Inter-language mappings and why words are never just borrowed

Graduate Conference on Areal Linguistics, Grammar and Contacts Tartu, 4- 6 May 2012 Inter-language mappings and why words are never just borrowed1 Marko Simonovi , Universiteit Utrecht 0. What? Why? Many discourses on language contact, both generative (e.g. Kang 2012) and “traditional” (e.g. Matras 2009), frame language contact as diachronic in nature and/or as the result of workings of elements which grammatical, rather than contact-specific (Markedness, Universal Grammar, Native Grammar). That is why one important question is seldom asked. Q: What is it that code-mixers know? Is there a synchronic/I-language side to language contact i.e. is there a “grammar of contact”? A (proposed here): Yes. Inter-language mappings are the “grammar of contact”. They are internalized by members of the bilingual community based on exposure to the existing correspondences. They radically change the picture of language contact once introduced. Mappings constitute the conversion rules for code-switching/borrowing. As will be shown, the perennial issue of the difference between code-switching and borrowing is obviated once we integrate the insight that words are never simply inserted from the source lexicon into either the recipient language discourse (code-switching) or the recipient lexicon (borrowing), but that this insertion is always partially mediated by mappings. In other words, bilinguals typically know what to do: users know about the categories in both languages and how to map the ones to the others. As we shall see, there are good reasons to explore whether these mappings operate on a different level of abstraction from the correspondences we encounter within languages. I shall argue for a novel agenda of loanword integration research, which includes interlanguage mappings in the basic model. 1 This talk is part of my PhD project "Lexicon immigration service - Prolegomena to a theory of loanword integration" I am grateful to my project supervisors René Kager and Wim Zonneveld, Daria Bahtina (Taria Pahtina), Ad Backus and Boban Arsenijevi for all the intra-actions which have led to this talk. 1 Graduate Conference on Areal Linguistics, Grammar and Contacts Tartu, 4- 6 May 2012 1. So obvious that you don’t see it: No mappings, no linguistic interest Actually, the existence of productive mappings is implicated in everything that linguists would consider linguistic data: presentability of facts as systematic mappings between two languages is required in order to look at them as linguistic. We are generally not interested in the pre-systematic soup, although we know there is one. Already Haugen described this: "When languages are in contact, there is a strong tendency for speakers to equate items of the one with items of the other. Some items thereby acquire associations different from those they have for monolinguals without such experience" (Haugen 1956: 44/45) But, and this is the point here, there is no destiny that can be read off the available structures: the mappings which will get established are not predictable from the language combination. In other words, the linguistic structure is not all we need to consider. Hualde (2006) makes a similar point for phonological adaptations (but his facts actually contain evidence for a much broader model). “Once a pattern of adaptation becomes conventionalized, phonetic/phonological considerations no longer apply.” 2. Conventionality and Always_already_borrowed - Entertaining the new discourse Since mappings are generalisations, the existence of a mapping always enforces productivity, it always pushes the pattern to be used on new items. In other words, the existence of a mapping makes sets in the source lexicon in principle borrowable. Hualde (2006) says "A Basque speaker who uses a word […] will not necessarily know whether s/he is repeating a Basque word which s/he has learned of whether s/he has in fact adapted it spontaneously from his/her Spanish lexicon." The goal here is to talk about of a number of cases entertaining the new discourse. The most important feature of the proposed framing is seeing languages in contact as entangled, and consequently destabilising the idea that words belong to languages in contact in an exclusive way. 2 Graduate Conference on Areal Linguistics, Grammar and Contacts Tartu, 4- 6 May 2012 3. Two easy examples: same language, different mappings 3.1. The English [æ] in Dutch (1) Belgian Netherlandic b[ɑ]dminton b[ ]dminton “badminton” l[ɑ]ptop l[ ]ptop “laptop” st[ɑ]nd st[ ]nd “stand” r[ɑ]ppen r[ ]ppen “to rap” Nothing in the native phonologies seems to point in this direction. Also in L2 English, the most common value for [æ] is [ ] in both varieties. In most approaches, the Belgian values would be explained away as extra-linguistically conditioned spelling pronunciations, or possibly influences from French and the Netherlandic values would be seen as more natural. All these causations are interesting for the present model, but they are not explanations, they actually only help us see which representations we have to take into account. For both varieties, the input is not simply [æ], it is (minimally) [æ] plus the graphemic value <a>, and this input is linked to the output [ɑ] and [ ] in Belgian and Netherlandic Dutch respectively. In sum, there is nothing inherently preferable about mappings based on pronunciation, the representation of mappings does not suffer from its “unnaturalness”. The mapping is then as shown in (2). (2) [ɑ] Belgian Dutch [ ] Netherlandic Dutch <a>, [æ], [ ]NATIVIZATION 3.2. Serbo-Croatian integration of English verbs All the standard languages which have arisen after the split of the Serbo-Croatian have a straight-forward mapping which can turn any English verbal stem into a biaspectual SC verb. Serbian and Croatian use different integration suffixes here. 3 Graduate Conference on Areal Linguistics, Grammar and Contacts Tartu, 4- 6 May 2012 (3) Serbian daunlodovati spemovati šerovati Croatian daunlodati spemati šerati “to download” “to spam” “to share” (4) VovatiBIASPECTUAL (+ whole paradigm) Serbian VatiBIASPECTUAL (+ whole paradigm) Croatian V 4. Divorcing mappings from the adaptation logic: Two unnatural mappings In this section we are looking into some more involved mappings and doing away with the telicity bias which sees integration of words from another language as adaptation. 4.1. Spanish-Basque Inter-language Mappings Hualde (2006) presents surprising correspondences which hold between Spanish nouns and their counterparts (borrowed from the former) in Basque. So, for instance, nouns which end in the sequence -on generally have -oi in their Basque correspondents. (5) Spanish camión electrón Basque kamioi elektroi "truck" "electron" This is surprising because very common nouns in Basque end in the "repaired" Spanish sequence e.g. gizon "man" and on "good". This correspondence has a historical explanation the original sequence -one has had different destinies in both languages, yet the mapping between the new forms has remained. So, mappings do not have to be motivated in terms, and the outputs are not strictly adaptations. Note that this does not take away the fact that these conventionalized mappings have to refer to (meta)linguistically accessible units - they just do not have to relate them in a way which would seem phonetically natural. An interesting aspect is that the sequences in question are not morphemes in these words. However, equally arbitrary morpheme-tomorpheme correspondences can bleed this general correspondence. So the words which end in the Spanish -cion/-sion get borrowed with a final -zio/-sio in Basque. (6) edición 4 edizio "edition" Graduate Conference on Areal Linguistics, Grammar and Contacts Tartu, 4- 6 May 2012 conclusión konklusio "conclusion" (Here as well, it may be a matter of discussion whether the units -cion/-sion and -zio/-sio are real morphemes in all the words.) 3.2. Syllabic r in English Borrowings into Serbian English rotacized vowels, realised as [ ], are typically mapped to the Serbian syllabic r by the speakers. This is a very prominent feature of the Serbian accent in English and of spontaneous nativisations, very obvious from the phoneticized English, common in colloquial Serbian. In the following example, taken from a blog, this accent is being ridiculed. The underlined letters are realisations of /vocalic r. (7) Srbs hed inaf of filti, pezent, primitivli komplikejted end ekstrimli agli Srbian lengvi . Lajk evidens za ovu tvrdnju, Aj vil mejk šr tu provajd ju sam bjutiful ekzempls from evridej lajf, nešnal kal r end medijas, vi mejd mi da tinkujem o jedna veri seriozna reforma na jezik. Det kajnd of reforma iz not jednostavna tu establiš, zbog ega gesujem det bi se mastovala sprovoditi step baj step. ...Enivej, fajnal gol vud bi tu supres Srbian lengvi (vokabjuleri, speling, pronansiješn, artikjulejšn end so on...) et ol instances: strating from evridej komjunikejšn, preko skuls end edjukejting programs, tu ekonomi, politiks, kal r, litera r, rilidžn end mor. http://blog.b92.net/text/6039/%22WRAJTUJ%20KAO%20SHTO%20SPIKUJESH%2C%20 RIDUJ%20KO%20SHTO%20JE%20WRAJTNUTO%22/ These examples show that there is a clear awareness of the mapping from [ ] to the syllabic r in Serbian speakers. In standard Serbian, however, there are no examples of syllabic r in English loans and the words containing [ ] are adopted with [Vr] sequences, whereby the vowel is usually taken from the graphical form. (8) Standard Serbian Colloqual Serbian Fert/Firt Berns/Burns Hurtsi/Hartsi Frt Brns Hrtsi “Firth” “Burns” “The Hurts” Serbian speakers seem to be aware of this aspect of the standard language. When asked to nativise the words workshop and feature the way they use them in an SMS and the way they would use them in an academic article, they choose vrkšop/fi r in the former and 5 Graduate Conference on Areal Linguistics, Grammar and Contacts Tartu, 4- 6 May 2012 vorkšop/fi er in the latter case2. It is important to note that this procedure is not entirely accessible to the speakers - they are not able to formulate a generalization - and that adaptation strategies are not taught at any level of formal education. However, the speakers are able to support their choice with other examples of standard adaptations. This example shows that even if the speakers have intuitions about certain correspondences (which then get invested into substandard nativisations), they can acquire a prescribed pattern and apply it productively. Again, Serbian speakers pick up on the available patterns and apply them in further adaptations, rather than developing their own intuitions on optimal correspondents in two languages. 5. Discussion & What needs to change The main point of this talk was to entertain the discourse on language contact which divorces the discussion of language contact from that of processes within languages. This leaves us with a freshly deconstructed picture of language contact. The emergent agenda of loanword research would have to focus on lexicalisation/mixing without thinking in terms of adaptation, but rather in terms of matching systems in order to make material transferable. Also, this situation enables the formalisation of contact phenomena independently of theories of grammar. In other words, we can still believe in UG, but have a usage-based approach to language contact. Finally, once language contact is separated from grammar, it is important to position the one with respect of the other. Most importantly, the levels of representation need to be compared. 2 I am thankful to Sandra Karauli , Petra Timotijevi . Milena Srbinoska and Miloš Raši for sharing their intuitions with me. 6 Graduate Conference on Areal Linguistics, Grammar and Contacts Tartu, 4- 6 May 2012 6. By way of conclusion Some radical conclusions in forms of questions: • Are “entangled languages” ontologically different from non-entangled ones and do they deserve a separate discipline? Or does language entanglement deserve one? • Is there such a thing as “words of a language” or are there only “features” (to be carefully formulated)? • Should language contact people stop hanging out with linguists for 10 years to get rid of the “linguistic” bias? • Are the mappings explaining anything, rather than just describing? • Should mapping rules be added to standard grammars & dictionaries (if those still exist) of languages which have productive mappings (e.g. Serbo-Croatian and Dutch) i.e. should we sell mappings to our prescriptive friends? 7 Graduate Conference on Areal Linguistics, Grammar and Contacts Tartu, 4- 6 May 2012 7. Bibliography Haugen, Einar 1956. Bilingualism in the Americas: A Bibliography and Research Guide. American Dialect Society. Alabama: University of Alabama Press Hualde, Juan. 2000. Patterns of correspondence in the adaptation of Spanish borrowings in Basque. BLS 25. Kang, Yoonjung. 2011. Loanword Phonology. In Companion to Phonology ed. by Marc van Oostendorp, Colin Ewen, Elizabeth Hume and Keren Rice, 2258 – 2282. Wiley: Wiley-Blackwell. Matras, Yaron. 2009. Language Contact. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Simonovi , Marko. 2009. Immigrants Start on the Periphery – A Unified Approach to Loanword Phonology. Masters thesis. Universiteit Utrecht. 8