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Adstrate Influence in Sri Lanka Malay: Definiteness, Animacy and Number in Accusative Case Marking
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Sri Lanka Malay is a creole-like language spoken by the descendents of soldiers, exiles and slaves brought to Sri Lanka by the Dutch from Java and their possessions in the Indonesian archipelago in the 17th and 18th centuries and by recruits brought by the British from the Malayan Peninsula and elsewhere in the 19th century. Various authors have noted the influence of indigenous languages on the structure of Sri Lanka Malay but disagreement has arisen over the source and mechanism. An examination of the interaction of definiteness, number, animacy and the accusative case in Sinhala, Tamil, and Sri Lanka Malay nominal inflection shows that Sri Lanka Malay aligns more closely here with Tamil than with Sinhala. The pattern of accusative case marking, in particular, can be attributed to Tamil influence. Moreover, the ubiquity of accusative case marking in Sri Lanka Malay together with its obscure origin and the absence of recent cataclysmic social events to trigger rapid linguistic change indicate that this alignment is of long standing, rather than a recent development.
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Establishing and Dating Sinhala Influence in Sri Lanka Malay
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- The study of Sri Lanka Malay has focussed on the genesis scenario, where theories of creolization (Smith et al., 2004; Smith & Paauw, 2006) with a dominant role of Tamil compete with theories of convergence (Bakker, 2006; Ansaldo, 2008), which allow for a more important role of Sinhala. This paper assesses and reevaluates the empirical data brought forward by both sides and contributes more empirical data on parallels with Sinhala. These parallels are partly due to substrate reinforcement (Siegel, 1998) of marginal structures found in Malay varieties, partly they are clear calques on Sinhala patterns. Some structures must be analysed as the result of Early Sinhala Influence during the colonial period, while for others, a later development following socio-political changes after independence is possible (Late Sinhala Influence). The paper argues that SLM changes towards Sinhala at both periods can be seen as a kind of metatypy comparable to other language contact settings in Eurasia and Papua.
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Comments on Nordhoff ’s “Establishing and Dating Sinhala Influence in Sri Lanka Malay”1
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Students of Sri Lanka Malay agree that the language has been heavily influenced by the local languages, Sinhala and Tamil. Differences arise over not only the degree and timing of such influence from each language, but also the extent to which the language developed through untutored second language acquisition (on the part of Tamil &/or Sinhala speakers) &/or intense bilingualism (on the part of Malay speakers). Nordhoff’s arguments for Sinhala influence are examined in the context of Thomason’s (2001) framework for establishing contact-induced change and found to be convincing for some features, but weaker or unconvincing in others. The argument for early Sinhala phonological influence is based on an unsurprising distribution and the mechanism of substrate influence (Siegel, 1998, 2008) which has not been shown to operate in the context of intense bilingualism. The linguistic differing consequences of untutored second language acquisition and intense bilingualism have not been thoroughly investigated, except on lexicon (Thomason and Kaufman, 1988). The Sinhalese component of Sri Lanka Malay lexicon stands at less than 1% (Paauw, 2004), a figure inconsistent with the claim of heavy Sinhala influence through intense bilingualism.
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Commentary on Smith’s papers1
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- In his two contributions to this issue, Ian Smith nicely sets out criteria to establish language contact. Unfortunately, a rigorous application of the standards listed by Thomason (2001), which he endorses, is detrimental to his argumentation based on the Tamil accusative. Smith furthermore argues that phonological and syntactic influence should go together. This is intended to discredit Sinhala influence, but closer scrutiny of the argument shows that it actually discredits Tamil influence.Smith’s papers furthermore are not informed by the socio-historical data and analysis presented in Nordhoff (2009), which are not compatible with his approach. Furthermore, Smith lists a phonological analysis based on syllable weight as a desideratum; such an analysis is also already found in Nordhoff 2009 and should have been consulted.
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Switch-reference and Omotic-Cushitic Language Contact in Southwest Ethiopia
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Africa has up until now been considered a continent where switch-reference systems are extremely rare. This study shows that there is a confined area in the South of Ethiopia where many Omotic languages and a few Cushitic languages have fully grammaticalised switch-reference systems on dependent (co-)subordinate non-final verbs, so-called converbs. The paper describes in detail the switch-reference system of Kambaata (Cushitic) and gives an overview of the distribution of switch-reference systems in Ethiopia in general. It is argued that switch-reference marking in Cushitic languages is the result of contact with neighbouring Omotic languages.
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The Formation of Regional Italian as a Consequence of Language Contact.The Salentino Case
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This article examines the mechanisms involved in the formation of regional Italian from the perspective of contact linguistics. Varieties of regional Italian containing elements of both local dialects and Standard Italian (SI) are spoken throughout Italy; this paper focuses primarily on Salento, a southern region characterized by a strong bilingual environment. The aim is to investigate the interaction between a dialect and a standard language, as well as the concrete linguistic mechanisms involved. The historical background of the acquisition of SI and its diffusion throughout the national territory are considered crucial moments in language transmission. Sociolinguistic characteristics of speakers are also analyzed, as are three types of constructions: change of verb transitivity, use of polyvalent complementizer, and gerunds. The analysis confirms that the spoken variety of Italian, regional Italian, is a result of contact-induced change of SI influenced by the local dialect, Salentino.
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Orthographic Traces in Romanian and Japanese Loanwords: Enriching Phonological Representations
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This paper presents a formal account of the influence of orthography in the adaptation of Romanian loanwords from French and Japanese loanwords from English. It agues that, in the course of adaptation, the accompanying presence of a written representation does play a part in shaping the phonological content of borrowed words. To explain such orthographic manifestations in loanwords, a grammatical mechanism is devised in which underlying input representations are composed of linguistic information emanating from both the native perceptual system and the grapheme-phoneme mapping procedure. Cast in the framework of Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky, 1993/2004), the bulk of the analysis rests in determining how the grammar evaluates output forms resulting from such amalgamated inputs. Theoretical implications of such a proposal are also discussed, in particular as it concerns the nature of input coding and representation. In short, phonological representations are assumed to embrace the segmental richness imparted by both speech and print.
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