Contact Languages: Ecology and Evolution in Asia

Why do groups of speakers in certain times and places come up with new varieties of languages? What are the social settings that determine whether a mixed language, a pidgin or a Creole will develop, and how can we understand the ways in which different languages contribute to the new grammar? Through the study of Malay contact varieties such as Baba Malay, Cocos Malay and Sri Lanka Malay, as well as the Asian Portuguese vernacular of Macau, and China Coast Pidgin, this book explores the social and structural dynamics that underlie the fascinating phenomenon of the creation of new, or restructured, grammars. It emphasizes the importance and interplay of historical documentation, socio-cultural observation and linguistic analysis in the study of contact languages, offering an evolutionary framework for the study of contact language formation - including pidgins and Creoles - in which historical, socio-cultural and typological observations come together

Review (article) of Wim Vandenbussche, Ernst Håkon Jahr and Peter Trudgill (eds.). Language Ecology for the 21st Century: Linguistic Conflicts and Social Environments. Oslo, Norway: Novus Press. 2013.

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Contact, typology and the speaker: the essentials of language

This paper focuses on some of the theoretical assumptions presented in Enfield, 2003 (Review of ‘Enfield, N.J., 2003. Linguistic Epidemiology: Semantics and grammar of language contact in mainland Southeast Asia. Routledge Curzon, London and New York, pp. xv + 397’) and their consequences for contemporary linguistic theory. In particular, I revisit three fundamental dimensions underlying language contact: multilingual practices of speech communities, modes of transmission and typological diversity. These three dimensions, I argue, are not only the reasons for contact to occur but the fundamental driving forces behind language change (and variation) at large. In this view, the dichotomy typically presented as ‘contact-induced’ or ‘external’ vs. ‘normal’ or ‘internal’ change needs to be significantly revised, if not dissolved, since a non-idealized view of language change as the one advocated by Enfield presents us with a reality in which the role of contact can hardly ever be overlooked

Surpass comparatives in Sinitic and beyond: typology and grammaticalization

The Surpass (or Exceed) comparative is a widespread feature of Sinitic languages found in almost all ‘dialect’ groups. This article investigates the nature of Surpass constructions in Southern Chinese varieties with a focus on Cantonese, and in unrelated languages of Southeast Asia, where Surpass comparatives are also found (Thai, Lao and Vietnamese). I offer possible grammaticalization paths for the Surpass comparative in the history of Chinese grammar, and argue that Surpass constructions are typical of Southern Sinitic but not of Mandarin Chinese (contra Stassen, Comparison and universal grammar, Basil Blackwell, 1985, Stassen, Comparative constructions, Oxford University Press, 2005). I also propose that the Surpass comparative should be added to the shared features of a broadly defined Mainland Southeast Asian region which illustrates the affinity of languages such as Cantonese to their non-Sinitic Southeast Asian neighbors. Finally, in arguing that comparatives in Mandarin Chinese are not Surpass construction, I suggest that it is not Sinitic languages in general that go against robust typological correlations between basic word order and standard-adjective order; rather, it is only Mandarin that provides a counterexample and is, in that respect, typologically rare

The Emergence of Pidgin and Creole Languages, Jeff Siegel, Oxford University Press (2008), 336 pp., Price: $136, ISBN: 9780199216666

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Sri Lanka Malay and its Lankan adstrates

Sri Lanka Malay is the vernacular language of the descendants of the Malay-Javanese diaspora of Sri Lanka. It is a restructured variety of Malay, which emerged from the prolonged contact between speakers of Malay varieties and speakers of Sinhala and Tamil varieties. The grammar shows a typological shift from the Austronesian to the Lankan type, a shift that can be explained by the typological pressure that the adstrates Sinhala and Tamil – which are highly congruent – exercise in the trilingual environment. This paper discusses the prevalent grammatical patterns of Sri Lanka Malay in terms of frequency, typological congruence and trilingual admixture. I show that, for a complete understanding of Sri Lanka Malay grammar, we must approach it by taking into full consideration the typological matrix in which it has developed, which includes a Malay-based lexifier and two adstrates, namely Sinhala and Tamil. This argues against a view of Sri Lanka Malay as the product of a bilingual admixture

Hilary Chappell (ed) 2001. Sinitic grammar. Synchronie and diachronic perspectives.

Ansaldo Umberto. Hilary Chappell (ed) 2001. Sinitic grammar. Synchronie and diachronic perspectives.. In: Cahiers de linguistique - Asie orientale, vol. 31 2, 2002. pp. 273-277

Singapore English. Structure, variation and usage. Studies in English Language. By Jakob R. E. Leimgruber

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Metatypy in Sri Lanka Malay

Metatypy in Sri Lanka Malay was published in Annual Review of South Asian Languages and Linguistics on page 3. This paper reviews the notion of metatypy in relation to the genesis of Sri Lanka Malay. Metatypy is a process of typological congruence known to occur in prolonged and intense situations of contact due to wide-spread multilingualism. In this process, contact-induced transfer of predominantly semantic categories leads to the evolution of grammatical patterns that emerge as syntactic compromises between the actual grammars in contact (Ross 2006). In this paper I show that metatypy efficiently explains the evo-lution of a new language – Sri Lanka Malay – as the outcome of the contact between Sinhala, Lankan Tamil and Trade Malay. The grammar of Sri Lanka Malay shows an extremely high degree of syntactic compromise, due to contact-induced transfer of semantic categories from Sinhala and Lankan Tamil in the everyday usage of Trade Malay. This is first and fore-most illustrated in the nominal domain, where Sri Lanka Malay exhibits a typical South Asian case system, though the verbal domain also shows in-teresting metatypic effects in its Tense and Aspect categories. In explaining a majority of the features of Sri Lanka Malay grammar, metatypy emerges as a more convincing explanation than previous accounts of its genesis (Ansaldo 2009). In addition, it sheds light on the reasons for the evolution of a new language, relying on the principles of second/third language transfer and contact-induced cognitive compromise known to occur in metatypic settings