Contact Linguistics. Chap

Exercise:
Compare the socio-historical background to the emergence of Irish English with that of Singapore English (discussed below) or any of the “New Englishes.” To what extent did the historical and social contexts of the contact influence the types and extent of change that took place in each case? (On Irish English, see Odlin 1997a; on Singapore English, see Hi & Platt 1993 and Gupta 1992; on the New Englishes, see Kachru 1997 and references therein; also the journal World Englishes.]


II. 4. Issues in the study of language shift.

Cases of group language shift raise many issues for scholars in various fields of enquiry, including sociologists interested in language maintenance and shift, psychologists interested in convergent and divergent accomodation in group behaviors, language planners concerned with issues of education and so on. We cannot investigate all of these issues here. We will be concerned primarily with the issues that the outcomes of group shift raise for linguistic theories of contact-induced change. These fall into three broad categories: those issues relating to the linguistic processes through which these outcomes emerged; those relating to the role played by socio-cultural and other non-linguistic factors in their formation; and those relating to their place in a classification of contact vernaculars.

II. 4. 1. Processes of formation.

The origins of contact vernaculars like the new Englishes and other “indigenized” varieties clearly require explanation in terms of a theoretical framework for SLA in general. The processes of grammar construction that resulted in these outcomes of shift are the same as those that we discussed earlier, in relation to individual SLA. Thus we can ascribe different aspects of their grammar to TL input, L1 influence, processes of simplification, and internally driven changes.

Scholars within the field known as “English as a world language” (EWL) have long recognized the similarities in the processes of restructuring that characterize both individual and group SLA. They often use the terminology of SLA studies, including such concepts as transfer, interference, etc. to describe the emergence of the new Englishes. Much of the EWL literature has focussed on two central processes of language change – “nativization” and “acculturation.” According to Kachru (1992:235), “Nativization involves the approximation of a language to the linguistic and discoursal characteristics of the native (or dominant) language of the area into which it has been transplanted.” On the other hand, “acculturation focuses on the people learning the transplanted language; it refers to the reflection of their sociocultural identities in a nativized language.” This emphasis on both linguistic and socio-cultural aspects of language shift reflects our own concern with both structural and non-structural factors in contact linguistics.
The term “nativization” is somewhat problematic, since creolists use it in a quite different sense, that is, to refer to the adoption of an erstwhile second language as the first or native language of a community. That is the sense in which we will use it here. In Kachru’s use, the term clearly refers to what we have called L1 or substratum influence. We have already seen ample evidence of this process at work in the formation of Irish English.
Similar kinds of reanalysis (or transfer, if you prefer) can be found in other outcomes of group SLA. For instance, the colloquial variety of Mandarin spoken in Taiwan shows evidence of significant influence from Taiwanese (Southern Min), the ancestral language of most of the population. For example, certain grammatical morphemes appear to have resulted from the reanalysis of standard (Beijing) Mandarin forms in terms of Taiwanese functional categories. A well-known example of this is the use of Mandarin you ‘have’ as an auxiliary marking perfective aspect, where standard Mandarin has verb-final particle –le. This use of you is modeled on a similar use of Taiwanese u ‘have’, which functions both as a main verb and an auxiliary marking perfective aspect. The following examples from Lin (1997) illustrate (Tw = Taiwanese; BM = Beijing Mandarin; TM = Taiwanese Mandarin)¹⁶. Tones are omitted.

(30) a. Tw wa kinali u chia dyongdao

I today have eat lunch
b. TM wo jintian you chi zhongfan
I today have eat lunch
c. BM wo jintian chi-le zhongfan
I today eat- PFTV lunch
“I have eaten lunch today.”

Various other examples of Taiwanese influence on TM have been documented for morpho-syntax (Cheng 1985; Kubler 1985)

Taiwanese has also influenced the phonology of TM. For example, the retroflex initials, /ts¶’/, /ts¶¡/ and /s¶/ of standard Mandarin have been replaced in TM by their non-retroflex Taiwanese equivalents, /ts’/, /ts/ and /s/ respectively. Taiwanese lacks the retroflex sounds, so its speakers simply substitute the most similar L1 sounds for them. Several other phonological features of TM can also be attributed to Taiwanese influence (Kubler 1979).


II. 4. 2. Degrees of ‘fossilization’ or approximation in group SLA.

The notion of so-called “fossilization” is also relevant to group learning, since different outcomes of shift seem to reflect different developmental stages in the acquisition of the TL. The term itself may not be appropriate when applied to group SLA, since it assumes that the community involved is aiming at a faithful reproduction of the TL. As Escure (1997: 275) notes, the term also “fails to capture the dynamic, innovative, and – at least subconsiously – intentional use of old features” to preserve a group identity distinct from that of the TL group.

Some outcomes, for example African American Vernacular English and Irish English, approximate their TL sources more closely. Others, such as Singapore English, display stronger effects of L1 influence and simplification that are characteristic of earlier stages of IL development. Different stages of fossilization may also be observed in different regional or social varieties of the same contact vernacular. As we saw earlier, Irish English really consists of a regional continuum, with western varieties more heavily influenced by Irish that those in the east (Odlin 1997:31; Filppula 1991). Moreover, there is some evidence that certain substratal features such as “sorrow negation” found in earlier Irish English have apparently been lost in the contemporary language (Odlin 1997a:14).
In general, however, it is difficult to identify the precise developmental stages involved in cases of shift in the way we can do for individual SLA. The main reason is that we cannot always observe the changes that take place in the former. Moreover, there is often no single variety that we can identify as the TL. Witness the diversity of the English dialectal input to the formation of Irish English, or AAVE (Winford 1997d, 1998). Often too, the shift can take place over several generations, and involve successive stages of bilingualism among different sections of the shifting group. As a result, over time, the target for new learners would have been second language varieties of the TL spoken by bilinguals (Odlin 1997a:27). Situations like these, where learners interact primarily among themselves rather than with native speakers of the TL, promote the preservation of contact-induced changes or innovations.


II. 4. 3. Colloquial Singapore English: A case of early IL fossilization?

The differences in stages of ‘fossilization’ among outcomes of shift can be illustrated by comparing Irish English with another indigenized variety, Colloquial Singapore English (Sing. E.). In general, despite the changes it has undergone, Irish English is quite English in character, showing a great deal of continuity from its British dialectal sources. The same cannot be said of vernacular or colloquial Sing. E., which diverges significantly from its English sources.

Sing. E. emerged in the period 1930 – 1960 in a complex contact situation involving English (taught as a second language in schools), and various substrate languages, including southern varieties of Chinese (especially Hokkien and Cantonese), Mandarin, and varieties of Malay (Gupta 1992:327). It became a lingua franca for the ethnically diverse population, and is now increasingly being used as a first or primary language by younger generations of Singaporeans.
Ho & Platt (1993) document various aspects of Sing. E. structure that are due to the familiar effects of L1 influence, simplification and internal developments. For instance, Sing. E has serial verb constructions like the following, which reflect the syntax of similar constructions in Hokkien and Cantonese, two of the principal substrates.

(31) Sing. E. You sit car come here, ah?

Hokkien lí che chhia lâi chit-tau ah
you sit car come here QP
“Did you come here by car?”

Other features that are clearly due to Chinese influence (sometimes reinforced by Malay) include the use of one as a relative marker, or as a marker of emphasis in sentence-final position (Ho & Platt: 10); the use of ‘emphatic’ got (p. 77); yes/no questions (Gupta 1992:338); and several discourse particles, e.g., ma, ah, lah etc., adopted directly from Chinese.

Sing. E. also displays the effects of simplificatory processes of reduction and regularization. Thus we find variable omission of copula/auxiliary be; omission of subject pronouns and of plural and past tense marking. There are several innovations in Sing. E. due to internal developments. For instance, used to is generalized to express both present and past habituality. The auxiliaries is and was are used as markers of present and past time reference respectively, as in the following examples from Ho & Platt (1993: 35):

(32) a. My father is stay here what.

“My father lives here.”
b. I was study in primary school.
“I studied in a primary school”

The extent of substrate influence in colloquial Sing. E. has led some scholars (e.g. Ritchie 1986) to suggest that this contact vernacular is typologically closer to Chinese than to English. Later in this chapter, we will consider some possible reasons for the greater prevalence of substrate and other features in Sing. E. than in Irish English, and what this implies for their place in a classification of contact vernaculars. For the moment, let us return to the processes of change and the constraints that regulate them.

II. 5. Linguistic constraints in Language Shift.

The situations we have considered here should suffice to illustrate the similarities in the processes of change found in both individual and group SLA. Presumably also, the changes that occur in both cases are subject to similar linguistic constraints, at least in relation to the role of individual learners in the acquisition process. We can conceive of group shift as involving two broad stages, one in which individual learners create their own IL grammars, and another in which the competition among features of those is resolved in favor of a set of community norms. Each stage is associated with its own processes of change and their attendant constraints.

At the level of individual acquisition, the same cognitive and linguistic principles come into play in all situations. As we have seen, different principles regulate different aspects of IL construction such as processes of simplification, L1 influence, and internally motivated change. Each of these can be observed in cases of group shift.
The general reduction of bound morphology, copulas etc, in Sing. E. appears to be due to input processing principles similar to those we discussed earlier, in relation to simplification as a learning strategy (See section I.7.1.) Similarly, the overgeneralization of SVO to questions, as well as the choice of used to as a general marker of habituality conform to the One to One principle, which favors canonical word order and isomorphism of form and meaning. L1 influence from Chinese no doubt played some role here as well. Similar principles might explain such developments as the use of is and was as markers of present and past respectively. The motivation in all these cases is apparently to maximize transparency in the form-function relationship.


II. 5. 1. Constraints on L1 influence.

This brings us to the role played by learners’ L1’s in cases of language shift. What principles or constraints regulate such influence? To understand this better, we need first of all to come to grips with what L1 influence involves.