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Extralinguistic Factors, Language Change, and Comparative
Reconstructions: Case Studies from South-West China
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Katia Chirkova
CRLAO, CNRS
Abstract: It is generally assumed that the outcomes of language contact by and large depend
on extralinguistic factors (e.g. Matras and Sakel 2007: 2). The reverse of this deterministic
claim entails that the potential outcomes of a language contact situation
may to some extent
be inferred from the extralinguistic context of that situation. In this sense, languages native to
the multi-ethnic and multilingual “ethnic corridor” of the
Sino-Tibetan borderland are, due to
the complex and layered history of this area, likely to be among
most extreme outcomes of
language contact—that is, heavy borrowing and heavy structural interference, penetrating into
all subsystems of the recipient language.
In
this paper, I focus on languages of the ethnic corridor that are spoken by small-size
groups with a long history of residence in the area, who are fully bilingual
in their native
tongue and their respective contact language. I examine local linguistic varieties of (a) well-
studied subgroups with written traditions, such as Sinitic and Tibetan; and (b) lesser-
researched and phylogenetically more
obscure subgroups, such as Qiangic. I argue that
common sociolinguistic settings for all considered varieties should lead us to examine the
linguistic structures of synchronically and historically lesser-understood
varieties aided by
insights gained from the study of synchronically and historically better-understood varieties
that fall into the same category. This approach allows us to extract falsifiable predictions from
complex cases of
language contact in the area, to derive testable conclusions about recurrent
local processes of language change.
