1887
  1. Home
  2. e-Journals
  3. Studies in Language. International Journal sponsored by the Foundation “Foundations of Language”
  4. Volume 45, Issue 4
  5. Article
Volume 45, Issue 4
  • ISSN 0378-4177
  • E-ISSN: 1569-9978
USD
Buy:$35.00 + Taxes

Abstract

Abstract

Morphological complexity is expected to decrease under mass admixture from adult second language speakers. While this has been chiefly shown for morphological richness, an unresolved question is whether the effect extends to aspects of morphological boundedness. Here we report a case study of Sino-Tibetan verbs, contrasting verbal expressions of two languages with very large (Chinese, Burmese) and of two languages with very small (Bunan, Chintang) numbers of second language speakers. We find that while the amount of second language speakers accounts for differences in the range and number of inflectional categories (degrees of synthesis), it does not affect the way in which morphological constituents are bound together, reflecting fortification through a mix of diachronically stable and universally preferred patterns. This calls for theoretical models that narrow down the range of changes that are driven by second language speaker admixture, and for extensive empirical testing on a global scale.

© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1075/sl.19059.wid
2020-11-02
2025-04-24

  • From This Site

    /content/journals/10.1075/sl.19059.wid
    dcterms_title,dcterms_subject,pub_keyword
    -contentType:Journal -contentType:Contributor -contentType:Concept -contentType:Institution
    10
    5
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Aldenderfer, Mark & Zhang Yinong
    2004 The prehistory of the Tibetan Plateau to the seventh century A.D.: perspectives and research from China and the West since 1950. Journal of World Prehistory18(1). 1–55. 10.1023/B:JOWO.0000038657.79035.9e
     https://doi.org/10.1023/B:JOWO.0000038657.79035.9e [Google Scholar]
  2. Anderson, Stephen R.
    2005 Aspects of the theory of clitics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199279906.001.0001
     https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199279906.001.0001 [Google Scholar]
  3. Behr, Wolfgang
    2004 ‘To translate’ is ‘to exchange’ 譯者易也 – linguistic diversity and the terms for translation in Ancient China. InN. Vittinghoff & M. Lackner (eds.), Mapping meanings: the field of new learning in late Qing China (Sinica Leidensia 64), 173–209. Leiden: Brill.
     [Google Scholar]
  4. 2010 Role of language in early Chinese constructions of ethnic identity, Journal of Chinese Philosophy37(4). 567–587. 10.1111/j.1540‑6253.2010.01605.x
     https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6253.2010.01605.x [Google Scholar]
  5. Bentz, Christian & Bodo Winter
    2013 Languages with more second language learners tend to lose nominal case. Language Dynamics and Change3. 1–27. 10.1163/22105832‑13030105
     https://doi.org/10.1163/22105832-13030105 [Google Scholar]
  6. Bickel, Balthasar & Fernando Zúñiga
    2017 The ‘word’ in polysynthetic languages: phonological and syntactic challenges. InMichael Fortescue, Marianne Mithun & Nicholas Evans (eds.), The Oxford handbook of polysynthesis, 158–185. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  7. Bickel, Balthasar & Johanna Nichols
    2005 Inflectional synthesis of the verb. InMartin Haspelmath, Matthew S. Dryer, David Gil, & Bernard Comrie (eds.), The world atlas of language structures, 94–97. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  8. 2007 Inflectional morphology. In: Timothy Shopen (ed.), Language typology and syntactic description, 2nd edn., 169–240. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 10.1017/CBO9780511618437.003
     https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511618437.003 [Google Scholar]
  9. Bickel, Balthasar, Goma Banjade, Martin Gaenszle, Elena Lieven, Netra Prasad Paudyal, Ichchha Purna Rai, Manoj Rai, Novel Kishore Rai, Sabine Stoll
    2007 Free prefix ordering in Chintang. Language83. 43–73. 10.1353/lan.2007.0002
     https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2007.0002 [Google Scholar]
  10. Bickel, Balthasar, Johanna Nichols, Taras Zakharko, Alena Witzlack-Makarevich, Kristine Hildebrandt, Michael Rießler, Lennart Bierkandt, Fernando Zúñiga & John B. Lowe
    2020 The AUTOTYP typological databases, Version 0.1.1. https://github.com/autotyp/autotyp-data (last access15 September 2020).
     [Google Scholar]
  11. Bickel, Balthasar, Kristine A. Hildebrandt & René Schiering
    2009 The distribution of phonological word domains: A probabilistic typology. InJanet Grijzenhout & Baris Kabak (eds.), Phonological domains: universals and deviations, 47–75. Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton. 10.1515/9783110219234.1.47
     https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110219234.1.47 [Google Scholar]
  12. Bickel, Balthasar
    2003 Prosodic tautomorphemicity in Sino-Tibetan. InDavid Bradley, Randy J. LaPolla, Boyd Michailovsky & Graham Thurgood (eds.), Variation in Sino-Tibetan and South East Asian languages, 89–99. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
     [Google Scholar]
  13. Booij, Geert
    2010 Construction morphology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  14. Bradley, David
    1997 Tibeto-Burman languages and classification. InDavid Bradley (ed.), Tibeto-Burman languages of the Himalayas, 1–71. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
     [Google Scholar]
  15. Bruening, Benjamin
    2018 The Lexicalist Hypothesis: both wrong and superfluous. Language94, 1–42. 10.1353/lan.2018.0000
     https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2018.0000 [Google Scholar]
  16. Chen, Matthew Y.
    2000 Tone sandhi: patterns across Chinese dialects. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 10.1017/CBO9780511486364
     https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511486364 [Google Scholar]
  17. Dai, John Xiang-Ling
    1998 Syntactic, phonological, and morphological words in Chinese. InJerome L. Packard (ed.), New approaches to Chinese word formation: morphology, phonology and the lexicon in Modern and Ancient Chinese, 104–134. Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton. 10.1515/9783110809084.103
     https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110809084.103 [Google Scholar]
  18. DeLancey, Scott
    1996 The Bipartite Stem Belt: disentangling areal and genetic correspondences. InDavid Librik & Roxane Beeler (eds.), Proceedings of the 22nd Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society February 16–19 1996, 37–54. Berkeley: Berkeley Linguistics Society. 10.3765/bls.v22i2.1372
     https://doi.org/10.3765/bls.v22i2.1372 [Google Scholar]
  19. 2013 Creolization in the divergence of the Tibeto-Burman languages. InThomas Owen-Smith & Nathan Hill (eds.), Trans-Himalayan linguistics: Historical and descriptive linguistics of the Himalayan area, 41–70. Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton. 10.1515/9783110310832.41
     https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110310832.41 [Google Scholar]
  20. 2015 The historical dynamics of morphological complexity in Trans-Himalayan. Linguistic Discovery13. 60–79. 10.1349/PS1.1537‑0852.A.463
     https://doi.org/10.1349/PS1.1537-0852.A.463 [Google Scholar]
  21. Dixon, Robert M. W. & Alexandra A. Aikhenvald
    2002 Word: A typological framework. InRobert M. W. Dixon & Alexandra A. Aikhenvald (eds.), Word: A cross-linguistic typology, 1–41. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  22. Dixon, Robert M. W.
    1977 A grammar of Yidiny. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 10.1017/CBO9781139085045
     https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139085045 [Google Scholar]
  23. Duanmu, San
    2000 The phonology of Standard Chinese, 2nd edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  24. Hall, T. Alan & Ursula Kleinhenz
    (eds.) 1999 Studies on the phonological word. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 10.1075/cilt.174
     https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.174 [Google Scholar]
  25. Hall, T. Alan, Kristine A. Hildebrandt & Balthasar Bickel
    2008 Introduction: theory and typology of the word. Linguistics46. 183–192. 10.1515/LING.2008.008
     https://doi.org/10.1515/LING.2008.008 [Google Scholar]
  26. Haspelmath, Martin
    2011 The indeterminacy of word segmentation and the nature of morphology and syntax. Folia Linguistica45. 31–80. 10.1515/flin.2011.002
     https://doi.org/10.1515/flin.2011.002 [Google Scholar]
  27. Hildebrandt, Kristine
    2005 The Himalayan enclave hypothesis and bipartite stems. Linguistic Society of America Annual Meeting, 6–9January 2005 [https://www.siue.edu/~khildeb/bipartite.pdf].
     [Google Scholar]
  28. Hildebrandt, Kristine A.
    2007 Prosodic and grammatical domains in Limbu. Himalayan Linguistics8. 1–34.
     [Google Scholar]
  29. 2014 The prosodic word. InJohn R. Taylor (ed.), The Oxford handbook of the word, 221–245. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  30. Hyman, Larry M.
    2008 Directional asymmetries in the morphology and phonology of words, with special reference to Bantu. Linguistics46. 309–350. 10.1515/LING.2008.012
     https://doi.org/10.1515/LING.2008.012 [Google Scholar]
  31. Jacobsen, William H. Jr.
    1980 Washo bipartite verb stems. InKathryn Klar, Margaret Langdon & Shirley Silver (eds.), American Indian and Indoeuropean Studies: Papers in Honor of Madison S. Beeler, 85–99. Berlin. 10.1515/9783110808681.85
     https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110808681.85 [Google Scholar]
  32. Jacques, Guillaume
    2018 Bipartite verbs in Japhug and other Trans-Himalayan languages. Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area41. 75–191. 10.1075/ltba.17012.jac
     https://doi.org/10.1075/ltba.17012.jac [Google Scholar]
  33. Jenny, Mathias & San San Hnin Tun
    2016 Burmese: A comprehensive grammar. New York: Routledge.
     [Google Scholar]
  34. Levshina, Natalia
    2015 How to do Linguistics with R. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 10.1075/z.195
     https://doi.org/10.1075/z.195 [Google Scholar]
  35. Lewis, M. Paul
    (ed.) 2009 Ethnologue: Languages of the world, 16th edn.Dallas: SIL International.
     [Google Scholar]
  36. Li, Charles N. & Sandra A. Thompson
    1981 Mandarin Chinese: A functional reference grammar. Berkeley: University of California Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  37. Lupyan, Gary & Rick Dale
    2010 Language structure is partly determined by social structure. PLoS ONE5(1), e8559. 10.1371/journal.pone.0008559
     https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0008559 [Google Scholar]
  38. Mansfield, John, Sabine Stoll & Balthasar Bickel
    2020 Category clustering: a probabilistic bias in the morphology of argument marking. Language96. 255–293. 10.1353/lan.2020.0021
     https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2020.0021 [Google Scholar]
  39. Matisoff, James A.
    1989 The bulging monosyllable or the mora the merrier: echo-vowel adverbialization in Lahu. InJeremy H. C. S. Davidson (ed.), Southeast Asian linguistics: Essays in honour of Eugénie J.A. Henderson, 163–197. London: SOAS.
     [Google Scholar]
  40. McWhorter, John
    2007 Language interrupted: Signs of non-native acquisition in standard language grammars. New York: Oxford University Press. 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195309805.001.0001
     https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195309805.001.0001 [Google Scholar]
  41. Nespor, Marina & Irene Vogel
    2007 Prosodic Phonology. Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton. 10.1515/9783110977790
     https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110977790 [Google Scholar]
  42. Paudyal, Netra P.
    2015 Aspects of Chintang Syntax: University of Zürich PhD dissertation.
     [Google Scholar]
  43. Post, Mark W.
    2009 The phonology and grammar of Galo “words”: A case study in benign disunity. Studies in Language33. 934–974. 10.1075/sl.33.4.05pos
     https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.33.4.05pos [Google Scholar]
  44. Sagart, Laurent, Guillaume Jacques, Yunfan Lai, Robin J. Ryder, Valentin Thouzeau, Simon J. Greenhill & Johann-Mattis List
    2019 Dated language phylogenies shed light on the ancestry of Sino-Tibetan. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences116. 10317–10322. doi:  10.1073/pnas.1817972116
     https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1817972116 [Google Scholar]
  45. Schiering, René, Balthasar Bickel & Kristine A. Hildebrandt
    2010 The prosodic word is not universal, but emergent. Journal of Linguistics46. 657–709. 10.1017/S0022226710000216
     https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022226710000216 [Google Scholar]
  46. Sharma, Devidatta
    1989 Tribal languages of Himachal Pradesh, part I. Delhi: Mittal.
     [Google Scholar]
  47. Thurgood, Graham
    2017 Sino-Tibetan: genetic and areal subgroups. InGraham Thurgood & Randy J. LaPolla (eds.), The Sino-Tibetan languages, 3–39. London: Routledge.
     [Google Scholar]
  48. Trudgill, Peter
    2001 Contact and simplification: Historical baggage and directionality in linguistic change. Linguistic Typology5. 371–374.
     [Google Scholar]
  49. 2011 Sociolinguistic typology: Social determinants of linguistic complexity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  50. van Driem, George
    2001a Languages of the Himalayas: An ethnolinguistic handbook of the greater Himalayan region. Leiden: Brill. 10.1163/9789004492530
     https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004492530 [Google Scholar]
  51. 2001b Zhangzhung and its next of kin in the Himalayas. InYasuhiko Nagano & Randy LaPolla (eds.), New research on Zhangzhung and related Himalayan languages, 31–44. Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology.
     [Google Scholar]
  52. Widmer, Manuel
    2017 A grammar of Bunan. Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton.
     [Google Scholar]
  53. Wiedenhof, Jeroen
    2015 A grammar of Mandarin. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 10.1075/z.197
     https://doi.org/10.1075/z.197 [Google Scholar]
  54. Winter, Bodo
    2020 Statistics for Linguists. London: Routledge.
     [Google Scholar]
  55. Wray, Alison & George W. Grace
    2007 The consequences of talking to strangers: Evolutionary corollaries of socio-cultural influences on linguistic form. Lingua117. 543–578. 10.1016/j.lingua.2005.05.005
     https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2005.05.005 [Google Scholar]
  56. Zhang, Menghan, Shi Yan, Wuyun Pan & Li Jin
    2019 Phylogenetic evidence for Sino-Tibetan origin in northern China in the Late Neolithic. Nature569. 112–115. doi:  10.1038/s41586‑019‑1153‑z
     https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1153-z [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.1075/sl.19059.wid
Loading
Morphological structure can escape reduction effects from mass admixture of second language speakers
Studies in Language. International Journal sponsored by the Foundation “Foundations of Language” 45, 707 (2021); https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.19059.wid
/content/journals/10.1075/sl.19059.wid
/content/journals/10.1075/sl.19059.wid
Loading

Data & Media loading...

  • Article Type: Research Article
Keyword(s): language contact; morphology; Sino-Tibetan

Most Cited

This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was successful
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error