
-ology
-otomy
`not'
`against'
`through'
`from, out of'
`upon'
`first'
`one'
`two'
`three'
`ear'
`nose'
`throat'
`fear'
`water'
`life'
`sound'
`pain'
`blood'
`disease'
`heart'
`far'
`circle'
`the people'
`power'
`inflammation'
`the study of'
`to cut'
Task 3.4
(a)
Try to work out the meaning of the following English terms after looking at the table
of Greek prefixes, roots and suffixes above.
otorhinolaryngitis
telephone
hydrophobia
analgesic
democracy
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
(b) Think of an English word that contains each of the following Greek prefixes and
write it down alongside:
50
a(n)-
`not'
ant(i)-
`against'
dia-
`through'
ex-
epi-
`upon'
proto-
`first'
mono-
`one'
(c)
di-
`two'
tri-
`three'
Now devise a new word for `the fear you feel when you are about to write your first
phonology exam' ... Would this be an example of inflection or derivation?
.......................................................................................................................................
Feedback
If otitis means `inflammation of the ear', rhinitis means `inflammation of the nose', and
laryngitis means an `inflamed throat', then otorhinolaryngitis means `inflammation of the
ear, nose and throat'. The next time you see this word on a doctor's certificate, do not
think that the patient is very ill, s/he merely has a common cold! A telephone is an
instrument for `hearing sounds far away', hydrophobia is `fear of water', an analgesic
(literally `without pain') refers to something like aspirin that is used to lessen pain.
Democracy (literally `people's power') is a form of a government in which the people
have a voice in the exercise of power.
Question (b) has many possible answers, including amoral, anti-apartheid, diagonal,
exodus, epidural, prototype, monocle, dilemma, tricycle, etc. For (c) I suggest
protophonologophobia, but you may have other suggestions! This word would be an
example of a novel derivation. We know it is formed by derivation, not inflection, as it
creates a new lexeme with a new meaning.
__________________________________________________________________________
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Task 3.5
(a)
Have another look at the following new words mentioned in the Introduction to this
study unit. Can you identify the word-formation process that was used to create
each of these words? Choose from borrowing, compounding, derivation,
conversion, clipping, blending and acronyms.
social media
crowdsourcing
m-commerce
helicopter parent
Janopause
(b) Now try and identify the word-formation process for these new words:
happify
.......................................................................................................................................
regifting
.......................................................................................................................................
blog
.......................................................................................................................................
blog
.......................................................................................................................................
BRICS
.......................................................................................................................................
Karaoke
.......................................................................................................................................
Feedback
52
social media
compound
crowdsourcing
compound
m-commerce
helicopter parent
compound
Janopause
happify
regifting
blog
blog
BRICS
acronym
karaoke
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Despite the exotic origins of the word taboo, the notions of things sacred and
unmentionable occurs at every level of civilization and in all kinds of environments.
Feared or prohibited semantic areas vary greatly, including the name of God,
reference to death, disease, madness, being crippled, as well as such common
aspects of physicality as copulation, the genitalia and the varieties of excretion,
even the most trivial of embarrassments, which in some societies include reference
to underclothes and humble occupations.
(Hughes 2000:44)
The apartheid government (like other oppressive regimes) was notorious for its
continually-changing set of euphemisms. The word apartheid (literally `separateness'),
possibly coined around 1917 (Hughes 1995:2) replaced the word segregation, and
became the rallying cry of Nationalists calling for racial separation of whites, blacks,
Indians and coloureds in South Africa. The word apartheid later gained a set of
euphemistic variants, including separate development, plural democracy and multinationalism. As Hughes commented drily in a 1987 article in the Star `The fact remains,
however, that more is needed than semantic subterfuge to remove a system so
iniquitous, ubiquitous and tenacious'. As our society becomes more and more politically
correct, we are using euphemisms not just for vulgar or unmentionable topics, but for
issues like poverty and race.
`Western society has since added other areas of taboo, such as matters of race,
financial collapse, poverty, going to prison, even trivialities which include fatness
and shortness. Hence terms like ethnic for racial, coloured folk for blacks, technical
correction for crash, recession for slump, financially underprivileged for poor ...
These are clearly more conscious, indeed highly contrived, part of the explicit
agendas of political correctness.
(Hughes 2000:49)
Task 3.6
(a)
Look back at section 3.7 and list three different reasons why languages might need
new words.
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
(b) Keep a list here of 10 new words you encounter in your own language over the next
few months. Write down where you heard them, e.g. on the radio, in a magazine,
from a friend etc. and the word-formation process used in each case:
54
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
Feedback
New words are needed when a language group encounters something for the first time,
possibly a new piece of technology or a new disease, or even a new issue that has
recently arisen, like cyberbullying. Words can also be borrowed from high status
languages for reasons of prestige, because they sound more impressive than the
existing words or because they capture a shade of meaning that is not present in the
existing word. New words are also sometimes deliberately coined when the old words
develop negative connotations and are then avoided by speakers. You may have some
other ideas on this topic.
__________________________________________________________________________
3.8 Summary
We began our investigation of new words by distinguishing between different word forms
of a single word, and the underlying abstract lexeme that links these related forms
together. New lexemes are created all the time, and this study unit focused on different
word-creation strategies that languages can draw on when creating new terms. Words
can be adopted from other languages by the process known as borrowing, or
alternatively two or more complete words can be combined in some way to create a new
compound. A third very common method for creating new words is by the process
known as derivation adding affixes to existing words, and we tried to draw a clear
distinction between the two morphological processes of derivation and inflection. Other
word-creation strategies that we identified include conversion turning a word from one
part of speech into another part of speech without adding any derivational affixes,
clipping or shortening words, blending parts of words to form a new word, or using the
initial letters of a phrase to form an acronym.
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We also discussed why languages might require new words. In many cases, a new word
becomes necessary to refer to something that is completely new to a particular language
community, but new words may also be borrowed or coined for reasons of prestige, or
for replacing words that are taboo or have acquired negative connotations.
Further reading
Aitchison, J. 2001. Language Change: Progress or Decay? (third edition). Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Crystal, D. 2010. The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Language. (third edition). New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
56
Study Unit 4
Language variation as a source of language
change
`Around the next corner is always a new linguistic experience,
waiting to be observed.'
David Crystal (linguist and author 1941)
OUTCOMES
After you have worked through this study unit you will be able to
1
2
3
4
5
6
explain how particular language varieties reflect social class and social values;
explain the relationship between language variation and language change;
distinguish between change from above and change from below;
reflect on Labov's contribution to sociolinguistics as a discipline;
explain in broad terms how to conduct sociolinguistic research;
explain and illustrate the following concepts:
language variation
linguistic variable
generational change
change from below
change from above
hypothesis
pilot study
methodology
vernacular
variationist theory
In a nutshell
In this study unit we will focus on how variation between different dialects and
sociolects can lead to language change. We will examine some interesting linguistic
research conducted by the renowned American linguist, William Labov in the 1960s.
We begin in Martha's Vineyard, an island off the east coast of the USA. We will
examine the changes that took place in the pronunciation of the islanders. We then
proceed to equally interesting research which Labov conducted on the pronunciation
of New Yorkers.
These two studies represent two different types of language change: change from
below and change from above. These changes are examined within the variationist
theory of language change which asserts that language change is born out of
language variation. We also look at some studies of social variation in the South
African linguistic context and investigate how sociolinguistic research is conducted.
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4.1 Introduction
No language is totally homogeneous. You learnt in the LIN1502 course on Multilingualism
that language can be a powerful marker of individual and group identity. The language
we choose to speak in a particular situation can send subtle messages about how we
choose to portray ourselves and the relations between us and those we are speaking to.
For example, many people control more than one dialect (local accent, word choice and
grammar that marks the geographical area they are from) and can select the most
appropriate dialect for the particular communicative situation in which they find
themselves. A speaker of standard Venda, for example, may prefer to use his Tshironga
(Southern Venda) dialect when returning to his home village or switch to BSAE (Black
South African English) at work. Individuals may choose different vocabulary and
pronunciation depending on who they are addressing, the formality of the situation and
how carefully they are speaking. You might pronounce the word tune as tyoon on some
occasions and as choon on others. You might sometimes say gonna and sometimes say
going to. Or you might be on your best behaviour and want to impress someone by
asking To whom am I speaking? instead of Who am I speaking to?
The different classes within a society are also reflected in language, giving rise to
different sociolects (socially-determined language varieties). Similarly, a slang variety will
mark in-group identity, usually of a younger, non-conservative group in society. Selecting
jargon associated with the workplace will mark one's inclusion in a particular expert
group such as IT professionals, plumbers or linguists. Even men and women use
language in different ways, as do different generations of language speakers. Older
speakers use a more conservative form of the language with some elements that are
falling into disuse, and teenagers tend to use more new forms. In the example below, De
Bose (1992:157) gives the example of a parent using standard American English and the
teenage child using Black American English:
Parent:
Where have you been all day? Where have you been?
Scholar:
At any one point in time there are therefore several different forms of the language that
exist simultaneously. This is referred to as language variation: wherever you look you will
find small differences between speakers in their pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar.
Language variation is therefore a normal feature of any language. (Look back at your
study guide on Multilingualism: The role of language in South Africa if you need to refresh
your memory about different kinds of language variation.)
For generations, linguists had very little idea what to make of this kind of variation.
According to Millar (2007:335):
... The very high degree of variation within a single community was, for the most
part, simply ignored: at best it was considered to be a peripheral and insignificant
aspect of language, no more than erratic and even random departures from the
norms, while at worst it was regarded as a considerable nuisance, as a collection of
tiresome details getting in the way of good descriptions.
(Millar 2007:335)
58
In this study unit we will examine the linguistic research conducted by the renowned
American linguist, William Labov, which changed this view of language forever and
transformed our understanding of language variation and language change. Labov was
one of the pioneers of a new branch of linguistics that was just beginning to establish
itself in the 1960s, namely sociolinguistics:
Sociolinguistics, which may be briefly defined as socially-focused language study,
emerged in the 1960s as a response to the former inattention to social concerns.
The key dynamic in the social study of language is linguistic diversity, that is,
differences in language form. A central concern of the discipline of sociolinguistics
is the way in which these linguistic differences mirror social differences. Given the
fact that some hierarchical ranking of differences within populations seems to be a
universal of human societies, it is not surprising that language should be exploited
as a resource for marking social boundaries. Such exploitation may be conscious
or unconscious. At the same time that this boundary-marking function of language
variety operates at the level of the social group and may be used by the group to
distinguish between us and those who are not us, the sociolinguist recognises that
language simultaneously functions as a cultural resource for individuals who are
engaged in a constant process of (re)negotiating individual social roles and
relationships. Language diversity acts at once, then, as a social resource (in
shaping social action) and as a social problem (at the level of the nation-state
where linguistic diversity is often seen as a barrier to the integration of populations).
(Herbert 1992:12)
An important reason for studying variation within a language is that it provides us with
evidence about language change in action and about how far changes have progressed,
as well as where and by whom these changes have been taken up.
The two articles we focus on deal with the changes in pronunciation of the speech
sounds (aw) and (ay) on the island of Martha's Vineyard, USA, and the pronunciation of
the (r)-sound in New York. The basic research methods and principles in these articles,
focusing on observing variation among speakers of different ages and classes, are still in
use in sociolinguistic research today.
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America, a fact deeply resented by some of the old inhabitants. The rural, western part of
the island around Chilmark is known as Up-Island. Most of the original population of the
island live in Up-Island, working in the fishing industry.
FIGURE 4.1: Martha's Vineyard
60
Labov plotted the results of the (aw) and (ay) pronunciation survey on a series of charts
showing age, geographical distribution, ethnic group and occupation. These comparisons showed that geographically, the centralised vowels were far more widespread in
the rural, western Up-Island than in the more densely populated Down-Island. In terms of
occupational groups, it was the fishermen whose speech showed the highest number of
local diphthongs. In other words, the change was most noticeable in the speech of the
fishermen. Unlike earlier generations of linguists, Labov was not satisfied with identifying
the existence of this variation, but believed there was some underlying reason why
particular speakers chose particular pronunciations.
Task 4.1
Look at the data in the table below and answer the following questions:
FIGURE 4.3: Centralisation of (aw) by age level on Martha's Vineyard (Labov 1972:22)
(a)
Age range
75+
6175
4660
3145
14-30
0,23
0,37
0,44
0,88
0,46
Which two concepts are being mapped against one another in this table?
.......................................................................................................................................
(d) Given the tendencies evident in the data, what would you guess the average
centralisation rating would have been in the 1933 data from 30 years earlier?
.......................................................................................................................................
(e)
Which age group does not fit the general pattern or trend in the data?
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Feedback
To answer (a), you need to look at the title of Table 4.1 and the headings of the columns.
These tell us that the table is mapping age range against average centralisation of the
(aw) variable. To answer questions (b) and (c) you need to refer to the previous page
where it explains Labov's method of assigning every vowel a rating of 0 (no
centralisation), 1, 2, or 3 (maximum centralisation) and then calculating average ratings
between 0 and 3. Lower averages are therefore indicative of less centralisation. Labov's
data indicated that the over 75s showed the least centralisation at an average of 0,23
and the 3145 age group displayed the most, with an average of 0,88. Centralisation is
therefore increasing gradually in Martha's Vineyard. This phenomenon is known as
generational change a language change that increases with each new generation of
speakers.
Because the pattern seems to be one of increasing centralization over time, we could
predict for Question (d) that the data from 30 years earlier would have even less
centralisation than the oldest generation's average of 0,23. In fact the average
centralisation for (aw) for the 4 speakers interviewed in 1933 was just 0,06, indicating
almost no centralisation at all. Surprisingly, the speech of the under-30s was less
affected than that of the 31 to 45-year-olds and doesn't fit the pattern of increasing
centralisation.
__________________________________________________________________________
So what conclusions did Labov draw from these findings? He noted that, compared with
mainland America and Martha's Vineyard in the 1930s, a change was taking place in
certain diphthongs on Martha's Vineyard. This change seemed to be most advanced in
the speech of the Up-Island fishermen. Labov concluded that the change he observed
had probably originated from this small group of working-class fishermen, and had then
spread to other people on the island, particularly those in the 31 to 45 age group. The
islanders were not particularly aware that this change was happening. In other words, it
was not a conscious change.
Historical evidence indicated that centralised diphthongs had always been present to
some extent in the fishermen's speech. Instead of representing an innovation (i.e.
something totally new), the vowels appeared to be a conservative, old-fashioned feature
in the fishermen's pronunciation. This vowel shift or change in some ways represented
an old-fashioned pronunciation prevalent in mainland America in the 18th and 19th
centuries. While the pronunciation of these diphthongs had changed over the course of
30 years in mainland America and on Martha's Vineyard, the fishermen had retained the
older pronunciation and started to exaggerate it.
Martha's Vineyard had been very isolated until about the 1940s, with a subsistence
agricultural and fishing industry. After 1940, declining fish stocks, war, and better
educational and economic opportunities drew young people increasingly to mainland
USA. Summer tourism became the main economic input and there was more and more
contact between the island and the mainland. The people of Martha's Vineyard had
started to lose the old diphthongs. In fact they had begun to speak like the neighbouring
mainland Americans, but this change appears to have been reversed. Why should such
a change be reversed and then move in the opposite direction with an exaggerated
pronunciation of the old vowels? The answer, Labov suggested, was connected with the
62
rise in popularity of the island as a tourist resort. The old inhabitants saw the tourists as
an intrusion and a threat to their traditional way of life. They disapproved of them and
regarded them as foreigners. The fishermen were the most close-knit social group on the
island and their occupation was independent of the summer people. The older
inhabitants of the island admired the fishermen, who appeared to exemplify the virtues
traditional to Martha's Vineyard. They viewed the fishermen as independent, skilful,
physically strong and hardy. In short, they epitomised the good old Island virtues as
opposed to the soft, consumer-orientated society of the summer visitors. The fishermen
came to represent the old, traditional Martha's Vineyard; this led a number of inhabitants
of Martha's Vineyard to subconsciously imitate the speech characteristics of the
fishermen in order to identify themselves as true islanders. This hypothesis was further
supported by Labov's findings that the local pronunciation was far stronger in those
inhabitants who were planning to stay on the island permanently. These were mostly in
the 31 to 45 year-old group. Those who planned to leave the island (including many
youngsters) had vowels which were more similar to the mainland USA pronunciation.
The spread of this change in pronunciation on Martha's Vineyard seemed to have taken
place in a series of overlapping stages. Labov identified these stages as follows:
Stage one:
An aspect of the speech of a particular social group differed from that of the
standard dialect of the area. In this case, the speech of the fishermen retained
certain old diphthongs which had ceased to exist in the standard speech of the
area.
Stage two:
Another social group on the island started to model itself on the first group and
subconsciously adopted and exaggerated certain features in the speech of the
fishermen. Because the fishermen were regarded as representing traditional virtues
and commitment to the island by those who lived permanently on the island, the
fishermen's diphthongs were subconsciously copied and exaggerated as a sign of
solidarity amongst islanders against the despised summer visitors.
Stage three:
The new speech feature gradually took hold among those who had adopted it. The
local diphthongs were adopted as the standard pronunciation by the 30 to 45 yearold age group.
Stage four:
The process began to repeat itself as other social groups started to model
themselves on the group which had now adopted the linguistic innovation as norm.
In this case, those in the 30 to 45 year-old age group were taken as models by other
groups on Martha's Vineyard.
In Labov's interpretation, centralisation in this context had become a linguistic marker of
a commitment to living permanently on Martha's Vineyard. This is why the youngest
group did not conform to the pattern, as many young people were intending to leave the
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63
island to study or get jobs on the mainland. Their vowels were therefore much closer to
those of mainland USA. By the age of 30, most of those who were intending to leave the
island had already left, and the remaining group was highly committed to staying and
thus adopted the vowels that indicated that positive attitude.
The type of change that occurred on Martha's Vineyard is sometimes referred to as
change from below. This means that a non-standard feature `which is widespread in
non-prestige speech begins to creep up the social ladder into the mouths of prestige
speakers, gaining ground steadily until it becomes accepted as the prestige norm, with
the older prestige form becoming stigmatized in turn' (Millar 2007:360).
Task 4.2
Use the following questions to help you revise the main points of Labov's research in
Martha's Vineyard.
(a)
(b) Why should the adult population (between 31 and 45 years old) of Martha's
Vineyard start subconsciously imitating the speech of this group?
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
(c)
Why had the original inhabitants of the island held on to the old speech habits and
not changed their pronunciation in line with that of the people around them?
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
(d) Why should such a change be reversed and then move in the opposite direction
with an exaggerated pronunciation of the old vowels?
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
64
(e)
Feedback
(a)
(b) Because the fishermen were regarded as representing traditional virtues and values
by those who lived permanently on the island, the fishermen's diphthongs were
subconsciously copied and exaggerated as a sign of solidarity amongst islanders
that distinguished them from the despised summer visitors.
(c)
The old inhabitants saw the tourists as an intrusion and a threat to their traditional
way of life. They disapproved of them and regarded them as foreigners.
(d) This was connected with the rise in popularity of the island as a tourist destination,
and the islanders' need to maintain a separate identity that distinguished them from
the tourists.
(e)
The type of change that occurred on Martha's Vineyard is called change from below
because a non-prestigious speech feature spread `upwards' into the speech of
higher social classes.
__________________________________________________________________________
Labov's study of language change on Martha's Vineyard is regarded as one of the
classic studies in sociolinguistics, as it delves deeply into the social meaning of different
values of a linguistic variable. Mesthrie (2000:84) describes it as `a clear illustration of the
interplay between linguistic and social factors in a relatively simple setting' in which `the
variation boiled down to a change in community norms ... arising out of a stronger sense
of ``us'' (islanders) versus ``them'' (mainlanders/tourists).'
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from the top of the price and fashion range, one from the middle and one from the
bottom, the salespeople would reflect the social pattern of the (r) variable in the
pronunciation of New York speech.
The choice of method used to collect and analyse data in research is known as the
methodology. The three stores that Labov picked were: Saks (a top of the range store in
the centre of the fashion area), Macy's (a middle of the range store) and S. Klein (an
inexpensive store in a poor area). This would probably be equivalent to picking
Stuttafords, Woolworths and Pep Stores in South Africa. According to Labov (1972:208),
observation of the vernacular gives us the most systematic data for analysing linguistic
variables. The vernacular is the speech style in which the minimum attention is given to
our own speech, resulting in the most usual, unmonitored style. Mesthrie (1992:42)
points out that the vernacular is not usually the `lowest' or most informal speech style.
Most speakers can adjust their styles upwards or downwards as the occasion demands,
using more formal styles or more informal ones. The vernacular usually lies somewhere
in between. Labov devised a clever way to elicit vernacular speech from the sales staff.
Hepretended to be a customer and asked a salesperson Excuse me, where are the
women's shoes? When the answer fourth floor was given, he would pretend he hadn't
heard and ask the salesperson to repeat the answer. This normally led to repetition of the
words fourth floor, usually spoken more carefully and with more emphasis the second
time. As soon as he had received these answers, he quickly moved out of sight and
made a note of the two pronunciations and other factors such as the age, sex and ethnic
group of the salesperson. In this way he was able to make a note of how each person
pronounced the words fourth floor and to see whether they used the variable (r) or not.
After carrying out 264 such inquiries in the three stores, Labov was able to correlate the
pronunciations of the salespeople with factors such as their age, sex and ethnic group.
His results showed an interesting correlation between the status of the shops and the
frequency of (r) after vowels. He noted that the overall percentage of (r) was higher in
Saks than in Macy's and higher in Macy's than in S. Klein. So far Labov's hypothesis was
confirmed. Those of the highest socio-economic groups tended to insert (r) far more
frequently than those in the lower socio-economic groups.
Task 4.3
Research is done in a very structured way and you need to become familiar with the
elements of sociolinguistic research. For Labov's pilot study in New York departmental
stores, try to identify the following research elements:
(a)
66
Imagine you are Labov. Write down an (imaginary) example of what your raw data
(notes) might have looked like after interviewing two salespeople.
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
(d) In the figure below the use of (r) by the employees of the three stores is compared
by means of a bar graph. The shaded area represents the percentage who used (r)
in all utterances and the unshaded area represents the percentage who used (r) in
some utterances. (The percentage who did not use (r) is not shown.) (N = total
number of people interviewed.) Look carefully at the bar graph and then answer the
questions that follow.
FIGURE 4.4: Overall stratification of (r) across department stores (cf. Labov 1972:51)
Saks
32
Macy's
31
S. Klein
30
20
17
4
N = 68
N = 125
N = 71
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Feedback
Labov's hypothesis was that the amount of (r) insertion depended on one's social class,
with the highest classes using more (r) than the middle and working classes. His
methodology was to collect samples of speech from three different socioeconomic
groups of salespeople at three different New York department stores. By pretending to
be a customer he got the salespeople to use the phrase fourth floor and then repeat it
more clearly. As soon as he had received these answers, he made a note of the
pronunciation and other factors such as the age, sex and ethnic group of the
salesperson. His notes or data probably looked something like the following, mentioning
where he collected the data, information about the salesperson and his or her
pronunciation ((0) indicates that (r) was not pronounced):
Store:
Saks
Date:
1 August 1969
Informant A
Age:
approx 25
Sex:
male
Ethnic group:
white
First pronunciation:
fou(r)th floo(r)
Repeated pronunciation:
fou(r)th floo(r)
Store:
Macy's
Date:
2 August 1969
Informant P
68
Age:
approx 55
Sex:
female
Ethnic group:
white
First pronunciation:
fou(0)th floo(r)
Repeated pronunciation:
fou(r)th floo(r)
In Question (d), underneath the bar graph we can see that N = 125 for Macy's, meaning
that 125 interviews were carried out in Macy's. 30% of the Saks informants used (r) all the
time and 32% used it some of the time, making a total of 62% who used (r). Hence we
can deduce that 38% never used (r) after a vowel (even though this isn't shown on the
graph). Similarly, we can add up the shaded and unshaded percentages and calculate
that 51% of Macy's informants and 21% of S. Klein informants used (r) at least some of
the time. These findings clearly indicate that (r) was used the most by Saks employees
(where the upper classes shopped) and the least by S. Klein employees (where the
working class shopped). This confirmed Labov's hypothesis that the (r) variable was
correlated with social status.
__________________________________________________________________________
We have seen that there were different pronunciations of (r) in the different stores, but
what evidence was there that a change was actually taking place? Labov noticed an
interesting point which seemed to indicate that change was occurring: there was a
difference between the vernacular speech (the first, most unmonitored utterance of fourth
floor by each salesperson) and the emphatic speech (the second utterance) in the data
from Klein's store. At Klein's, there was a significantly higher proportion of (r) in the more
careful, emphatic repetition of the words fourth floor. It seemed that these assistants had
at least two styles of speech: casual style, in which they did not consciously think about
what they said, and the more careful, formal style, in which they tried to insert (r), which
they felt was socially desirable. When they were speaking more carefully, they were
obviously trying to use what they considered a more prestigious pronunciation.
After his pilot study at the three departmental stores, Labov went on to do a more
detailed study of speech patterns in New York City. He studied the pronunciation of a
large number of people from all sectors of New York society, divided into social classes
on the basis of their socio-economic status (occupation, education level and income):
upper middle-class (UMC), lower middle-class (LMC), working class (WC) and lower
class (LC). He then identified four speech styles, ranging in order of formality. The four
styles were casual speech, formal speech, reading connected prose aloud and reading
word lists aloud. He then observed the speech of a range of subjects from each of the
social classes in all speech styles and noted the degree of the variable (r) used by each
subject.
When he analysed his results (as shown in Figure 4.5 below), it was clear that the
frequency of (r) varied directly according to social class: the higher the social class, the
greater the amount of (r) insertion. It was also clear that (r) for all classes varied
according to the level of formality of speech: the greater the level of formality, the greater
the frequency of (r).
But the most interesting feature of these findings was the speech behaviour of the LMC,
where there was an enormous difference between the percentage of (r) in casual speech
as opposed to more formal speech and reading aloud. In fact, the LMC used (r) more
than the UMC speakers when reading word lists aloud (note the second-highest line
crossing over the top line in the graph in Figure 4.5). The graph below clearly shows this
unusual result.
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Casual
Formal
Reading
Word list
Style
What is the significance of the overuse of (r) in the formal speech of the lower middle
class? Why should the LMC use (r) even more that the UMC? Labov suggested that the
reason for this is that members of the LMC tend to be socially and linguistically insecure
and anxious to improve their social status, with the result that they try to copy the
prestigious pronunciation of the UMC. When they are consciously thinking about their
pronunciation (i.e. when they are using formal speech styles) they then try harder to copy
the speech style of the UMC and consequently use (r) even more than the UMC would
normally use it. Labov claimed that this overuse of the prestige variant by the LMC
indicated that a sound change was in progress.
Let us summarise the results of the research done in New York City: the variable (r) was
socially prestigious as it increased according to social class and formality of style. This
increase in (r) in more formal speech styles was strongest in the language of the LMC
(especially LMC women) who imitated and sometimes exaggerated prestige features
(including (r)) found in the speech of the UMC. Because the LMC were consciously trying
to imitate the UMC use of (r) in their speech, the type of change that was occurring in
New York is termed a change from above. Change from above involves a linguistic
change that is introduced from a higher social class and spreads into the speech of
those with lower socioeconomic status. The study of New Yorkers' use of (r) represents a
change from above, where a lower class, the LMC in particular, consciously imitated a
prestige feature in a higher class, namely UMC.
70
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working-class speech tends to be associated with roughness and toughness, which are
considered by many men to be desirable masculine attributes (but not desirable
feminine attributes). The subconscious changes (changes from below) are generally
initiated by LMC men imitating the speech of working-class men because they tend to
admire the supposed masculinity of their speech. These suggestions are supported by
the changes on Martha's Vineyard where the speech of the fishermen was admired. He
goes on to suggest that conscious changes (changes from above) tend to be initiated by
women as women are consciously striving to speak `better' and selecting more prestige
variants. In New York the change was led by LMC women, a grouping defined in terms of
both gender and class.
What was Labov's contribution to the theory of linguistic change? Previously linguists
were unsure how language change originated and spread. Thanks to the work of
scholars such as Labov, we are now able to observe changes happening with far greater
accuracy than before. We can see how they spread and trace them to their point of
origin, that is see where and how they began. Besides his influence in shaping the new
discipline of sociolinguistics, other innovative aspects of Labov's contribution were that
he
. recognised the importance of the linguistic variable as an indicator of individual and
group identity
. recognised that vernacular speech provided the most valuable and natural data for
sociolinguistic analysis
. used a quantitative (numerical and statistical) approach to variation to highlight
different language norms in different social groups
. showed for the first time that a linguistic change that is in process will manifest itself
as linguistic variation.
The type of studies done by Labov have not been carried out to any great extent in South
Africa. There are therefore still many opportunities for researchers who are interested in
investigating language variation and change in the South African context.One of the
reasons for this is that in a multilingual country like South Africa, the class distinctions
that are a basic component of Labov's studies are not so clear cut, and the concept of
class and ethnic group sometimes overlap. However, it is important to remember that
while we have eleven official languages in South Africa, `each language label represents
a range of language varieties which is often quite extensive' (Herbert 1992:3). Herbert
(1992:3) gives the example of attempting to teach standard (KwaZulu-Natal) Zulu to Zulu
learners in Gauteng for whom this variety is so far removed from their own that it is like
learning a foreign language. A diversity of varieties is therefore a significant feature of all
our languages.
Task 4.4
Some studies of South African Indian English (SAIE) have been based on Labov's
approach to variation. Mesthrie (1992:44) explains that the varieties of SAIE differ quite
markedly across different classes. Upper middle class SAIE is not very different from
SAE, but working class SAIE as spoken by older, less educated, rural speakers has
many linguistic characteristics that make this variety unique. In the example below, can
you identify any linguistic variables relating to pronunciation or grammar that
characterise this working class variety of SAIE?
72
Q:
A:
Where we go! Hardly we go, visit Durban too. Sometime 'olidays, my 'usband
take his brother's house an' his sistern-law there an' all of his connection. My
connection-all staying Merebank. Sometime holidays we go, but this year
'oliday we had y'know, like we had some problem an' all like we want to go
visit, I don' like to go stay that two-three weeks an' all they living 'ard life like
us too, they earn little bit money too.
(Mesthrie 1992:44)
...............................................................................................................................................
...............................................................................................................................................
...............................................................................................................................................
...............................................................................................................................................
...............................................................................................................................................
Feedback
As far as phonology is concerned, you probably noticed the missing h sounds at the
beginning of words like 'olidays, 'usband, the missing t in don' (don't) and the missing d
in most occurrences of an' (and). Further research might show that initial (h) is a linguistic
variable that may be present in upper middle class SAIE but absent in the working class
variety. The syntax is also different from SAE. For example, SAIE seems to use more -ing
forms than simple present tense forms, for example they living 'ard life (`they live a hard
life') and My connection-all staying Merebank (`My side of the family all stay in
Merebank'). Whether this variation in SAIE represents a change in progress remains to
be seen.
__________________________________________________________________________
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Did you ever get blamed for something you never did?
What do you like best about living in X?
(Tagliamonte 2006:40)
The interviewer should use a variety that is informal and that approximates the vernacular
of the informant. This allows the informant to relax and feel comfortable. Here is an
example of a question posed to a teenage informant:
So, like, have you ever had like a really freaky experience?
(Tagliamonte 2006:41)
Letting the informant talk without interruption is also important, asking short, follow-up
questions to keep the conversation going (Tagliamonte 2006:47). Importantly, the
sociolinguistic interview needs to tailor itself to the cultural norms of the informants, for
example with regard to appropriate forms of address and avoidance of taboo subjects.
You can practise your sociolinguistic interview technique any time that you are at a family
gathering or waiting in a long queue. Start a conversation by asking a personal (but not
too personal) question and showing interest in the answer. Keep asking follow-up
questions and listen out for interesting linguistic variables. In fact, sociolinguistic
interviews can provide much more than just information about language use:
In the end, the data that you will collect using these strategies will be more
remarkable than you can imagine. I never cease to be amazed at how poignant
sociolinguistic interviews can be. In fact, some of the wisdom, sayings and thoughts
of people whose words I have analysed have been etched in my memory forever.
(Tagliamonte 2006:48)
Task 4.5
Is there any evidence that the interviewer in Task 4.4 (Mesthrie 1992:44) is following
Labov's advice for a successful sociolinguistic interview?
...............................................................................................................................................
...............................................................................................................................................
...............................................................................................................................................
...............................................................................................................................................
...............................................................................................................................................
Feedback
This interviewer is following the guidelines for a successful sociolinguistic interview by
asking a short, personal question that will keep the informant talking. He also makes sure
74
that he does not interrupt the informant while she is talking. The interviewer has adopted
an informal SAIE variety himself, omitting the do in the question How often you go to
Durban? Mesthrie says that most styles of SAIE omit the do, resulting in questions like
You saw me? rather than Did you see me? In this way the interviewer is adopting the
vernacular and making his informant feel at ease in order to collect speech samples that
are as informal and natural as possible to serve as data for sociolinguistic analysis.
__________________________________________________________________________
4.7 Summary
In this study unit we saw that language can be a powerful marker of social identity.
Individual speakers frequently control several varieties and can select the most
appropriate variety for the particular communicative situation in which they find
themselves. The discipline of sociolinguistics focuses on linguistic variation, that is,
differences in language form. A central concern of the discipline of sociolinguistics is the
way in which these linguistic differences mirror social differences between speakers.
We looked at two classic sociolinguistic studies carried out by the American linguist
William Labov. The Martha's Vineyard study illustrated the type of language change
known as change from below, where a linguistic change spread gradually from a nonstandard dialect into the prestige variety. The New York study illustrated change from
above, where a prestige variable spread into the speech of the middle and working
class. Labov is credited with putting the discipline of sociolinguistics firmly on the
linguistic map and his variationist theory of language change emphasised the
importance of the linguistic variable as an indicator of individual and group identity
and showed that a linguistic change that is in process will manifest itself as linguistic
variation.
We also focused on the various elements of sociolinguistic research, including the
research hypothesis and methodology. We concluded by discussing the best way to
collect sociolinguistic data, using an interview technique that makes the informant feel
comfortable and elicits informal, spontaneous, vernacular language data.
Further reading
Aitchison, J. 2001. Language Change: Progress or Decay? (third edition). Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Crystal, D. 2010. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. (third edition). New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
LIN2602
8 Geographical identity
9 Ethnic and national identity
10 Social identity
54 Language change
59 World languages
60 Multilingualism
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Study Unit 5
Codeswitching and mixed languages
The use of multiple languages permits people to say and do,
indeed to be, two or more things where normally a choice is expected.
Monica Heller (Canadian linguist and academic)
OUTCOMES
After you have worked through this study unit you will be able to
1
2
3
4
5
unmarked choice
markedness model of codeswitching
language mixing
mixed language
Tsotsitaal
In a nutshell
In this study unit we look at situations in which languages come into frequent contact
and begin to have an influence on each other. We explore how bilinguals use two
languages as a resource to express aspects of their social identity. The purpose is to
show that multilingual situations with a high degree of language contact can lead to
codeswitching, mixed languages and eventually to language change.
5.1 Introduction
In a monolingual country, the country has only one main spoken language. However,
even countries such as France, Britain and the USA that claim to be monolingual in
76
Task 5.1
(a)
(b) According to the Ethnologue table mentioned above, which three countries had the
most languages?
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(c)
How many languages would you estimate are spoken in South Africa?
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Feedback
(a)
The only `genuine monolingual' countries I found were the British Indian Ocean
territory, the Falkland Islands, St Helena, the Vatican City and North Korea, most of
which are islands and all of which are highly isolated either politically or
geographically from the rest of the world. In our global world, these are the only
conditions under which a monolingual state seems to be able to exist.
(b) The countries with the most linguistic diversity are Papua New Guinea with 830
languages, Indonesia with 722 and Nigeria with 521.
(c)
LIN2602
According to the Ethnologue: Languages of the World (http://www.ethnologue.com) there are 40 different languages spoken in South Africa. As we saw in Study
Unit 2, the linguistic situation in South Africa is complex, with 11 official languages
77
and other languages that are spoken as L1 but have no official status, such as the
Khoesan languages, Hindi and other Indian languages, Greek, German, etc. There
is a high degree of bi- and multilingualism in South Africa due to extensive contact
between speakers of various languages, especially in urban areas. The multilingual
situation in South Africa is, in fact, an ideal `research station' for studying various
language contact phenomena.
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A striking feature of the African continent is its linguistic diversity. Here is a sample list of
the total number of languages spoken in various African countries:
Country
Nigeria
521
Cameroon
279
Chad
133
Cote d'Ivoire
93
Ethiopia
88
82
Burkina Faso
70
Congo
66
Benin
56
Gabon
43
Angola
41
South Africa
40
Botswana
40
Egypt
27
Algeria
22
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The above features lead to the use of various kinds of language mixing as a common
form of communication. The most obvious of these, as we saw in Study Unit 3, is the
borrowing of words from neighbouring languages. However, as we will see in this study
unit, there are many other forms of language mixing and language change that result
from language contact.
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Casual contact where there are only a few bilinguals who may not even be fluent. This
results in borrowing of mostly content words, like the Italian musical terms that have
entered English sonata, staccato, crescendo, etc.
Slightly more intense contact where a greater proportion of the speakers are bilingual
and are reasonably fluent. This results in borrowing of content and function words,
and adoption of some speech sounds from the source language, especially in
79
borrowed words. An example is the borrowing of clicks into Xhosa and Zulu due to
contact with the Khoesan languages in South Africa.
More intense contact, with even more bilinguals and positive attitudes to the
language. This results in borrowing of content words, function words and affixes.
Structural changes can also occur to the language, including sound changes like the
addition of new phonemes from the source language, loss of original phonemes, and
changes in word order and other aspects of grammar. An example of this level of
contact would be contact between the various South African languages, e.g.
between English and Afrikaans, between Sesotho and Afrikaans or between Zulu and
English. Many words have been borrowed, both at an earlier stage and on an
ongoing basis. Word order patterns have also been borrowed to some extent, with
Afrikaans, for example, now allowing some SVO instead of the usual SOV word order.
Intensive contact with extensive bilingualism and positive attitudes to the source
language. This results in heavy borrowing and large-scale structural changes such
as sweeping changes in word order and grammar, loss or addition of rules, etc. An
example of this heavy degree of contact-induced change is the relationship between
Urdu, Marathi and Kannada in the Indian village of Kupwar. Urdu and Marathi are
Indo-European languages and Kannada is a Dravidian language, so these three
languages have very different sentence structures. In Kupwar, however, the pervasive
contact between the three languages has resulted in all three having the same word
order and sentence structure, so that they now no longer follow the rules of Urdu,
Marathi and Kannada spoken elsewhere. In effect, in Kupwar the vocabularies of
three different languages can be slotted into the same grammatical structure (Millar
2007:397).
It is clear from the categorisation above that two of the critical factors affecting the
amount of contact-induced change seem to be the degree of speaker bilingualism and
the attitudes of the speakers to the other language(s). Other critical factors are the length
of the contact (years, decades, centuries, etc.), the relative sizes of the speaker
populations, and the degree of socioeconomic or political pressure placed on speakers
to shift to the dominant language (Thomason 2003:689). However, it is important to note
that it is not always predictable why some language contact situations result in extensive
mutual influence while others leave the languages unaffected:
It is easy to find contact situations in which, despite (for instance) great pressure on
and universal bilingualism among speakers of one language, very little contactinduced change of any kind has occurred. One such example is Montana Salish
(also called Flathead), a Salishan language spoken in northwestern Montana. Of
the several thousand tribal members, fewer than 70 fluent speakers of the language
remain, and all of them have native fluency in English as well as in Montana Salish.
Nevertheless, the English intrusion into Montana Salish is minimal: a few loanwords
some of them dating back to the nineteenth century, when few if any tribal
members spoke English and no detectable grammatical influence of any kind.
(Thomason 2003:689)
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Task 5.2
Choose any two local languages in your region and classify the degree of contactinduced change between them using Thomason's (2001) 4-point scale above, from
casual contact to intensive contact (or the fifth possibility no contact-induced change).
You can focus on how one language has affected the other, you don't have to describe
changes in both languages. Describe the sociolinguistic situation (substratum and
superstratum languages, language statistics, the frequency of bilingual speakers,
attitudes of speakers to each other's language, etc.) and provide some linguistic
examples (borrowed words, borrowed speech sounds, syntactic changes etc.) to help
support your argument regarding the degree of contact-induced change.
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Feedback
Thomason (2001) argues that language contact is a matter of degree, and that the
degree of contact can influence the degree of language change. Your argument should
try and describe both of these factors. While casual contact usually results in little
contact-induced language change, more intense contact results in more noticeable
changes or even dramatic influence of one language upon the other. You need to give
actual concrete examples of how one language has affected the other, for example you
could look in a dictionary to find words borrowed from the other language, or search the
internet for websites or articles discussing the influence of one language on the other, or
give examples of actual conversations or written text that demonstrate this influence. You
need to state clearly which of the abovementioned categories your two languages fall
into (1, 2, 3 or 4), or perhaps the contact situation is an exception to the rule, where a
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language has been maintained largely untouched by other languages with which it is in
contact.
__________________________________________________________________________
So how do we know if a particular language change is a result of contact with another
language? Sometimes it is easy to identify a word as being borrowed because it contains
sound combinations that don't exist elsewhere in the language. An example is the nyasound of English words like Tanya and lasagna and nyala. These words are clearly
borrowed from other languages (Russian, Italian and Zulu respectively) because English
doesn't use this sound combination.
In other cases, however, it is not so easy for linguists to tell if a particular language
change in Language A is a result of contact with Language B. Firstly we would have to
show that a word or structural feature of Language A matches that of Language B. It
would also be necessary to show that Languages A and B were spoken in the same area
at the same time. Then we need to show that there are a number other features of
Language A that are similar to Language B but do not occur in other languages related
to A. If there is only one feature of Languages A and B that is similar, this is unlikely to be
a result of contact-induced change. However if there is a whole range of similar linguistic
features, then it is likely that these similarities resulted from language contact.
Task 5.3
Try and answer the following true or false questions, arguing your point logically using the
information you have been given in this study unit so far.
(a)
(b) True or false? If Language X and Language Y fall into the third category of `more
intense' language contact above, with many fluent bilinguals and positive attitudes
to both languages, we can conclude that extensive borrowing and significant
contact-induced grammatical changes will take place in at least one of the
languages.
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82
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Feedback
The statement in (a) is true. Dutch and later Afrikaans was the superstratum language,
the language of the socioeconomically powerful group of settlers, and as we saw in
Study Unit 3, it borrowed words and place names from the indigenous Khoe. Substratum
influence in a language contact situation means that the language of a minority group
influences that of a more powerful group.
You should have realised by now that very little about languages and language change is
completely predictable and so the statement in (b) is false. While category 3 contact may
well lead to heavy borrowing and structural change in one or both languages, the
Montana Salish example in 5.2 above shows us that this is not always the case. While
there is often a relationship between the intensity of the contact and the degree of
contact-induced change, some language contact situations leave the languages
unaffected.
__________________________________________________________________________
5.3 Codeswitching
One kind of contact-induced language change that you probably encounter every day is
codeswitching. Codeswitching, as you saw in LIN1502 Multilingualism, refers to the `use
of two or more languages in the same conversation, usually within the same
conversational turn, or even within the same sentence of that turn' (Myers-Scotton
1993:47). Codeswitching is thus the shifting by a speaker from Language A to Language
B, allowing the speaker to express his or her identity in terms of two different languages.
For example, a person may start a conversation in Sepedi, but use certain English words
and phrases as a replacement for Sepedi equivalents, as in the examples below:
Lehono ke swanetse go ya court. Ke swanetse go phakisa ka gore e thoma ka nine
in the morning.
`Today I have to go to court. I need to hurry up because it starts at nine in the
morning.'
Bana ba sekolo ba rata go gossip. Ke ka fao ka mehla ba le in conflict with one
another.
`School children like gossiping. That is why they are always in conflict with one
another.'
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83
Although there are Sepedi equivalents for the English phrases above, e.g. kgorong ya
tsheko for `court' and go seba for `gossip', the English equivalents are selected here in
order to express the speaker's bilingual identity and the presence of a bilingual hearer.
In McCormick's view (1995:194), codeswitching can often be seen to serve specific
purposes or have certain stylistic or social effects. Its function differs from one situation
to the other. For example, it can be used to quote another speaker, to have the last word
in an argument, to emphasise a point, to indicate one's expertise on a topic or to explain
a term. In other words, the shift in language is meaningful in some way within the context
of that particular conversation. For example, a person enters a bookshop and addresses
the person behind the counter in one of the African languages. The salesperson
responds in English, alerting the customer that the salesperson is in fact not a mothertongue speaker of her language. The customer then switches to English for the rest of
the conversation as a result of this new understanding of the speech situation and the
salesperson's identity. The importance of language(s) in negotiating and highlighting
different facets of our identity is captured in the following quote:
Who we display ourselves to be, as relevant from moment to moment in the
conduct of the interaction at hand, can change from moment to moment in the
interaction itself. We are not just typecast by a single category of social identity
throughout an entire encounter. Our social identity of the moment is situated in the
interaction at hand; we perform it as we go along and we do so co-jointly with the
other interactional partners.
(McKay & Hornberger 1996:292)
Codeswitching is thus a valuable linguistic and social resource that bilinguals can draw
on in their day-to-day interactions.
84
Fugueni madirisha!
`Open the windows'
Passenger:
Bus conductor:
Task 5.4
Collect three of your own examples of codeswitching. Using the markedness model of
codeswitching described above, decide whether your examples illustrate codeswitching
as a series of unmarked choices between different languages, codeswitching itself as
the unmarked choice or codeswitching as a marked choice. Justify your decision by
referring to the context in which the conversation took place.
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LIN2602
85
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Feedback
Remember to mention the languages used and provide English glosses for the portions
of the utterance that are not in English. Don't forget to explain the context in which the
conversation takes place (who is speaking to whom, in which setting, what is their
relationship, etc.). You also need to explain your decision regarding whether
codeswitching is marked or unmarked, i.e. why it is an expected or unexpected choice
in that specific conversation.
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86
with a single use and continue with increasing usage by the innovating speaker(s)
and by other speakers, and the addition by invention of a new word, like photocopy,
must follow the same path.
(Thomason 2003:696)
Sankoff (2001:649) agrees that bilinguals' ability to draw on lexical items from both their
languages `can reasonably be considered as the beginning point of lexical borrowing'.
Codeswitching is therefore a process that can lead to language change due to its daily
use by bilingual speakers.
CODESWITCHING
LANGUAGE MIXING
MIXED LANGUAGES
While we saw in 5.3 that codeswitching involves language switching that can be used in
creative ways by speakers to serve particular functions within a conversation, language
mixing involves very frequent switching in which it is difficult to tell what the primary
language of communication is. Language mixing therefore corresponds to `codeswitching as the unmarked choice' (see the markedness model in 5.3.1 above). While each
switch is not intended to be meaningful,the pervasive switching that characterises
language mixing is important as a signal of bilingual identity. According to Auer
(1999:318), `The very fact of selecting a mixing mode from the repertoire (to the exclusion
of other, more ``monolingual'' modes) can of course be of social significance; for
instance it may signal group identity'.
Language varieties that are strongly characterised by language mixing will often have a
particular name within the community, for example the mixing of Hebrew and English in
Israel is called Heblish (Auer 1999:318). It is usually only proficient bilinguals that will
engage in language mixing, and Auer (1999:318) therefore suggests that language
mixing requires a higher bilingual competence than codeswitching. The situations in
which language mixing becomes a code in its own right are usually where a bilingual
group wishes to differentiate itself from the communities of both individual languages.
For example, the Sesotho-English female friends below use language mixing to assert
their modern, urban, bilingual identity and differentiate themselves both from Sesotho
monolinguals and from English monolinguals:
Mmule:
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In the case of mixed languages (sometimes called `stabilised mixed varieties'), certain
switches become obligatory in the language. The Michif language of Canada, for
example, is the mixed language spoken by the descendants of indigenous Cree, Nakota
and Ojibwe women and fur trade workers of European ancestry (mainly French
Canadians and Scottish Canadians). As explained in the extract below, noun structures
are taken from French while the verb structures are from the indigenous language Cree.
In general, Michif noun phrase phonology, lexicon, morphology, and syntax are
derived from Me
tis French, while verb phrase phonology, lexicon, morphology, and
syntax are from a southern variety of Plains Cree. (Plains Cree is a western dialect of
Cree.) Articles and adjectives are also of Me
tis French origin, but demonstratives
are from Plains Cree ... The number of speakers is estimated at fewer than 1,000; it
was probably double or triple this number at the close of the 19th century, but never
much higher.
Downloaded 7 March 2012 from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michif_language
Stabilised mixed varieties therefore develop a more fixed grammar, and are less open to
individual creativity than language mixing. They are also much rarer than language
mixing. The speakers of stabilised mixed varieties are usually not fluent bilinguals but
may be second or third generation speakers after first-generation mixed marriages. The
only African example of a mixed language is Mbugu or Ma'a, a language spoken in
Tanzania, which has a Cushitic vocabulary and Bantu morphology and grammar.
Because mixed languages come from two different parent languages, it is not possible
to classify them as belonging to either language family.
88
Task 5.5
Decide whether the language variety described below is an example of codeswitching,
language mixing or a mixed language and explain your answer. Read the interview
transcription.
Tengo que ir al bus stop para pick up mi hija. (Overheard in the U.S.)
`I have to go to the bus stop to pick up my daughter.'
RAY SUAREZ:
What is Spanglish?
ILAN STAVANS: Not yet, not quite. Perhaps we're in the process of becoming
one. We are closer to being a dialect. There is really not one
Spanglish. There are varieties of Spanglish.
Downloaded 23 March 2012 from
http://www.pbs.org/speak/seatosea/americanvarieties/
spanglish/book/
Spanglish is a type of codeswitching/ language mixing/mixed language (choose one)
because
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Feedback
Spanglish refers to the growing use of English vocabulary, phrases and syntax in the
everyday speech and writing of Spanish-English bilinguals, especially in the United
States. Often Spanish and English are used interchangeably, even in the same sentence.
This is obviously codeswitching, but the fact that the variety has a name, Spanglish,
suggests that it is an example of language mixing. Language mixing entails fluent
bilinguals selecting codeswitching as the unmarked choice, with very frequent switches
back and forth.
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90
Setting:
Participants:
3 black male youths, aged between 17 and 18, all of whom attend
English-medium schools
Mpho:
Thapelo:
Sgabi:
Mpho:
Ag [Oh], just this and that ... Hey, have you guys heard Bonga is
having a 411 [party] this weekend? Has he invited you guys?
Sgabi:
Thapelo:
Sgabi:
Clearly!
Mpho:
For sure! Eish [oh dear], how soon we forget! Anyway, it's cool, it's
cool. We'll gate-crash.
Sgabi:
Thapelo:
C'mon man, why you go and diss [insult] the brother like that?
Conversation 2:
Setting:
Participants:
Mpho:
[to Sgabi] So, bro where's your bra [brother], Thapelo, today?
Sgabi:
Ag, com'on nigga he's your blood too. Anyway, don't know. Last
saw him walking his REGTE [real] home yesterday afternoon.
Maybe the brother c ... .
Kuni:
[arrives and joins the two] Heita ma-outie [Howzit guys]. Hoezet!
[Howzit]
Sgabi:
Mpho:
Kuni:
Neh, grand!
Heit! [Hi!]
Sgabi:
Hola! [Hi!]
Kuni:
Hola [Hi]
Lehlogonolo: So, u-waa uSipho vandag? ... [So, how is Sipho today?]
Mpho:
Eish, loyo! Uyankhinya, serious! [Oh no, that one! He gives me the
creeps, I'm serious!]
Lehlogonolo: Entlek, why nina ungathi ni ne beef so? Zikhiphani, vele? Or maybe
ni banga i-aidie? [Actually, why do you look so angry? What's
wrong? Or maybe what are you fighting about?]
Mpho:
It is clear from Conversation 1 above that Mpho and Sgabi use a form of English slang at
school. Words like diss and nigger show the influence of Black American English, as do
the pronunciation and word choice of phrases like Wassup wid de brother? There are
also borrowed words from other South African languages, e.g. smaak `like' from
Afrikaans and Eish `oh dear' from African languages.
In Conversation 2, back in the township, the conversation starts off in English but soon
shifts to a mixture of local languages and slang as a way of locating themselves socially
as urban black youth. When asked about their adaptations in identity, they both argued
that they did not wish to be perceived by their peers (particularly in the township) as
arrogant `coconuts' (i.e. black people acting white), but that they wanted to be seen `as
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part of the black youth culture' (their words). As Joe explains in a mixture of English, Zulu
(italics) and Afrikaans (capitals) below, language choice is dependent on where you are
and who you are with:
It depends ukuthi unobani. For instance if nginabangane bam kuya ngokuthi bathole
sikhuluma ni if bafike ngikhuluma Zulu bazajoyina if islang sabangane ONS SAL
ALMAL WITIE. The situation ukuthi unabobani.
`It depends on who you are with. For instance, if I'm with my friends it depends on
what we are discussing if they find me speaking Zulu they will join me if it's my
friends' slang, then we will all speak it. The situation depends on who you are with.'
(Joe with shebeen friends, cited by Finlayson & Slabbert 1997:399)
Task 5.6
(a)
Do you speak more than one language? Which language do you speak with which
groups of people? Do you use different languages to express different aspects of
your identity?
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(b) Do you speak more than one variety of your mother tongue? Describe the varieties,
with examples of each. Do they involve codeswitching/language mixing? Which
language varieties do you speak with which groups of people? Do you use different
varieties to express different aspects of your identity?
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Feedback
This is your opportunity to think about how your own language usage is part of the
identity you assume when interacting with different groups of friends, family members
and colleagues. Try and use linguistic terms like dialect, accent, sociolect, codeswitching, language mixing, etc. to give your answers more weight.
__________________________________________________________________________
Two South African case studies are presented in 5.4.1 and 5.4.2 below.
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ised English borrowings. An example of the former is the word ilahle which means `coal'
in Zulu but means `a stolen vehicle' in Tsotsitaal. Ipilisi means `a pill' in Zulu but refers
more specifically to mandrax or cocaine in Tsotsitaal.
Makhudu (1995) illustrates several interesting phonological and morphological
characteristics of Tsotsitaal, including a tendency to replace certain sounds in borrowed
words with n or m. For example English beer becomes miya, and Afrikaans baadjie
`jacket' becomes maikie.
Many words are formed by reduplication or syllable-repetition, with semantic shift from
the original, so English nice, for example, becomes naiza-naiza `party', Zulu thenga `buy'
becomes thenga-thenga `a cheap woman' and Afrikaans snaaks `funny' becomes
snakanaka `a fool'.
Morphologically the language draws on English, Afrikaans, Zulu and Sesotho, for
example using Afrikaans -kie or Zulu -wana to form diminutives like dronkie `drunkard'
and ntsundwana `a suit'. Tsotsitaal uses Sotho -eng to form locatives like bareng
`drinking place', and English -s to form plurals like ntwanas children.
Task 5.7
(a)
What is the difference between a mixed language and a mixed language variety?
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(b) Tsotsitaal words and phrases are beginning to appear in the mainstream media. For
example, a well-known MTN cell phone advert used the phrase Ayoba, a slang word
expressing excitement or agreement or used simply as a greeting. SA Tourism had
a Sho't Left campaign, challenging South Africans to undertake more domestic
tourism. Sho't left is derived from everyday South African `taxi lingo'. A taxi
commuter wanting a ride to a destination close by will say Sho't left, driva meaning
`I want to get off just around the corner'. Would you agree that the appearance of
Tsotsitaal in print means that Tsotsitaal has become a standard language?
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Feedback
A mixed language (see 5.3.3 above) refers to the rare situation in which certain switches
become a stabilised, obligatory part of the grammar of the language. The Michif
language of Canada, for example, is a mixed language spoken by descendants of
intermarriage between two different parent languages, and requires verb forms to be in
one language and noun phrases to be in another. A mixed language variety, on the other
hand, is a more creative, less rigid combination of elements from different languages,
such as Tsotsitaal, which draws on English, Afrikaans, Zulu and Sesotho vocabulary and
morphology.
Mixed varieties like Tsotsitaal are unlikely to become standard languages as they are
essentially innovative and constantly changing, using vocabulary, morphology and
syntax from a variety of languages. Their vocabularies are so fluid that dictionaries would
probably be out of date before they were printed (but see Molamu 2003 Tsotsi-taal: A
dictionary of the language of Sophiatown). They are unlikely to become standard
languages that are taught in schools because speakers use them primarily for informal
in-group communication and because both speakers and non-speakers view them as
stigmatised varieties. The appearance of Tsotsitaal in South African advertising is an
attempt to appeal to the wallets of the upwardly mobile urban township dwellers who
constitute a growing market for South African goods and services.
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course, can happen only if frequent switching is part of the normal way of talking in
the community. Where it is, it can become a marker of the community's sense of
identity it has done so in District Six.
In District Six, language mixing is so entrenched that the variety can be seen as a fairly
stable, widely used mixed code, with codeswitching as the unmarked choice. Here are
some examples:
Example 1
`Kyk hier: ons coloureds het opgegroei om te praat kombuistaal, ne
? Which is
Afrikaans en Engels gemix.
`Look here: we coloureds grew up speaking kitchen language, right? Which is
Afrikaans and English mixed.'
Linguistic Informant, District 6, 1980s
(McCormick 2002)
Example 2
My ma het nie gewerk nie, my ouma het nie gewerk nie she was a housewife.
`My mother didn't work, my grandmother didn't work she was a housewife.'
(McCormick 1995:194)
Example 3
Want you see what the children are today? Hulle word so impatience vir ons en
die ... and dan gaan ek maar kamer toe, then I go lay down otherwise then we get
into trouble, dan word ons twee miskien in trouble nou weer.
`Because you see what the children are today? They get so impatient with us and
the ... and then I just go to my room, then I go and lie down otherwise then we get
into trouble, then maybe the two of us would get into trouble again.'
(McCormick 2002:182183)
Task 5.8
Where would you locate the District Six variety on the continuum discussed in 5.3.3
above? Circle the most appropriate term and explain your answer more fully below.
LANGUAGE MIXING
MIXED LANGUAGES
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Feedback
The District Six variety seems to be one of language mixing. Firstly the examples
(particularly Example 3) involve very frequent back-and-forth switching in which it is
difficult to tell whether the primary language of communication is English or Afrikaans.
We are also told that in District Six, codeswitching is the unmarked choice, which implies
that we are dealing with language mixing rather than codeswitching where each switch
serves a specific function. The pervasive switching that characterises language mixing is
important as a signal of bilingual identity, and the case study explains that the District Six
identity is a bilingual one that differentiates itself from either standard English or standard
Afrikaans. The final clue is that the variety has its own name, kombuistaal, which
suggests that its speakers see it as a marker of communal identity. Usually names are
only given to language mixing and mixed languages, but since the degree of language
switching is left up to individual speakers' creativity, rather than dictated by stable
grammatical rules, this would fall into the category of language mixing.
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5.5 Summary
In this study unit, we have discussed the way in which languages may influence and
change each other in a situation of language contact. Speech sounds, words and
grammar from the superstratum (high status) language can be borrowed into the local
languages, or alternatively the minority substratum language can influence the dominant
language. We saw that language contact is a matter of degree, and that the degree of
contact between two groups can influence the degree of language change. Typically,
casual contact will result in little contact-induced language change, while intensive
contact can lead to dramatic influences of the languages upon one another.
We also looked at codeswitching and language mixing in multilingual societies as part of
the continually-changing repertoire that bilingual speakers can draw on to express their
fluid identities as members of a range of social groupings.
Codeswitching refers to the use of two or more languages in the same conversation, and
can often be seen to serve specific purposes or have certain stylistic or social effects. We
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Further reading
Crystal, D. 2010. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. (third edition). New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Chapter 54 Language change
Chapter 60 Multilingualism
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Study Unit 6
English as a global language
The English language is nobody's special property.
It is the property of the imagination: it is the property of the language itself.
Derek Walcott (West Indian poet and playwright 1930)
OUTCOMES
After you have worked through this study unit you will be able to
1
2
3
4
discuss the forces that have played a role in the development of English as an
international language;
explain and critically evaluate Kachru's circle model of World Englishes;
describe the linguistic features of the varieties of English used in South Africa; and
explain and illustrate the following concepts:
language of wider communication
World Englishes Inner Circle
Outer Circle
Expanding Circle
In a nutshell
In this study unit we examine the forces that have played a role in the development
and spread of English the language most widely spoken in the world today. We
look briefly at how various political and social upheavals and technological
innovations in the world influenced the English language and at the ways that
English has changed and been localised in various regions of the world. We look at
the debate between those who promote a single global standard for English and
those who accept different regional standards. We conclude by focusing on the
linguistic characteristics of three South African varieties of English.
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6.1 Introduction
From humble beginnings 1 500 years ago the English language has grown and changed
in many ways. At the beginning of the 21st century, English is now used as a global
language and can be regarded as the lingua franca of the world (a lingua franca is a
language used to communicate when people do not share a common mother tongue).
Today English has become the primary language for international communication.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Language
L1 speakers
L2 speakers
Mandarin Chinese
Spanish
English
Hindi and Urdu
Arabic
Portuguese
Bengali
Russian
Japanese
German
940
391
370
370
284
206
206
158
127
92
350 million
1,5 billion
585 million
250 million
150 million
200 million
million
million
million
million
million
million
million
million
million
million
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colonialism and nowadays due to the global reach of American media.In the table above
we see that only Mandarin Chinese and Spanish have more speakers than English, but
neither is used as widely as English because English is a language of wider
communication in many parts of the world, in other words a language that people
commonly use to communicate across geographical, language and cultural barriers.
English therefore has many more second-language (L2) and foreign-language speakers
than first-language speakers. As a language of wider communication it fulfils many
functions it is used in a variety of domains and has developed the vocabulary to
express concepts in all fields of modern-day activities. This strength of English, its ability
to incorporate vocabulary from other languages, or what David Crystal (2008:143) refers
to as its `vacuum-cleaner' nature, is a theme that you have already come across when
we discussed borrowing in Study Unit 3. Hasman (2000:3) describes some of the global
functions of English:
When Mexican pilots land their aeroplanes in France, they and the ground
controllers use English for security reasons. When German physicists want to alert
the scientific community to new discoveries, they first publish their findings in
English. When Japanese executives conduct business with Scandinavian
entrepreneurs, they negotiate in English. When pop singers write their songs, they
often use lyrics or phrases in English. When demonstrators want to alert the world to
their problems, they display signs in English.
More statistics:
. McArthur (1998) lists 113 geographical areas where English is currently used regularly
on a widespread basis.
. English is now the language most widely taught as a foreign language in over 100
countries.
. An estimated 1.4 billion people live in countries where English has official status.
. It is estimated that more than 70% of the world's scientists read English.
. About 85% of the world's mail is written in English.
. About 90% of all information used on computers is stored in English.
. English is the language of popular culture as embodied in music lyrics, television and
film.
. Statistics reveal that most of Unisa's 375 000 students conduct their studies through
the medium of English.
Look at the following map:
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Canada
United Kingdom
Rep. of Ireland
United Sates
Malta
The Bahamas
Belize
Jamaica
Trinidad and Tobago Nigeria
Guyana
Philippines
Sri Lanka
Singapore
Australia
South Africa
New Zealand
Task 6.1
In your view, why is English (with 370 million L1 speakers) the dominant global language
today even though Mandarin Chinese (with 940 million L1 speakers) has more native
speakers?
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Feedback
While Mandarin is spoken mainly in China, and mainly as an L1, colonisation spread
English all over the world. During the 20th century the number of people using English as
a second language (ESL) has steadily grown, due to the economic, political,
technological and cultural power of English and the global mobility that the language
provides.
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Old Norse
Old English
dike
ditch
raise
rise
scrub
shrub
skirt
shirt
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1066 is an important date in the history of England because this is the year that William
the Conqueror from Normandy (present-day France) crossed the channel between
England and France, defeated the English at the Battle of Hastings and was crowned
king of England on Christmas Day. A scholar describes the period of social upheaval and
transformation after the event as follows:
During the next four years William succeeded in destroying most of the Old English
nobility in a series of campaigns to subjugate the whole country. Important
positions in the King's court and government were filled by William's Normans who
also confiscated many of the great estates formerly owed by the English nobility.
English churchmen who had been responsible not only for the conduct of
ecclesiastical affairs but also for the maintenance and development of the great
centres of learning were replaced by French bishops, archbishops, abbots, and
monks. The literature produced for the upper social and political classes was
written in French, not in English.
(McLaughlin 1970:44)
After the conquest of England the ruling class of England were Normans who spoke a
variety of French. The French language had a profound effect on the development of
English, with extensive new borrowings in the areas of culture, law, fashion and food
among others (e.g. beauty, geometry, grammar, medicine, music, noun, painting, paper,
pen, poet, romance, sculpture, story, accuse, adultery, arrest, arson, attorney, bail, blame,
convict, crime, brooch, button, cloak, collar, diamond, dress, embroidery, jewel,
ornament, pearl, petticoat, appetite, bacon, beef, biscuit, dinner, feast, fry, grape, gravy).
In the latter quarter of the 15th century the technology that was to play such an important
role in the spread of English in the twentieth century was introduced when William Caxton
set up his printing press. Suddenly it was possible to reproduce written texts, and in the
next 150 years nearly 20 000 books appeared in English. Printers had to make decisions
about spelling, grammar, vocabulary and the writing system and this process helped to
develop a standard form of spelling and punctuation. By the late fifteenth century English
had already established itself as the language of literature and learning.
It was during this period that decisions were made about what constituted standard
English, and what did not. The speech of the London area was chosen as the standard
dialect. Crystal (1988:187) gives reasons why this particular dialect was chosen:
The East Midland area was the largest of the dialect areas, and contained more of
the population. In particular, it contained London, Cambridge, and (on the borders
with Southern) Oxford the main social and political centre, and the main seats of
learning. The presence of the Court in London was a compelling attraction for those
who wished for social prestige or career opportunities. The East Midlands 'triangle'
was a wealthy agricultural area, and the centre of the growing wool trade. And it was
also conveniently positioned between the Northern and Southern dialects, acting as
a kind of communication `bridge' between them. This last point was even
recognized at the time ... The clinching factor was William Caxton, who in 1476 set
up his printing press in Westminster, and chose to use the speech of the London
area as the basis for his translations and spelling. By the end of the fifteenth century,
the distinction between `central' and `provincial' life was firmly established. It was
reflected in the distinction between `standard' and `regional' speech the former
thought of as correct, proper and educated, the latter as incorrect, careless, and
inferior [an attitude] which is still with us today.
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Task 6.2
Make a list of the reasons why English became standardised around the 15th century.
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Feedback
The invention of the printing press was the most critical factor, as this allowed texts to be
written in a particular form with particular spelling and then distributed widely. The
London dialect became the basis for Standard English due to the economic and political
power of the capital city and the location of the London printing houses. Certain norms of
spelling, grammar and punctuation began to be evident in written documents, and were
then passed on from generation to generation within the literate classes, and the idea of
standard versus non-standard English began to emerge.
__________________________________________________________________________
The latter half of the 15th century is also regarded as the beginning of the Renaissance
(the French for rebirth) and during this time new attitudes and a sense of freedom
(political as well as religious) manifested itself. A spirit of exploration led adventurers to
travel to other parts of the world, and many of these areas were colonised.
The 16th century is often referred to as the Golden Age of English, when English began
to be used as a literary language instead of Latin and Greek. The writer who had the
profoundest effect on the development of English as a literary language was the poet
and playwright, William Shakespeare. He exploited the language as no other writer
before him had done. Many everyday expressions used today were introduced by
Shakespeare, e.g. hoodwinked, tongue-tied, a tower of strength, a fool's paradise, good
riddance.
The Industrial Revolution of the 19th century further helped to advance English as the
language of global trade. By 1860 the British had direct influence over many territories
throughout the world. In North America the numbers of English speakers had overtaken
those in the British Isles. It was also during this period of colonisation that so many
varieties of the language were born when the English carried their culture and language
to other parts of the world (the colonies of America in North America, the Caribbean, and
later to Australia, New Zealand, India and Africa).
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Task 6.3
What variety of English is spoken in your region? If there is more than one variety, choose
one. Is it an L1 or a L2 variety? Try and describe some of the linguistic features
(phonology, vocabulary, grammar etc.) that make this variety unique. Collect an audio or
video sample on your phone to illustrate this variety. Provide a written transcription of
what is said in the audio or video clip, explaining any non-standard words or phrases that
are used.
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Feedback
Use this opportunity to listen closely and observe the linguistic features of one of the
varieties of English you hear around you. In my area of the Johannesburg northern
suburbs, for example, I tend to hear an L1 variety of SAE spoken by white and
increasingly by black speakers. The accent is slightly nasalised, and is also
characterised by a tendency to pronounce t sounds as ts, e.g. See you tsomorrow! In
the middle of words, t sounds are often pronounced as d, e.g. in words like Peter and
106
pretty. This dialect has borrowed words from Afrikaans (e.g. ja `yes', braai `barbecue',
pap `mealie-meal porridge') and from Yiddish (e.g. schlep `burden/effort') and also uses
the word no to mean `yes', e.g. How are you? No, I'm good thanks.
__________________________________________________________________________
New varieties or types of English are often referred to as different `Englishes' and several
academic journals are devoted to the study of new varieties, for example World Englishes
and English World-wide. Kachru, a major Indian linguist, has written extensively about the
varieties of English in the developing world. Together with Larry E Smith from Honolulu,
Hawaii, Kachru launched a journal called World Englishes: The Journal of English as an
International and Intranational Language. The journal's editorial stance is that all `world
Englishes' belong equally to all who use them (whether in its standard or any other form),
and that ways of speaking and patterns of discourse are different across nations.
This has important ramifications for users of the language worldwide, as it suggests that
all users of English have the right to help shape it. This view is in opposition to the school
of thought that believes that only first language speakers have a monopoly on the
language and can make decisions concerning its usage and `purity'.
The spread of English around the world has been represented by Kachru as three
concentric circles. Each circle represents different phases of the spread of English and
different ways in which the language has been acquired and is currently used, including
the depth of penetration of English at various societal levels (see Figure 6.4 below).
The core, or Inner Circle, is where English is the primary language the United
Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. These varieties were essentially
the result of British colonisation the movement of English-speaking people from one
part of the world to another and therefore did not contribute to a significant increase in
speaker numbers. However, the transplantation of English to new contexts brought
English into contact with a variety of other languages and a variety of non-Western
cultures.
The Outer Circle represents the spread of English through British and later American
colonisation to multilingual settings where English became the language of the powerful
elite. Over time this resulted in a host of second-language speakers of the language as
the local elite saw English as a window to the scientific and technological developments
of the western world, to Christianity, to rich literary traditions and to expanding
educational opportunities. However, English was not always accepted without
resistance, and in many Outer Circle countries there is tension between enthusiastic
acceptance and a more negative view of English as `an intruder, slowly nibbling away at
the linguistic domains that rightfully belong to local languages' (Kachru 1992:246).
English is nevertheless an official language in all the Outer Circle countries, including
Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland, Namibia, Malawi, Singapore and India. Each of these
has a range of varieties of English, including a form that has become accepted as the
regional standard.
The Expanding circle includes countries such as China, Thailand, Japan, Israel, Greece,
Poland and others that recognise the importance of English as an international language
but do not themselves have a history of colonisation by members of the Inner Circle nor
does English have a special place in their language policy that is, it is not an official
language.
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Task 6.4
(a)
(b) Kachru did not put South Africa into his model. Where do you think South Africa fits
and why?
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1,088,200,000
50,273,000
175,904,000
4,512,000
122,620,000
42,593,000
18,004,000
12,972,000
19,813,000
285,796,000
8,878,000
107,756,000
13,754,000
810,806,000
22,919,000
16,965,000
112,258,000
109,434,000
58,723,000
2,641,000
16,606,000
23,996,000
7,334,000
245,800,000
57,006,000
25,880,000
16,470,000
3,366,000
(Kachru 1992:233ff. Note that the speaker numbers are from 1988 and are now out of date.)
Feedback
The map heading tells us that it reflects countries where England is an official language
and is spoken by a significant population. This means that it covers both Inner Circle
countries like the UK and Australia and Outer Circle countries like Nigeria and Singapore.
You might argue that South Africa falls into the Inner Circle as it was a former British
colony, with a group of several thousand British settlers. The period of British settlement
in the early 1800s is roughly the same as that of New Zealand. However, one difference
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noted by Leith (1996), is that in the Inner Circle countries, substantial settlement by firstlanguage speakers of English largely displaced the precolonial population. In South
Africa, English did not displace the other languages but became part of a multilingual
melting pot. In this respect it is more like an Outer Circle country, where `sparser colonial
settlements' maintained the precolonial population and allowed a proportion of them
access to learning English as a second or additional language (Leith 1996:1812).
In South Africa English is one of the official languages (so we can't be in the Expanding
Circle) and is the most common language of education, business and politics. A regional
standard known as South African English exists and several dictionaries have been
published detailing the vocabulary and pronunciation of this variety. As in many Outer
Circle countries, the advancement of English into more and more areas of South African
life is contested by those who wish to retain and promote indigenous languages. The
situation is complicated further by the South African trend for L2 speakers of English to
raise their children in English and send them to English schools.
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The in-between nature of the South African example points out that Kachru's model,
while still widely influential, is not subtle enough to capture all the different ways that
English is used across the world. According to Jenkins (2003), there are grey areas
between Inner and Outer Circle countries and also between Outer and Expanding Circle
countries:
The model is based on geography and genetics rather than on the way speakers
identify with and use English. Some English users in the Outer Circle speak it as
their first language (occasionally as their only language) e.g. in Singapore.
Meanwhile an increasing number of speakers in the Expanding Circle use English
for a very wide range of purposes including social, with native speakers and even
more frequently with other non-native speakers from both their own and different
L1s, and both in their home country and abroad.
(Jenkins 2003:17)
A further problem with Kachru's model is that it implies that the situation is uniform for all
the countries within a particular circle, although this is clearly not the case:
Even within the Inner Circle, countries differ in the amount of linguistic diversity they
contain (e.g. there is far more diversity in the US than in the UK). In the Outer Circle,
countries differ in a number of respects such as whether English is spoken only by
an elite, as in India, or is widespread, as in Singapore; or whether it is spoken by a
single L1 group leading to one variety of English as in Bangladesh, or by several
different L1 groups leaning to several varieties of English as in India.
(Jenkins 2003:1718)
Another scholar who disagrees with Kachru's model is the British linguist Randolph Quirk
(1920). Quirk and Kachru have fundamentally different views that surfaced at a 1984
conference on standards of English. Quirk argued for the need to uphold standards in
the use of English in both Inner Circle countries and those outside the Inner Circle. Quirk
believes in the virtues of Standard English, arguing in favour of a British-based
international standard that is understood and valued everywhere, especially in written
communication. He disapproves of the trend towards greater tolerance for variation in
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Not only has `English' become international in the last half-century, but scholarship
about English has also become international; the ownership of an interest in English
has become international. We are no longer a language community which is
associated with a national community or even with a family of nations such as the
Commonwealth aspired to be. We are an international community.
(Brumfit 1995:16)
Task 6.5
(a)
Contrast Quirk's view and Kachru's view on Outer Circle varieties of English.
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(b) Have a look at the quote by Derek Walcott at the beginning of this study unit. Does
he fall into the Kachru camp or the Quirk camp?
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Feedback
Quirk uses Inner Circle values and norms to define a native speaker-based standard for
English, viewing second-language varieties as non-standard varieties resulting from
interference with other languages. He believes in a single international Standard English
that should be taught at school, would be understood by everyone and would unite the
global community of English speakers. In contrast, Kachru views the diverse varieties in
the Outer and Expanding Circles as new norms, with their own `world Englishes' that
belong equally to all who use them.
By asserting that English is `nobody's special property', Walcott is placing himself firmly
in Kachru's camp. The West Indian poet from St Lucia in the Caribbean won the Nobel
Prize for Literature in 1992. He uses an `Outer Circle' variety of English in his poetry, and
recognises the right of Outer Circle countries to own their own varieties of English and
use them creatively in regional literature.
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6.5.1 SAE
South African English (SAE) is itself divided into several different varieties based on
geographical origin and social class. Lass (2002:123) notes that `the morphology and
syntax of L1 varieties of SAE have not been well studied, and it would be premature to
give any kind of detailed account', but the phonology and vocabulary of the variety have
been studied in detail by South African linguists such as L.W. Lanham, Roger Lass,
William and Jean Branford, Vivian de Klerk, Rajend Mesthrie, Ian Bekker and Bertus van
Rooy.
According to Lass (2002:106), one of the phonological features of SAE is that the [I]
vowel in kit (and hit and it) is not the same as the [I] vowel in fit and pit. In words like bath
and rather, SAE uses the vowel in bar, or even the vowel in bore. South African English
also tends to use an [e] vowel in words like hat, so we are easy to identify as `South
Efrican', or even just `Seffrican'!
At the lexical level, we are unique in referring to traffic lights as robots and traffic officers
as speedcops. We are the only English speakers that use the term loadshedding
(`planned power cuts') and the only ones that use just now to mean `soon'. In many of
the local varieties of English, South Africans use sorry to express sympathy, even when
they are clearly not to blame:
Lecturer:
Class:
Sorry.
Loans from Afrikaans and other local languages are common, as david crystal
discovered on his travels:
And at various times, in South Africa or Zimbabwe, I was offered mealie-meal,
sadza, biltong, and bunny-chow respectively, fine maize-meal, a type of thick
porridge, salted meat, and curry in a hollowed out half-loaf. It is an unusual
experience, checking in a dictionary before you eat something.
(Crystal 2008:145)
6.5.2 BSAE
According to De Klerk and Gough (2002:356), Black South African English (BSAE) is
an L2 variety of English commonly used by the L1 speakers of South Africa's indigenous
African languages. In many schools, English is the medium of instruction either from the
start or after 4 years of mother-tongue education. However in many cases, the teachers
are L2 speakers and exposure to L1 English speakers in classrooms is limited. This has
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resulted in certain characteristic pronunciation and grammar, with influence from African
languages, becoming the BSAE norm.
Some of the phonological features of BSAE include a reduction of English vowels, as
African languages in the region have only 5 or 7 vowels (De Klerk & Gough 2002:360).
For example, the vowels in lot and port are both realised as the o-sound [ ], resulting in
lot and pot. A very noticeable feature is the word stresses, which tend to fall on the
second-last syllable, resulting in words like seVENty.
At the syntactic level, BSAE has fixed phrases like can be able to, in fact and each and
every. Another feature is the insertion of `extra' articles and pronouns and prepositions
(She was carrying a luggage, My Standard 9, I have enjoyed it very much, He explained
about the situation). Extension of the present progressive tense is also common, e.g. She
was loving him very much. Codeswitching and borrowing are also common features.
According to De Klerk and Gough (2002:357), this variety is increasing in prestige as the
socioeconomic status of black South Africans improves. It is also the variety most used
for government communication. However, the increase in black South Africans attending
suburban English-medium schools is resulting in an increasing number of youth
speaking SAE rather than BSAE, sometimes as their only language. It therefore remains
to be seen what the role and status of BSAE will be in the decades to come.
6.5.3 SAIE
South African Indian English (SAIE) is a variety of English used by about three-quarters of
a million South Africa Indians, usually as their first language. According to Bughwan
(1970:503), `English was first transmitted to Indians by native speakers of the language
English missionaries, British teachers and English-speaking sugar-estate owners'.
Mesthrie's research on SAIE gives a picture of a community that is `now largely urban,
largely moderately educated (with seven to twelve years of schooling), with a majority of
people having Tamil and Bhojpuri as ancestral languages' (Mesthrie 1992:38). SAIE is
therefore a second-language variety of English that has become a first language variety
over time.
SAIE shows signs of influence from the original Indian languages. Some examples of
SAIE words borrowed from Indian languages (taken from Mesthrie 1995:2545) are
given below:
isel
dhania
bhajia
nikah
thanni
ihanda
Semantic shifts often occur in SAIE where the meanings of words differ from Standard
English:
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lazy
`unintelligent'
interfere
`to molest'
hint
independent
`stand-offish, haughty'
raw
`uncouth, vulgar'
healthy
goodwill
There are several different varieties of SAIE, dependent on the age, background, social
class and level of education of speakers. Mesthrie (1992:44) gives the following
examples of SAIE, the first from a 55-year-old, rural, working class speaker and the
second from a 60-year old urban, working class speaker.
Q:
A:
Q:
A:
I went an' bought one soda water. So I had a soda water in the cafe
, I took my
coat out, took my jersey an' all out, I chucked it on the table. I sat, sat, sat I
said no, I felt I must reach home. I didn't trust anybody to drive that van
because it was lent to me from somebody else. So somehow or other I
managed, I jumped into the van, an' I drove the van an' came, I just came an'
parked here an' lied down.
(60-year-old, urban, working class speaker)
Task 6.6
Look closely at the speech samples above. Can you identify any of the distinguishing
characteristics of SAIE? Focus on pronunciation, grammar, word order, word meaning
etc.
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Feedback
As far as phonology is concerned, we have already commented on the missing h sounds
in words like 'olidays, 'usband in the first example and the missing d in most occurrences
of an' (and) in both examples.
The syntax is also different from SAE. Notice, for example, that there is no do in the first
question `How often you go to Durban?' Mesthrie says that most styles of SAIE omit the
do, resulting in questions like You saw me? rather than Did you see me? SAIE also seems
to use more -ing forms than simple present tense forms, for example they living 'ard life
(`they live a hard life') and My connection-all staying Merebank (`My side of the family all
stay in Merebank'). The past tense form of lie down in the second example is lied down,
which would not be used in Standard English. Some of the prepositions are omitted, e.g.
Sometime holidays we go (`Sometimes we go in the holidays') or differ from Standard
English, e.g. it was lent to me from somebody else (`it was lent to me by somebody else').
The word order is also sometimes noticeably different from SAE, e.g. Hardly we go (`we
hardly go'). According to Mesthrie (1992:115), objects are often placed first in SAIE,
resulting in OSV word order, for example, And ginger we should plant. Repetition of
words for emphasis is also used in the second example, for example I sat, sat, sat (`I sat
for a long time'). Mesthrie (1992:52) explains that this kind of reduplication is a favoured
device in SAIE to indicate intensity or frequency, e.g. waiting-waiting we got so fed up
(`we got fed up with waiting for so long').
SAIE also has particular words that distinguish the ethnolect from other forms of English
spoken in South Africa. One of these is the phrase an' all meaning `all of them/everything/
everybody'. Another example that is not found in the extracts is the frequent use of y'all
as the second person plural pronoun, as in I'm cross why y'all not eating (I'm upset that
you (pl.) are not eating'). In the examples, you may have noticed the word too is used
much more frequently and in a different way to SAE, e.g. Hardly we go, visit Durban too.
__________________________________________________________________________
6.6 Summary
English is now used as a global language and its L2 speakers alone number over 1,5
billion. It can be regarded as the lingua franca of the world due to its importance in
technology, commerce and science and its ability to borrow words from other languages
and continue to change and adapt to new realities. English is spoken in both standard
and non-standard varieties in many different parts of the world.
Looking back at the history of English, we saw that Germanic-speaking invaders
introduced a new language to Britain known as Anglo-Saxon or Old English. This
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language was later heavily influenced by French during the Norman occupation of
Britain. By the late fifteenth century the invention of the printing press allowed written
English texts to become more accessible and contributed to the acceptance of the
London dialect as the standard.
Colonisation in the 19th century spread the English culture and language to other parts
of the world. This ongoing spread of English has been represented by Kachru as three
concentric circles: In Inner Circle countries English is the primary language as a result of
British colonisation; in Outer Circle countries English is an official language but coexists
with other languages and has many second-language speakers of the regional standard;
while in Expanding circle countries, English is recognised as an important international
language but is not an official language.
We identified several criticisms that have been raised in relation to Kachru's model, and
noted the disagreement between Kachru and Quirk relating to whether English has only
one recognised centre (England) that sets the standard, or whether the norm-providing
centres have multiplied in the last century. We concluded our investigation of World
Englishes by looking at some of the linguistic and sociolinguistic features of the varieties
of English currently spoken in South Africa: South African English (SAE), Black South
African English (BSAE) and South African Indian English (SAIE).
Further reading
Crystal, D. 2010. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. (third edition). New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Chapter 56 The language barrier
Chapter 59 World languages
Crystal, D. 2003. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. (second
edition). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Crystal, D. 2003. English as a Global Language (second edition). Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press (or see sample at http://www.sprachshop.com/sixcms/media.php/
811/English_as_a_grobal_lang_sample_ch.pdf)
Jenkins, J. 2003. World Englishes: A resource book for students. Abingdon and New
York: Routledge.
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Study Unit 7
New languages: pidgins and creoles
A LETTER FROM PARENT TO TEACHER
dearest teacher,pls i not like how u give my son 0\10 in the english ezam. i have look at d
thing he write and everytin correct.so what
is the why that u now give him 0\10.i teach him english everyday and he has know it well
well and her hand written is dey correct.
so pls what is d y for little mark ...
Joke downloaded from http://www.onlinenigeria.com/jokes/ad/1-3644
OUTCOMES
After you have worked through this study unit you will be able to
1
2
3
4
discuss the sociolinguistic conditions that lead to the birth of a pidgin language;
distinguish between a pidgin and a creole and describe their linguistic characteristics;
explain the process of language change that results when a creole remains in contact
with the standard language on which it is based; and
explain and illustrate the following concepts:
pidgin
creole
lexifier language
base language
decreolisation
creole continuum
basilect
mesolect
acrolect
Fanakalo
In a nutshell
In this unit our attention is drawn to new linguistic varieties that arise as a result of
contact between two or more language groups, such as Portuguese traders along
the African coast and slaves forcibly relocated from West Africa to America and the
Caribbean. We look at the birth of new pidgin languages and their development into
creoles. The linguistic characteristics of pidgins and creoles are also investigated.
We also investigate how and why creole languages decline and move gradually
closer to standard languages. We conclude our investigation by focusing on two
case studies, namely Fanakalo in South Africa and Mauritian Creole. Although both
originated from language contact situations, they have developed in very different
ways.
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7.1 Introduction
The origins of language in the human species happened so long ago that we can only
speculate about how and when it happened, although it is thought to have occurred in
Africa. However, sometimes we can get a glimpse into how the process may have
happened by studying the birth of new languages in more recent times. In this study unit
we focus on the `makeshift' languages that arise when the need for communication
overcomes the barriers between speakers of two different languages.
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Naro (1978) makes the observation that pidgins are rule-governed languages rather than
an arbitrary mixture of languages. He also makes the observation that pidgins are no
one's languages they are always second languages. Note, however, that Naro (1978)
does not identify under what conditions pidgins are formed. To be able to account for the
type of situation in which pidgins are developed we need to take a closer look at
language contact situations.
Before a pidgin can be created, there must be contact between people who do not know
each other's languages. This suggests that pidgins arise amongst adults rather than
children. There must also be a need for monolinguals belonging to different speech
communities to communicate with each other. The contact situation must be temporary
and relatively informal. Although language contact is a necessary precondition for
pidgins to develop, it is not a sufficient one. By this we mean that not all contact
situations produce pidgins. In fact, most contact situations do not produce pidgins.
Task 7.1
(a)
(b) What are the main differences between a pidgin and a lingua franca?
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Feedback
Contact situations frequently lead to bilingualism or multilingualism, where speakers of
one language learn the language of other community members and speak to them in
their own language(s). Many examples of multilingualism can be seen in South Africa
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and it is not uncommon to come across people who can speak three or even more
languages such as Zulu, English and Afrikaans. In pidgin contact situations bilingualism
does not occur. The speakers of different languages do not learn one another's
languages. They simply use a limited variety based on one or more of the languages
involved in the contact situation.
Another possible outcome of a contact situation in which speakers are not able to
understand each other's language, is for everyone to use a third or common language,
known as a lingua franca. As we saw in Study Unit 2, a lingua franca is a language used
to communicate when people do not share a common mother tongue. For instance,
when students from different parts of the world study together in the United States of
America and speak (reasonably) correct English to each other, they are not using a
pidgin, but a lingua franca. In India, English is often used as a lingua franca between
members of widely differing Indian speech communities. Swahili is an important lingua
franca in East Africa. The term lingua franca therefore has a much wider meaning than
the term pidgin. Each pidgin functions as a type of lingua franca (because it is used for
communication between members of different speech communities) but a lingua franca
is not a pidgin. The key characteristic of a lingua franca is that it is a fully-fledged
(developed) language with mother-tongue speakers, such as English, whereas a pidgin
language has no native speakers.
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Islands of Mauritius, the Seychelles and Reunion. There is also scholarly debate over the
extent to which the early forms of Afrikaans can be considered a pidgin, resulting from
contact between Dutch and other European settlers, the Khoekhoe substratum, and
Creole-Portuguese and Malay slaves (see e.g. Roberge 2002).
7.4.1 Vocabulary
The vocabulary of a pidgin is often based on the language of the dominant group. The
dominant language, that is the language from which most of the vocabulary is
introduced, is referred to as the lexifier language of the pidgin. One reason why the
dominant language tends to be the lexifier language is because the dominant language
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introduces a number of new concepts (with their original names) into the culture of the
non-dominant group. Thus in Khoi (or Khoekhoe) Pidgin Dutch most of the words are
Dutch. Among the most common lexifier languages of pidgins are English, French,
Portuguese, Spanish, and Arabic.
Task 7.2
English is the lexifier language of Hawaiian Pidgin English. See if your knowledge of
English allows you to translate the following example from Hawaiian Pidgin English (Hint:
The speaker is comparing life with a road. Try reading the sentence aloud; this will
probably make it easier to understand):
Samtaim gud rod get, samtaim, olsem ben get enguru get, no? enikain seim, olsem
hyuman life.
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Feedback
You probably recognised a few words like samtaim, `sometime', seim `same' and
hyuman life `human life', but notice the spelling is very sound-based, unlike Standard
English with all its idiosyncrasies and inconsistencies. However, you probably couldn't
follow the meaning. The gloss is provided below:
Samtaim
olsem
hyuman life.
bends get angles get, no? any kind same, all-same human life.
The English translation would run something like this:
`Sometimes you get a good road, sometimes you get, like, bends, corners, right?
Everything's like that. Human life's like that.'
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This example shows clearly that knowledge of the lexifier language does not enable you
to understand the pidgin. It still needs to be learnt.
__________________________________________________________________________
Because of the trend towards simplification, a pidgin is characterised by its limited
vocabulary and, consequently, pidgin speakers can only discuss certain topics (Hudson
1980:62). The small vocabulary implies that knowledge of the context and the topic of the
conversation play an important role in the interpretation of an utterance. Because the
vocabulary is small, each word has a wide meaning. The meaning of the Tok Pisin word
han illustrates this point (Tok Pisin is a pidgin/creole language spoken in Papua New
Guinea):
han bilong dok (`hands belong to a dog') `front paw of a dog'
han bilong pik (`hands belong to a pig') `shoulder of pork'
han bilong pisin (`hands belong to a pigeon') `wing of a pigeon'
han bilong diwai (`hands belong to a tree') `branch of a tree'
plantihan (`plenty hands') `centipede'.
Task 7.3
(a)
Based on the example above, can you identify the lexifier language of Tok Pisin?
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(b) Where do you think the language Tok Pisin gets its name from?
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Feedback
Because you can see from the glosses that Tok Pisin is based on English vocabulary,
e.g. han `hand' and bilong `belong', you can deduce that English is the lexifier language
of Tok Pisin. In fact, 80% of the vocabulary of the language comes from English. The
language gets its name from the phrase `talk pidgin'.
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As in speech addressed to children (motherese), reduplicated phrases are also typically
present in many pidgins. For example in Nigerian Pidgin, reduplicated words include
koro-koro `clear vision', yama-yama `disgusting', and doti-doti `garbage'.
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7.4.2 Phonology
As pointed out above, the simplification of the phonological (sound) system of pidgins
leads to certain similarities among pidgins worldwide. For example: the phonology of Tok
Pisin and many other pidgins shows only five vowels. In Tok Pisin, for example, this leads
to a neutralisation of the contrast between the English words work (Tok Pisin: wok) and
walk. The contrast between these two words is now expressed on the morphological
level: the word wokabout (`walk about') is used for `walk' and wok means `work'.
The number of consonants phonemes is also reduced in pidgin languages. For example,
the contrast between [p] and [f] is neutralised in Tok Pisin by the loss of [f]: The word
laugh thus becomes lap and leaf becomes lip. The reduction in the number of phonemes
(sounds) also leads to the loss of the contrast between [s], [l] and [tl]. This means that
the English words watch and wash are both pronounced as was in Tok Pisin.
7.4.3 Morphology
The simplification process is seen on the grammatical level in a sharp reduction of the
inflectional morphology of the lexifier languages in pidgins. Inflectional morphemes are
used in standard languages to:
. signal relationships between words in a sentence, for example, the agreement
between a subject and a verb in sentences such as The dog walks / The dogs walk;
. provide additional grammatical information such as tense, case, number, etc., for
example English cat cats, dog dogs
The loss of inflection in pidgins manifests differently in different types of languages but
the results tend to be very similar: a type of telegraphic speech. This simplification
implies that important meaning distinctions can no longer be expressed. For example,
the loss of the English possessive suffix the dog's paw in Tok Pisin is compensated for by
using the word bilong. Thus the Tok Pisin phrase han bilong dok `hand belonging to a
dog' refers to a dog's paw. The affixes expressing number (e.g. the -s added to nouns in
English to denote the concept `plural') are similarly lost in the pidginisation process. Thus
Tok Pisin expresses the concept `more than one' by a numeral: two boy bilong yu (`your
two sons'). This last example illustrates that important concepts that are expressed in the
lexifier language by an inflectional morpheme are expressed in the pidgin using a full
word.
A similar loss of inflectional morphology or grammatical morphemes is seen in African
pidgins in a loss of the Bantu noun prefix system. For instance, the fifteen noun classes
that occur in Zulu are reduced to one contrast in the Zulu-based pidgin Fanakalo (see
7.7.1), namely the contrast between the singular and the plural which is marked by maor zi-. A few nouns that refer to human beings take the prefix um- the singular and the
prefix ba- in the plural. The loss of the noun class markers means that the concord
system of Zulu is also lost in Fanakalo.
There are two possible reasons why the inflectional morphology has been lost in pidgins:
. It is easier to interpret a language where one form has one meaning. (The plural
morpheme -s in English has three forms: -s, z and -ez as in cats, dogs and horses)
. It is easier to learn a language with limited morphology such as English or Afrikaans
than one that has a complex morphology such as Latin or Zulu.
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`I'm talking'
a bin tok
`I talked'
a go tok
`I will talk'
7.4.4 Syntax
As pointed out earlier, many pidgins have SVO sequence even if one of the donor
languages has, for instance, a VSO sequence. There are, of course exceptions: Naga
Pidgin, spoken in northeast India, is reported to have a SOV basic word order. Nearly all
pidginised forms of English have an SVO sequence.
The auxiliary verb used to mark tense is lacking in most English-based pidgins. For
instance, an auxiliary verb such as has in He has gone would be dropped in pidgins. This
is usually compensated for by adding adverbs like today or tomorrow.
The verb to be is frequently omitted altogether in pidgins:
beam very strong `the beam is very strong'.
me angikele nau
yu klinim pis
yu klinim pis
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When a pidgin acquires mother-tongue speakers (i.e. children grow up and speak it as a
mother tongue), it starts to undergo various changes (this process is known as
elaboration). It then grows into a fully developed language which we call a creole.
All pidgins have the potential to develop into fully-developed languages. Pidgins can be
regarded as languages in embryo all the necessary linguistic elements are there in a
restricted form. Under the right circumstances a pidgin can be creolised (that is,
develop into a creole). Once a pidgin is adopted as a first language (that is, there are
mother tongue speakers) and it starts to be used for a wide range of functions (it is used
for other situations than trading), it begins to develop into a creole.
A good example is the Caribbean creoles. These first started as pidgins which were used
as a means of communication between master and slaves. Because many of the slaves
came from different linguistic backgrounds, pidgins developed as a means of
communication between them. Gradually the use of the pidgin expanded to cover
more and more situations. In the case of mixed marriages the pidgin became the main
means of communication between them and it was then passed on to the children as
their first language. Once the pidgin was adopted as a first language, it developed
rapidly and the old African languages fell into disuse and became forgotten, leaving the
way open for the new creole to become a fully developed language. Another example of
a pidgin that has been creolised is Nigerian pidgin, an English-based pidgin and creole
language spoken as a lingua franca across Nigeria. According to Wikipedia,
The language is commonly referred to as `Pidgin' or `Brokin'. It is often not
considered a creole language since most speakers are not native speakers,
although many children do learn it early. ... Ihemere (2006) reports that Nigerian
Pidgin is the native language of approximately 3 to 5 million people and is a second
language for at least another 75 million. Variations of Pidgin are also spoken across
West Africa, in countries such as Equatorial Guinea and Cameroon. Pidgin English,
despite its common use throughout the country, has no official status.
Nigerian Pidgin, along with the various pidgin and creole languages of West Africa
share similarities to the various dialects of English found in the Caribbean. Some of
the returning descendants of slaves taken to the New World of West African origin
brought back many words and phrases to West Africa from the Jamaican Creole
(also known as Jamaican Patois or simply Patois) and the other creole languages of
the West Indies which are components of Nigerian Pidgin.
Downloaded from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigerian_Pidgin
on 19 March 2012
As the above extract suggests, it is not easy to draw an exact dividing line between a
pidgin and a creole. The point at which the pidgin is adopted as the mother tongue of
some speakers could be regarded as the birth of a new language, but like all babies it
still has to grow and mature. Once the pidgin becomes a first language, its development
is greatly accelerated. Its speakers may start to use it in new ways, for example, for
teaching children or for storytelling. It undergoes rapid alteration and expansion in its
grammar, vocabulary and phonology. The structure of the creole becomes more
complex.
Mature creoles can be regarded as fully developed languages because they can be
used in all normal communicative situations, i.e. they have a full range of functions in all
domains. Some creoles have been accepted as the language of government and
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administration as in the case of Tok Pisin and they also become literary languages. A
creole may even become a national language of a country. For instance, Sango is a
Ngbandi-based creole spoken in the Central African Republic, Cameroon, Chad, Congo,
and the DRC. Originally used by river traders, Sango is a Bantu language with some
French lexical influence used as a language of wider communication in the region. It is
the most widespread language in the Central African Republic with 400 000 mothertongue speakers and a further 1,6 million second-language speakers (1988 census). It
has been declared the national language of the Central African Republic and is used in
all domains, including as a language of instruction in many schools.
Task 7.4
Based on your reading of 7.3 and 7.4 above, can you summarise the major differences
between pidgins and creoles? Try and think of at least six points of difference:
Pidgins
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Creoles
Feedback
The table below shows some of the difference between pidgins and creoles that you may
have identified:
Pidgins
Creoles
More stable
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able to speak the base language. Education also plays an important role here. The base
language has a higher status and is a language of education. Because of their origins,
creoles are often regarded as low prestige varieties. and once speakers of the creole
become educated, it is likely that they will start to adopt the standard language. If this
process continues throughout the creole-speaking community, the creole will disappear
completely, that is, it will have been decreolised and the speakers will all have adopted
the base language.
The process of decreolisation usually takes place slowly and unevenly. Some members
of the creole-speaking community adopt the base language which is more prestigious,
whereas others do not change their language so rapidly in that direction. Older, working
class or more rural community members typically still use a `deep creole', that is the
process of decreolisation has hardly touched them. This situation can be described in
terms of a creole continuum, in other words a range of varieties of the creole in various
stages of decreolisation.
Normally three stages are identified in the creole continuum: the basilect or `deep'
creole, which is most like the original creole, the mesolect(s) or various varieties in which
decreolisation is beginning to take place and the acrolect where decreolisation has
progressed the furthest. The acrolect is the form of the creole that is closest to the base
language. All three stages can exist simultaneously in a creole-speaking community as
speakers may be in different stages of decreolisation.
FIGURE 7.1: Creole continuum, with examples from Jamaican
Creole basilect ? Creole mesolects ? Creole ? acrolect ? Base language
Mi a nyam ? Me a eat
The process of decreolisation may lead to the development of new language varieties. In
the United States of America the pidgin languages of the slaves gradually developed into
a creole which they adopted as their mother tongue. Because of contact with mothertongue speakers of English and increased levels of education after the emancipation of
the slaves, the creole varieties started to become decreolised with the result that Black
American English is a decreolised variety of English. It is a dialect of American English
which has grown out of a creole variety. It retains certain creole elements, although it is
no longer regarded as a creole and is moving closer to standard American English.
The case of Afrikaans is quite a complex situation in which the creole varieties of the
Dutch spoken by the Khoekhoe and the slaves started to be decreolised through contact
with mother-tongue speakers of Dutch. At the same time the mother-tongue speakers of
Dutch were influenced by these creole varieties. As a result many creole elements have
been absorbed into Afrikaans. For instance, constructions like the reduplication of verbs
(singsing, dansdans) which do not appear in Dutch can be traced back to MalayPortuguese elements in the variety of Dutch spoken by the slaves. The influence on
Afrikaans of these creolised varieties led to Afrikaans absorbing many creole elements.
Afrikaans is sometimes referred to as a partial creole language.
130
soldiers and workers from the Dutch East India Company Dutch who came to the Cape
from the Dutch Repblic in the 17th century, brought with them the various dialects of
Dutch. The slaves who came from the East brought with them various eastern languages
which had an influence on the development of Afrikaans, and the Khoe speakers who
formed the indigenous population of the Cape influenced the development of Afrikaans
as well.
Many of the officials and soldiers who were employed by the Dutch East India Company
at the Cape resigned and began farming. These farmers were called the freeburghers.
The freeburghers mainly became stock farmers and they gradually moved away from the
Cape into the interior in search of pastures for their stock. They lived on the eastern
border of the Cape which they continually expanded. Although these settlers came from
various European countries (The Dutch Republic, Germany and France were the main
countries of origin) and spoke various varieties of Dutch and other European languages,
they adopted Dutch as their mother tongue. The variety of Dutch that they spoke
however was influenced by the different varieties of Dutch and other European
languages which the settlers brought with them. The type of Dutch that they spoke is
called Border Afrikaans (Oosgrensafrikaans).
The slaves came from various linguistic backgrounds and from countries diverse as
India, Madagascar, Benin, Angola and Liberia amongst others. One of the languages
which most of the slaves knew to some extent was a creolised variety of Portuguese
spoken in the East which was called Malay-Portuguese. It originated from a type of
pidgin Portuguese spoken by Malay speakers who wanted to learn Portuguese but had
not quite mastered it. Malay-Portuguese was the language which was used to
communicate with Portuguese traders, soldiers and sailors. It was well-known in the
East and even many Dutch sailors could speak it. At the Cape the slaves began to speak
Dutch with their new masters and with their fellow slaves. Dutch was often used as a
lingua franca amongst the slaves because many of them spoke different languages.
Many of the slaves did not learn Dutch from mother-tongue speakers, but from the fellow
slaves who spoke a type of learner Dutch. This type of Dutch was simplified (as it was not
their mother tongue) and it was also influenced by elements from their various mother
tongues (particularly Malay-Portuguese). Gradually this variety of Dutch was adopted as
the mother tongue of the slaves and they lost the ability to speak their original mother
tongues. That was the beginning of a variety of Dutch called Cape Afrikaans (Kaapse
Afrikaans). The slaves remained mainly at the Cape and did not move into the interior of
South Africa, so their variety of Dutch has had an influence on the type of Afrikaans
spoken in the Cape today. Remnants of Malay-Portuguese can still be seen in present
day Afrikaans in common words such as baie, koejawel and piesang as mentioned in
Study Unit 2
Because of the need to trade, particularly for cattle and livestock, the Dutch settlers
found it necessary to trade with the Khoe. This trade lead to the development of a
contact language, pidgin Dutch. Contact with the Dutch had important consequences for
the Khoi. As a result of this contact their social system was destroyed, new chiefs were
appointed by the Dutch, unknown illnesses such as small-lpox led to the breakdown of
the traditional society and to a large extent they began to adopt the Dutch language.
Many of the Khoi were frightened by the small pox epidemic so they moved away from
the Cape. Most of them moved in a North Westerly direction and settled in the region of
the Orange River. The variety of Dutch that they spoke is known as Orange River
Afrikaans (Oranjerivierafrikaans). The Khoe who did not move to the Orange River region
began to work for the Dutch farmers as herdsmen. Their status changed from providers
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of livestock to herders of livestock. Traces of the Khoi languages can be seen in modern
Afrikaans. A number of words of Khoi origin such as Gamka, Keiskamma and Karoo as
discussed in Study Unit 2.
As we have seen above, during the first years after the arrival of the Dutch at the Cape a
large variety of people settled at the Cape. Apart from the Dutch settlers, there were three
other important groups of speakers in the community. They were the slaves, who spoke
various Asian and African languages; the Khoi speakers; and the freeburghers, who
spoke a variety of Dutch. Each one of these groups spoke their own distinctive variety of
the early Afrikaans. There were therefore three dialects or varieties of early Afrikaans:
Cape Afrikaans (Kaapse Afrikaans), originally spoken by the slaves; Orange River
Afrikaans (Oranjerivierafrikaans), originally spoken by the Khoi; and Border Afrikaans
(Oosgrensafrikaans), spoken by the stock farmers who had trekked away from the Cape.
The people who spoke these various varieties of Afrikaans did not live in isolation from
one another. They constantly came into contact with one another and naturally these
various dialects influenced one another. Modern Afrikaans can be seen as a mixture of
these various dialects.
By the end of the 19th century the varieties of Dutch spoken at the Cape were so far
removed from standard Dutch that a movement arose towards establishing Afrikaans as
a standard language. Although Dutch and English were accepted as the two official
languages of the country when the Union of South Africa came into being in 1910, there
was a strong movement to have Afrikaans accepted as an official language and
eventually in 1925 Afrikaans replaced Dutch as one of the official languages of South
Africa.
It is possible that many of the languages of the world may have developed out of creole
languages or that creolisation may have played a role in their development (as it did in
the case of Afrikaans). A major language like French, for example, may have started as a
pidgin Latin spoken in Gaul, which later became creolised and then developed into a
fully-fledged language with the status of a literary and national language. There is even
some evidence that creolisation many have played a role in the development of Middle
English. Unfortunately, we do not always have evidence of the role of creolisation in the
development of languages as we do not have written records of the earlier stages.
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Task 7.5
Match the examples and definitions in the left-hand column with the appropriate terms in
the right-hand column. You won't need all the terms in the right-hand column.
(a) The language that plays the most significant role in the composition of the
pidgin
(b) The adoption of a pidgin as a first
language, with consequent linguistic elaboration and extension into a wider range
of domains
(c) The development of a language used in
restricted contact situations
(d) The creole language variety closest to the
original pidgin language
(e) The creole language variety closest to the
original base language
(f) The language from which a pidgin derives
most of its vocabulary
(g) a situation where a creole language
consists of a spectrum of varieties
between those most and least similar to
the superstrate language
(h) Hawaiian Pidgin originated as a form of
communication on the plantations.
Based on English, it has also been
influenced by Portuguese, Hawaiian, Japanese and Cantonese. In the 19th and
20th centuries, Pidgin started to be used
outside the plantation between ethnic
groups and eventually it became the
primary language of most people in
Hawaii, replacing the original languages
such as Hawaiian.
(i) Bahamian is an English-based language
spoken by approximately 400,000 people
in the Bahamas. Bahamian is spoken as
L1 by both white and black Bahamians,
although in slightly different forms. Less
educated speakers have merged /v/ and
/w/ into a single phoneme, and words with
th in English are usually pronounced with
[d] or [t] as in dis `this' and tink `think'.
(j) English first arrived in China in the 1630s,
and a modified form of English known as
Chinese Pidgin English developed in the
17th century for use as a trade language.
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creole continuum
lexifier language
pidgin
creolisation
acrolect
mesolect
basilect
pidginisation
base language
decreolisation
creole
133
Feedback
The term defined in (a) is base language, (b) is creolisation, (c) is pidginisation, (d) is
basilect, (e) is acrolect and (f) is lexifier language and (g) is creole continuum. The
situation described in (h) (Hawaiian Pidgin) is one of pidginisation, followed by
creolisation. Case study (i) (Bahamian) is also a creole because we are told that
Bahamian has L1 speakers. The pidgin origins of the Bahamian language are displayed
in the reduced consonant phonology described in the case study. The situation in (j)
(Chinese Pidgin English) describes pidginisation (or just a pidgin).
__________________________________________________________________________
7.8.1 Fanakalo
In the previous section we noted that Afrikaans emerged as a contact language between
the Dutch settlers in South Africa and the local people. Another contact language which
arose in the eastern parts of South Africa is Fanakalo. Fanakalo is basically a simplified
form of Zulu with a large number of words derived from English and to a lesser extent
Afrikaans included in its vocabulary. Adendorff (2002:181) cites Cole's estimation that
Fanakalo vocabulary is 70% Zulu, 24% English and 6% Afrikaans. What is interesting
about Fanakalo is that it is still alive today as a pidgin language, used for communication
between different linguistic groups. As a pidgin, it has no mother-tongue speakers.
Most South African are aware of Fanakalo as a language that is used on the mines,
where it has become somewhat institutionalised, but it seems that it originally came from
the Colony of Natal (KwaZulu-Natal today). The origins of Fanakalo are to some degree
uncertain, but the most likely theory of origin is put forward by Mesthrie (1995). He
maintains that Fanakalo arose as a result of contact between British settlers in Natal and
local Zulu speakers. This contact pidgin language was in general use in the colony of
Natal when the first indentured Indian labourers arrived in 1861. Mesthrie argues that as
Fanakalo was used widely in contact situations between Indians and Zulu speakers, the
Indians played a role in stabilising this pidgin, which was adopted by them as their
standard form of communication with Zulu speakers.
Adendorff (1995) argues that the role that the missionaries played in the development of
Fanakalo is underestimated. The form of Zulu used by the missionaries influenced the
development of Fanakalo. It seems that Fanakalo developed because white farmers,
missionaries and Indian traders wanted to communicate with the Zulu-speaking majority
134
and so used their limited, simplified form of Zulu mixed with English as a common basis
for communication. Later, Fanakalo spread to other areas. When the gold mines were
developed on the reef around Johannesburg early in the 20th century, many Zulu
speakers sought employment on the mines and Fanakalo came to be used on the mines
as a general means of communication, particularly between foremen and mineworkers.
While it tends to be used in situations where there is a difference of power between
speakers, according to Adendorff (2002:180), Fanakalo `can be used to play down
asymmetry in a relationship; indeed, rather than signalling disparities in power, it is
always instrumental in signalling solidarity'. Some examples of Fanakalo from Adendorff
(2002) are provided below:
Mina washa
ka
lo
manzi
with
the
water
wash
pomp
The pump
yena
donsa
lo
manzi
it is
release
the
water
have
six
children
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envit
zot
pu
we will
mariaz.
wedding
will
get
go see
li
si
mo kapav.
him/her
if
ti
manz en
136
pom.
an apple
can
Task 7.6
(a)
Feedback
The lexifier languages of Fanakalo and Mauritian Creole are, respectively, Zulu and
French, as these form the primary source of vocabulary in the two languages. You may
have various ideas about why Fanakalo has never been creolized, but one possible
answer is that mineworkers were frequently male migrant labourers whose families and
home languages were based elsewhere. Fanakalo thus remained a pidgin second
language with limited use outside the workplace and was never passed on to children. It
also tends to be stigmatised, particularly by African language speakers.
7.9 Summary
This study unit introduced you to pidgin languages, the simplified languages like
Fanakalo that arise as a result of temporary contact between two groups of monolingual
speakers who belong to different communities and who have limited social interaction.
Pidgins are never spoken as a mother tongue and are consequently very unstable in that
they can change or fall into disuse very easily.
The most important structural characteristic of pidgins is simplification. This is a result of
the fact that, in order to serve the purpose for which they were created, pidgins must be
easy to learn. Some of the linguistic characteristics of pidgins include the slow speech
rate, the limited number of linguistic units and the highly simplified phonology,
morphology and grammar.
When contact continues and the pidgin undergoes elaboration and becomes used in a
wider range of situations, it can develop into a fully developed language which we call a
creole. This situation was illustrated in the case study of Mauritian Creole. A later
development known as decreolisation occurs when a creole exists side by side with its
base language. The process of decreolisation usually takes place slowly and unevenly,
resulting in the simultaneous existence of various varieties of the creole: the basilect or
`deep' creole, which is most like the original creole, the mesolect(s) in which
decreolisation is beginning to take place and the acrolect, the form of the creole that
is closest to the base language.
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Further reading
Crystal, D. 2010. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. (third edition). New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Chapter 55 Pidgins and creoles
Chapter 56 The language barrier
Singh, I. 2000. Pidgins and Creoles: An introduction. London: Arnold.
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Study Unit 8
Language shift, language death and language
revival
I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigree of
nations.
Samuel Johnson (English author, poet, literary critic and lexicographer 17091784)
OUTCOMES
After you have studied this unit you should be able to
1
2
3
4
5
sudden death
gradual death
semi-speaker
rememberers
viable language
language maintenance
In a nutshell
In this study unit we reflect on the phenomenon of language shift in multilingual
settings and examine examples of shift in South Africa. We look at the various stages
of language shift and at how shift can lead in certain situations to the complete
disappearance of a language language death. We will touch on the research
methods used in studies of language shift, and explore the effects on the linguistic
structure and features of a dying language.
To end on a more positive note we will look at language maintenance and the revival
of dying languages, focusing on factors which prevent or slow down the rate of shift.
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8.1 Introduction
In this study unit we will look more closely at the effect of multilingualism on minority
languages. It is now well-known that the rise of dominant languages such as Mandarin,
Spanish, Swahili and particularly English often comes at the cost of minority languages in
the community. Television news and documentaries, the internet and social media have
brought many of these stories of threatened languages to the attention of a worldwide
audience:
It is difficult to imagine a period in the history of human development when issues of
language diversity, linguistic subordination, and language loss have been more
evident. Just a half-century ago, small, physically remote communities and socially
subordinate groups were relatively invisible and inaudible within the dominant,
mainstream society. Accordingly, the sociolinguistic status of these communities
was unrecognized and their voices unheard. Language varieties often developed,
lived and died without extensive public attention. Today, images and voices can be
beamed globally within milliseconds, and the naturalness of diversity is readily
transparent.
Wolfram (2008:188)
This study unit focuses on some of the issues relating to language shift, dying languages
and language varieties and the possibility of language revival.
140
inhabitants were Hungarian mother-tongue speakers but also spoke German. Gal spent
a year living in the community, a research method known as participant-observation,
where one observes and records community behaviour while simultaneously experiencing their lifestyle. Gal interviewed many individual community members of various ages
about their language choices in various different situations. Table 8.1 below illustrates an
excerpt from her data:
TABLE 8.1: The choice of Hungarian (H) or German (G) by women speakers in
Oberwart (based on Gal 1979:102)
Age of
speaker
Church
services
Talking to
grandparents
Talking to
parents
Talking to
siblings
Talking to
children
Talking to
grandchildren
14
14
GH
17
GH
GH
22
GH
33
35
GH
GH
40
GH
50
63
GH
71
GH
Task 8.1
Have a look at Gal's data set above and answer the questions that follow:
(a)
(b) What does the top row of the table represent as it moves from left to right?
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(c)
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(d) Are there any monolinguals according to the data given above?
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
(e)
Are there any domains/speech situations in which only one language is used?
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
(f)
Feedback
(a)
The first column indicates the age of the speaker, arranged from youngest (14) to
oldest (71).
(b) The top row indicates the speech situation and with whom the conversation was
taking place. With the exception of the first two columns, the speech situations are
arranged in decreasing age of the interlocutor, with older relatives (grandparent and
parents) on the left and younger relatives (siblings, children, grandchildren) on the
right of the table.
(c)
Empty cells indicate speech situations that didn't apply to that particular speaker,
e.g. the 33-year-old has no siblings and the 14-year-olds do not yet have children or
grandchildren.
(d) The only monolingual in the data is the 71-year-old speaker who speaks only
Hungarian.
(e)
(f)
Church services are the only domain in which a single language, Hungarian, is used
by everyone.
Shift was taking place from Hungarian to German, with German gradually replacing
Hungarian in many domains. While the majority were Hungarian L1 and German L2
speakers, German was the language of economic success and was becoming
increasingly widespread among younger community members. We can see this
clearly from the table, as older community members are Hungarian monolinguals or
used mostly Hungarian, except when speaking to their grandchildren. Younger
community members use German in all situations although they still hear Hungarian
at church. Gal's data suggests that language choice is predictable in Oberwart: if
one knows the age of the speaker and the age of the interlocutor, one should be
able to make a fair prediction of which language will be selected.
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142
A South African example of language shift is the Khoe speakers who became bilingual in
Dutch and Khoe, eventually abandoning their own language and adopting a variety of
Dutch as their mother tongue. Two other examples of language shift are presented in the
following case studies:
8 730
Hindi
5 848
Tamil
4 874
Telugu
762
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48 705
German
33 523
Greek
12 859
Italian
8 949
Chinese
4 572
The shift normally takes place over three generations: the first generation are bilingual
but their mother tongue remains the dominant language; in the second generation one of
the dominant languages starts to replace their mother tongue as their first language. By
the third generation their first language is now the dominant language of the community
and they have a very limited knowledge of the heritage language. Unless they maintain
close contact with their mother country or members of their ethnic community, their
children will grow up as monolinguals. Sometimes the third generation feels a great
sense of loss over the heritage language that has been replaced:
Third-generation pursuit of an ancestral language is a phenomenon with a fairly
obvious social basis. The generation who do not transmit an ethnic language are
usually actively in search of a social betterment that they believe they can only
achieve by abandoning, among other identifying behaviors, a stigmatizing
language. The first generation secure as to social position is often also the first
generation to yearn after the lost language, which by their time is no longer
regarded as particularly stigmatizing. Some of these descendants see an
ethnolinguistic heritage which eluded them and react to their loss, sadly or even
resentfully. This is so widespread and recurrent a response to ancestral-language
loss as to be something of a cliche
among immigrant-descended groups.
Dorian 1993:57677
Task 8.2
In South Africa, the African languages, Afrikaans and the European and Indian heritage
languages are under threat from English. Interview a group of 35 people of different
ages (perhaps a family) from any of these groups, or from any language in your area that
seems to be undergoing language shift. Write a short linguistic profile for each person. A
linguistic profile consists of the following information: Name, age, gender, a list of all the
languages the person speaks or understands with a proficiency rating (i.e. how well s/he
speaks and understands the language), when and where the languages were learnt,
education level and medium of instruction at each level, when and where s/he uses the
original language, attitude to the original language and to the dominant language that is
taking its place. Classify each family member as one of the following:
144
You could also include a table of language choices like that of Gal in Table 8.1:
Age of
speaker
Church
services
Talking to
grandparents
Talking to
parents
Talking to
siblings
Talking to
children
Talking to
grandchildren
On the basis of the information you have gathered, is language shift taking place in this
group of speakers or not? Justify your answer.
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Feedback
This task is a great way to practise your sociolinguistic research skills. Choose a family or
group of speakers that you think might be exhibiting signs of language shift. Make sure
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there are older and younger people in the group so that you can compare the spread of
the two languages in the speech of older and younger people. You can practise your
sociolinguistic interview skills by referring back to section 4.6. Don't forget to make a list
of the questions you want to ask and make notes as you interview each person. Also
take an empty copy of the table above so that you can fill it in as you go. Don't forget to
come to a clear conclusion about whether your hypothesis of language shift in the group
was supported by the data or not.
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146
In Study Unit 2 we discussed the historical events that led to language shift and death in
the case of Khoe and San languages in South Africa. The death of these two language
families illustrates two different types of language death. Many San languages died out
as a result of genocide. The languages died out because most of the speakers had died
out.
When the Dutch settlers first came to the Cape in 1652 they found two groups of people
there: the Khoe and the San. As the San were hunters who regarded cattle as fair game
for hunting and had no understanding of the concept of ownership of livestock (i.e. they
did not understand that cattle could belong to people), they used to hunt the settlers'
cattle. This led to clashes with the settlers, and it was common practice for San to be
shot on sight. At the same time the Bantu races moving down from the east were
encroaching on the San traditional hunting grounds and gradually destroying them. In
this sad chapter in the history of our country the San became victims of both black and
white expansion and aggression and were gradually exterminated by the other racial
groups who were encroaching on their land. The San, who together with the Khoe were
the original inhabitants of the southern part of Africa, have almost completely
disappeared as an ethnic group.
The few that remained sought refuge in the deserts of Namibia and Botswana or
intermarried with other racial groups and lost their identity as a separate ethnic group.
Today, as we have seen, only a few San remain in Botswana, parts of Namibia and the
northern Cape. As the race disappeared, so their languages disappeared. And today
they have virtually died out in South Africa.
The death of the Khoe languages is different, however. The Khoe society was strongly
influenced by the contact with the Dutch settlers. Over a period of time they learned the
Dutch language or at least a particular variety of that language. As their society
disintegrated, so their language was lost. There was a shift towards Dutch which
eventually lead to the death of their language as their language fell into disuse and was
replaced by a variety of the Dutch language. Today their languages have completely died
out in South Africa. The only surviving varieties of the Khoe languages (such as Nama)
are spoken in Namibia. But in South Africa these languages no longer exist. All the
descendants of the Khoe have adopted Afrikaans as their mother tongue (except those
who were absorbed by intermarriage into the Xhosa-speaking community). And they
form part of what is known as the Cape Coloured population today.
The story of the San is unfortunately not an isolated occurrence in the history of the
world. Many languages have died out in the past as a result of warfare and conquest by
other nations. In Study Unit 4 we read how the speakers of the Celtic languages in Britain
were driven by the Anglo-Saxon invaders into the western mountains of Wales or fled
across the sea to Brittany in France. Those who remained in that part of Britain which is
known as England today, were either taken into slavery or killed. Their language has
completely disappeared from England.
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simplification of the traditional language correlating with the age of the speaker.
Eventually children no longer learn the dying language at all and the language dies out
together with its former speakers.
According to Palosaari and Campbell (2010), aspects of phonology, syntax and
morphology that are obligatory in a viable language may become optional in a dying
language, and may not appear in the language of semi-speakers at all. The rate of
change is also very fast, with changes occurring much more rapidly than language
change in viable languages. Some examples of structural linguistic changes at the
phonological, morphological and syntactic levels are given below:
An example of phonological change is found in Pipil, a language of El Salvador. In former
times the /l/ sound always became voiceless at the end of a word, but in the speech of
semi-speakers it can be either voiced or voiceless. In other words, a phonological rule
has ceased to apply. Unusual aspects of a dying language which are difficult to learn
may be lost or replaced with more common or easier ones. For example, the
endangered language Mam in Mexico is losing its uvular stop /q/ in favour of the velar
stop /k/ which is much more common in the world's languages. Interestingly, the reverse
can also occur, with rare or unusual sounds being overused in a dying language.
Speakers of the dying language Pipil tend to overuse the voiceless /l/ sound, using it
anywhere in a word where it was formerly restricted only to word-final position (Palosaari
& Campbell 2010).
At the morphological level it is common for dying languages to lose some of their
morphology and to take on a more rigid word order. For example, the Mexican language
Tlahuica used to make a distinction between singular (one person), dual (two people)
and plural (many people), but has lost the dual number marker as the language
becomes used less and less. A preference for synthetic constructions rather than
analytic ones is also a characteristic of dying languages. This means that dying
languages will tend to lose inflectional morphemes and will use full words (and a more
restricted word order) to express the same concept. The example given by Palosaari and
Campbell (2010) from Pipil is the loss of the future tense suffix:
ni- panu -s
I-
pass-
future tense
`I will pass'
This single-word construction is seldom heard any longer, and has been replaced by the
synthetic construction:
ni- yu ni- panu
I-
go I-
pass
`I am going to pass'
In Scottish Gaelic, Dorian noted that speakers now tend to use forms like ri mis `to me'
and bho aid `from them' rather than the original analytic forms riu-m `to-me' and bhu-atha
`from-them'.
Complex aspects of syntax are also likely to fall away in dying languages. For example,
speakers may use simple sentences rather than complex sentences with subordinate
clauses. Often, syntactic reduction goes hand in hand with a stylistic shrinkage of the
148
endangered language. As it becomes used in fewer and fewer situations, it loses the
variability of style and register that a viable language displays. Eventually the dying
language may have only a single possible style, for example the intimate form of the
language used in the home, or possibly a highly ritualised formal register used at
ceremonial occasions.
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giving up the use of their language in their daily life. Surely this is a view to which
they are entitled, and it would not be the action of a responsible linguist to persuade
them to do otherwise. I was working with an Indian colleague who has decided to
forego the use of his and his wife's native language in their own home, so that the
child could be brought up as a native language speaker of English. This choice,
and any choices that the Toda might make, are clearly their prerogative.
(Ladefoged 1992:809810)
Task 8.3
Have a look at the quote from Samuel Johnson at the beginning of the study unit. Do you
agree with him? Does it matter if languages die? What will be lost? Or is it better for
communities to move forward and learn dominant languages that will improve their lives?
What is your view? Have you made any conscious decisions in your own life about
shifting away from one of your languages?
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150
Feedback
Any answers are fine here as long as you justify them carefully and thoughtfully. As a
linguist, however, you will probably agree with Johnson and Crystal that language loss is
always a pity, as languages that are lost can never again be studied in their living form.
Perhaps you agree with Dalby (2002:283286), who argues that the loss of language
diversity matters for three reasons: Firstly, we need the cultural knowledge that minority
languages preserve and transmit. Secondly, we need languages for the alternative worldviews that they can provide, and thirdly, we need other languages as resources to draw
on to keep our own language creative and continually renewed, for example through
borrowing.
If you have access on your phone or computer, you could watch the 28-minute
video lecture entitled Language Death: A Problem for All by David Crystal (Wiley
Blackwell Compass) on http://vimeo.com/6677955
__________________________________________________________________________
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4
5
6
It is however very difficult to maintain a language in the face of strong economic factors.
Economic factors are generally regarded as the major players in a language shift
situation. A shift to the dominant language of the host society in the domain of work and
business is a universal trend in immigrant societies throughout the world. Immigrants are
severely handicapped and suffer discrimination in the area of employment if they lack
competence in the dominant language of society. Education is also one of the most
powerful factors in bringing about language shift. Attitudes and loyalty to the minority
language also play a vital role in determining whether shift or maintenance will take
place.
Task 8.4
Choose any three of the language maintenance factors identified by Barnes and
McDuling (1995), and describe how they have affected the maintenance of one of the
minority languages in your own linguistic community.
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.............................................................................................................................................. .
Feedback
If you speak a minority language you could answer this question by discussing the
maintenance of the language in your own family or extended family with respect to three
of the factors above. Alternatively you could devise a set of questions based on three of
the above factors and interview some members of a minority or threatened language
who are making conscious efforts to maintain their language and pass the language on
to their children. Either way, you need to come to a clear conclusion about whether the
efforts have been effective in maintaining the language and preventing language shift.
__________________________________________________________________________
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of them cannot utter a single word of Chingoni yet they do not doubt their Ngoni identity.
He concludes that
The Ngoni situation demonstrates that attempts to halt the decline of shrinking
minority language are not likely to be successful. This is because the shrinking itself
reflects larger trends, which cannot be significantly affected by linguistic action
alone. ... The Abenguni Revival Association's enthusiasm for the survival of
Chingoni may not be in the best interest of the ordinary Ngoni ... and if a community
seems not to feel the need to `protect' its distinct way of speaking, it may be
arrogant of any language association to regard the survival of the language as in
any way sacrosanct.
Kishindo (2002:218)
Task 8.5
Would you describe the situation in the Ngoni community in Malawi as one of language
shift, language death or language revival? Explain your answer.
...............................................................................................................................................
...............................................................................................................................................
...............................................................................................................................................
...............................................................................................................................................
...............................................................................................................................................
...............................................................................................................................................
...............................................................................................................................................
...............................................................................................................................................
Feedback
Although the case study is entitled The revival of Malawia Chingoni, it appears that it is
only a very small pressure group within the community that is aiming for this goal. In fact,
Chingoni was already a dying language in the 1960s as it was not being passed on to
children. The efforts of the Abenguni Revival Association are on a very small scale and
are hampered by the lack of living speakers of the language who can teach it. Chingoni
bibles and Zulu materials will not be sufficient to bring back Chingoni, which is related to
but very different from Zulu. As Kishindo (2002) implies, the community is not buying in
strongly to revival efforts as they now speak other languages and identify themselves as
Ngoni purely on the basis of cultural traditions but not language.
__________________________________________________________________________
154
8.5 Summary
In this study unit we looked at the phenomenon of language shift, where a linguistic
community changes over a period of time from the habitual use of a minority language to
another more socioeconomically useful language. We looked at some examples of
research methods such as participant-observation and tables of language use within
community members of varying ages, and explored some examples of language shift in
South Africa.
We also saw how languages can die, either as a result of a sudden tragedy such as
violent conquest or genocide, or, more usually, by a gradual process of language shift
over generations. When languages are no longer passed on to younger generations,
they will die together with their last speakers, rememberers and semi-speakers. We
investigated some of the linguistic changes that take place in dying languages and noted
that the degree of fluency and simplification of the traditional language correlates with the
age of the speaker. Aspects of phonology, syntax and morphology that are obligatory in
a viable language may become optional in a dying language, and unusual aspects of a
dying language may either be overused or replaced with more common or easier ones. It
is also common for dying languages to take on a more rigid word order and a more
restricted range of styles. We concluded our discussion of language death by giving
some thought to the question of whether language death matters in the modern world.
We also explored the language maintenance factors that can inhibit the rate of shift and
prevent the language from dying out completely. These included education, attitudes,
religion, contact with the mother country and communication patterns within the family.
We concluded with a case study assessing the revival efforts of Chingoni in Malawi.
LIN2602
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over time. The only constant is that language never stops changing and speakers never
stop using language in creative ways.
Further reading
Aitchison, J. 2001. Language Change: Progress or Decay? (third edition). Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Chapter 16 Language death.
Crystal, D. 2010. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. (third edition). New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Chapter 61 Language planning
Crystal, D. 2000 Language Death. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, or browse
sample pages at http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/samples/cam032/99053220.pdf
Dalby, A. 2002. Language in Danger. London: Penguin.
Nettle, D & Romaine, S. 2000. Vanishing Voices: The Extinction of the World's Languages.
New York: Oxford University Press.
156
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Glossary
accents Regional or social differences in the way in which words are pronounced within
a language. (Afrikaans aksente)
accommodation When speakers adjust the way in which they speak in reaction to the
person or people they are talking to. (Afrikaans akkommodasie)
acrolect The form of the creole that is closest to the standard language, where
decreolisation has progressed the furthest. (Afrikaans akrolek)
acronym A word formed by combining the first letters of a longer phrase. (Afrikaans
akroniem)
analogy A process whereby an existing linguistic pattern is followed even for new words
or for former exceptions to the rule. (Afrikaans analogie)
arbitrary having no intrinsic connection between the sound of a word and what it means.
(Afrikaans arbitre
r)
baby-talk Simplified language used by adults when speaking to very young children.
(Afrikaans babataal)
balanced bilingual An individual who has roughly equal proficiency in two languages.
(Afrikaans gebalanseerde tweetalige)
Bantu languages A sub-family of the Niger-Congo language family, including Southern
African languages such as Sepedi, Sesotho, Tswana, Tsonga, Shona, Venda,
Xhosa, Zulu, Siswati and Ndebele. (Afrikaans Bantutale)
base language The language that plays the biggest role in the composition of a pidgin.
(Afrikaans basistaal)
basilect The `deepest' creole variety which is most like the original creole. (Afrikaans
basilek)
bilingual A person who can use two or more languages as a means of communication in
most situations and switch from one language to the other if necessary. (Afrikaans
tweetalige)
Black South African English A second-language variety of English spoken by black
South Africans (Afrikaans Swart Suid-Afrikaanse Engels)
blending A word-formation process in which parts of words are combined to form a new
word. (Afrikaans vermenging)
borrowed term A words or phrase from one language that is inserted into the
grammatical framework of another language, and is widely accepted, often taking
on the phonological form and affixes of the borrowing language. (Same as
loanword) (Afrikaans leenwoord or geleende term)
borrowing The process of taking words from another language into one's own
language, either as they are or with a degree of phonological adjustment to make
them easier to pronounce. (Afrikaans ontlening)
broadening A type of semantic change in which the meaning of a word is expanded to
refer to `more' than it did before. (Afrikaans verbreding)
BSAE See Black South African English
162
change from above A linguistic change that is introduced from a higher social class and
spreads into the speech of those with lower socioeconomic status. (Afrikaans
verandering van bo)
change from below A process in which a non-standard linguistic feature gradually
becomes accepted as the prestige norm, with the older prestige form becoming
stigmatised in turn. (Afrikaans verandering van onder)
clipping A process of word formation in which a word is shortened. (Afrikaans verkorting)
code Any language, language variety or language style selected by a speaker. (Afrikaans
kode)
codeswitching The use of two or more linguistic varieties in the same conversation.
(Afrikaans kodewisseling)
comparative historical linguistics The branch of Linguistics that attempts to group
related languages together and build up a picture of the proto-language of each
language family. (Afrikaans vergelykende historiese linguistiek)
comparative historical reconstruction The method used by linguists to explore the
history of individual languages and classify related languages and language
families. (Afrikaans vergelykende historiese rekonstruksie)
compounding Joining together two or more complete words and combining their
meanings in some way to create a new concept. (Afrikaans samestelling)
contact-induced change language change that results from contact between two or
more languages. (Afrikaans verandering weens kontak)
content words Words such as nouns, verbs and adjectives that carry the main message
of a sentence. (Afrikaans inhoudswoorde)
conversion A word-formation process in which a word is turned from one part of speech
into another part of speech without adding any derivational affixes. (Afrikaans
omkering)
creole A fully developed language based on a pidgin that has acquired mother-tongue
speakers and undergone elaboration. (Afrikaans kreool)
creole continuum A range of varieties of a creole that coexist when the creole is in
various stages of decreolisation. (Afrikaans kreoolkontinuum)
creolisation The development of a creole from a pidgin. (Afrikaans kreolisering)
decreolisation The gradual decline of a creole as it moves towards the standard
language on which it is based. (Afrikaans dekreolisering)
derivation The process of creating new words by adding affixes to existing words.
(Afrikaans afleiding)
descriptive approach An approach to language which describes actual usage rather
than prescribing `correct' and `incorrect' language use. (Afrikaans beskrywende
benadering)
dialect A language variety which is associated with a particular geographical area and is
mutually intelligible to speakers of other varieties of the language; any regional,
social or ethnic language variety. (Afrikaans dialek)
diglossia A multilingual situation in which two or more languages co-occur throughout
the speech community, with each language serving a different set of functions.
(Afrikaans diglossie)
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domains Social contexts in which language varieties are used. (Afrikaans domeine)
dominant language A language whose speakers have access to economic and political
power. (Afrikaans dominante taal)
endangered languages Languages with small population groups, older speakers, and
low rates of language transmission. (Same as threatened languages) (Afrikaans
bedreigde tale)
ethnolect A variety of language associated with a particular racial or ethnic group.
(Afrikaans etnolek)
Expanding circle Countries that recognise the importance of English as an international
language but do not themselves have a history of colonisation by members of the
Inner circle or use English as an official language. (Afrikaans Groeiende kring)
first language A person's home language or mother tongue. (Same as L1.) (Afrikaans
eerste taal)
foreign language A language that is not spoken in the society in which it is being learnt.
(Afrikaans vreemdetaal)
forms of address Terms used to address someone when we speak or write to them.
(Afrikaans aanspreekvorme)
function words Words such as the, is, in and that which serve a grammatical purpose
but do not contribute much to the meaning of a sentence. (Afrikaans
funksiewoorde)
generational change A language change that increases with each new generation of
speakers. (Afrikaans generasie gebasseerde verandering)
gloss A literal or word-for-word translation. (Afrikaans glos)
gradual death The death of a language due to language shift and a reduction in the
number of speakers over time, usually several generations. (Afrikaans geleidelike
dood)
grammaticalisation A process of syntactic change in which content words become
function words. (Afrikaans grammatikalisering)
head The main element of a compound term. (Afrikaans hoof)
Head-final compounds Two or more words joined together to create a new concept with
the main element as the last element of the compound. (Afrikaans samestellingsmet hoofwoord agterna)
head-initial compound Two or more words joined together to create a new concept with
the main element as the first element of the compound. (Afrikaans samestellings
met hoofwoord voor)
hypothesis A scientific statement expressing a researcher's guessed answer to a
particular research question. (Afrikaans hipotese)
idiolect A way of speaking that is unique to a particular person. (Afrikaans idiolek)
164
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166
mother tongue A person's home language. (Same as first language and L1.) (Afrikaans
huistaal or moedertaal)
mother tongue instruction A situation where the language of instruction in schools is
the pupils' mother tongue. (Afrikaans moedertaalondeerrig)
mutually intelligible varieties Language varieties which are similar enough for
monolingual speakers to understand each other. (Afrikaans onderling verstaanbare
varie
teite)
narrowing A type of semantic change in which a word becomes used in a more specific
sense than it was in the past. (Afrikaans vernouing)
national language A language that is widely used and functions as a national symbol
uniting the citizens of the country. (Afrikaans nasionale taal or landstaal)
native speaker A person who speaks a language as his or her first language. (Afrikaans
moedertaalspreker)
Niger-Congo languages A large family of African languages, including the sub-family of
Bantu languages. (Afrikaans Niger-Kongo tale)
official language A standard language selected by government as the language used in
parliament and in the public service. (Afrikaans amptelike taal)
onomatopoeic words Words where the sound of the word imitates the thing it
describes. (Afrikaans klanknabootsende woorde)
Outer circle Countries to which English has spread through British and American
colonisation and become an official regional standard language in a multilingual
setting, with many second-language speakers of English. (Afrikaans Buitekring)
partial shift When speakers of one language start using another language in certain
circumstances while they retain their own language in other circumstances.
(Afrikaans gedeeltelike verskuiwing)
participant-observation a research method where one lives in a community and
observes and records community behaviour while simultaneously experiencing their
lifestyle. (Afrikaans deelnemer waarneming)
phonological change A sound change or pronunciation change. (Afrikaans fonologiese
verandering)
pidgin language A simplified language used in restricted contact situations. (Afrikaans
pidgintaal)
pilot study A small-scale investigation designed to give some idea of whether or not a
researcher's hypothesis is supported. (Afrikaans loodsondersoek or steekproef)
pragmatic change A change in the norms of language usage. (Afrikaans pragmatiese
verandering)
prefix A bound morpheme attached before a lexeme. (Afrikaans voorvoegsel)
prescriptive approach An approach to language which prescribes or dictates how
people should use the language. (Afrikaans voorskrywende benadering)
Proto-Indo-European The common ancestor language from which all the IndoEuropean languages are descended. (Afrikaans Proto-Indo-Europese)
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variety Any speech pattern that differs systematically from others in terms of vocabulary,
pronunciation, grammar, etc. (Afrikaans varie
teit)
vernacular The speech style in which the minimum attention is given to our own speech,
resulting in the most unmonitored style. (Afrikaans omgangstaal)
viable languages `Healthy' languages whose long-term survival is relatively assured as
they are successfully passed on between generations. (Afrikaans lewensvatbare
tale)
word forms Different variants of the same word or lexeme. (Afrikaans woordvorme)
170