The Handbook of Language Contact最新文献_第2页

Contact Explanations in Linguistics 语言学中的接触解释

The Handbook of Language Contact Pub Date : 2020-07-28 DOI: 10.1002/9781444318159.CH1

Sarah Thomason

{"title":"Contact Explanations in Linguistics","authors":"Sarah Thomason","doi":"10.1002/9781444318159.CH1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444318159.CH1","url":null,"abstract":"Language contact has been invoked with increasing frequency over the past two or three decades as a, or the, cause of a wide range of linguistic changes. Historical linguists have (of course) mainly addressed these changes from a diachronic perspective ‐ that is, analyzing ways in which language contact has influenced lexical and/or structural developments over time. But sociolinguists, and many or most of the scholars who would characterize their specialty as contact linguistics, have focused on processes involving contact in analyzing synchronic variation. A few scholars have even argued that contact is the sole source of language variation and change; this extreme position is a neat counterpoint to an older position in historical linguistics, namely, that language contact is responsible only for lexical changes and quite minor structural changes. In this chapter I will argue that neither extreme position is viable. This argument will be developed through a survey of general types of contact explanations, especially explanations for changes over time, juxtaposed with a comparative survey of major causal factors in internally motivated language change. My goal is to show that both internal and external motivations are needed in any full account of language history and, by implication, of synchronic variation. Progress in contact linguistics depends, in my opinion, on recognizing the complexity of change processes ‐ on resisting the urge to offer a single simple explanation for all types of structural change. The structure of the chapter is as follows. Section 1 provides some background concepts and definitions, and sections 2 and 3 compare and contrast contact explanations with internal explanations of change. Section 4 is a brief conclusion that includes a warning about the need to be cautious in making claims about the causes of change ‐ both because in most cases no cause can be firmly established and because of the real possibility that multiple causes are responsible for a particular change.","PeriodicalId":443921,"journal":{"name":"The Handbook of Language Contact","volume":"30 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-07-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121945847","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 48

Language Contact in the Balkans 巴尔干半岛的语言接触

The Handbook of Language Contact Pub Date : 2020-07-28 DOI: 10.1002/9781444318159.CH30

B. Joseph

引用次数: 22

Contact and the Celtic Languages 接触和凯尔特语

The Handbook of Language Contact Pub Date : 2020-07-28 DOI: 10.1002/9781444318159.CH26

J. Eska

引用次数: 2

Contact Languages of the Pacific 太平洋联络语言

The Handbook of Language Contact Pub Date : 2020-07-28 DOI: 10.1002/9781119485094.CH37

J. Siegel

引用次数: 17

Contact and Code‐Switching 接触和代码切换

The Handbook of Language Contact Pub Date : 2020-07-28 DOI: 10.1002/9781119485094.ch9

P. Gardner-Chloros

引用次数: 2