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Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2011

Towards a Comprehensive Approach to Studying Synchronic Language Contact

Résumé

Most of the research on language contact focuses on diachronic or historical language contact phenomena and is mostly preoccupied with structural linguistic aspects. Researchers examine the structural nature of the features that underwent change and the relative impact of possible input languages/features and other sources such as language universals and language internal processes of change such as grammaticalization and reanalysis in the case of morphosyntactic features on the emergence of these features. Contact scenarios and ultimately models and typologies of contact-induced change tend to be heavily based on this kinds of structural linguistic evidence because detailed social data is often hard to come by for most historical settings. Essentially, the social processes that led to the contact setting are inferred on the basis of mostly linguistic and macro-social data. This has led to relatively homogenizing language contact accounts and scenarios. For instance, it is typically assumed that each contact setting is associated with just one or one main social and linguistic process or mechanism and that all the changes that occur are the result of this mechanism. Change is generally also conceptualized as relatively abrupt rather than as being the result of several possibly contradictory and overlapping processes. However, current research on cases of creole genesis and bilingual mixed languages in particular is suggesting that even detailed structural analysis does not support homogeneizing accounts. The aim of this paper is to further explore this issue on the basis of an investigation of a synchronic contact setting, the case of Takitaki in French Guiana. We examine the emergence and development of Takitaki on the basis of both social and linguistic data. Analysis suggests that important social processes such as migration, rapid urbanization and the emergence of new intra and inter-ethnic/social group interaction patterns on the one hand and vernacularization, acquistion of second, third etc. language speakers and the emergence of new social identities (e.g. pan-Maroon identity) on the other led to the emergence and drives the development of this contact vernacular. From the linguistic point of view, we show that various processes such as koinization, borrowing, different patterns of code-switching and stylistic blending are overlapping each other and are taking place at the same time. These processes are in part converging leading to the mainstreaming of some language varieties and to the backgrounding and social reassignment or restriction of others. In other cases, however, individual agency is giving rise to processes of divergence leading to increased differentiation and the emergence of new varieties and practices that stand in complex relationships to existing varieties and practices. Our investigation suggests that the Takitaki contact setting is socially and linguistically heterogeneous and the emerging contact outcomes did not arise due to one language contact mechanism but is the result of the complext interaction of several different mechanisms of contact and change. In order to properly understand these processes it is vital to carefully examine the social context using sociolinguistic and linguistic anthropological methods of data collection and analysis. It is equally important to focus not only only structural linguistic but also on pragmatic aspects of language use.

Domaines

Linguistique
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Dates et versions

halshs-00674053 , version 1 (24-02-2012)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : halshs-00674053 , version 1

Citer

Isabelle Léglise, Bettina Migge. Towards a Comprehensive Approach to Studying Synchronic Language Contact. Rethinking Contact Induced Change, Jun 2011, Leiden, Netherlands. ⟨halshs-00674053⟩

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