language contact thesis

Search Menu
Browse content in Arts and Humanities
Browse content in Archaeology
Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Archaeology
Archaeological Methodology and Techniques
Archaeology by Region
Archaeology of Religion
Archaeology of Trade and Exchange
Biblical Archaeology
Contemporary and Public Archaeology
Environmental Archaeology
Historical Archaeology
History and Theory of Archaeology
Industrial Archaeology
Landscape Archaeology
Mortuary Archaeology
Prehistoric Archaeology
Underwater Archaeology
Zooarchaeology
Browse content in Architecture
Architectural Structure and Design
History of Architecture
Landscape Art and Architecture
Residential and Domestic Buildings
Theory of Architecture
Browse content in Art
Art Subjects and Themes
Gender and Sexuality in Art
History of Art
Industrial and Commercial Art
Theory of Art
Biographical Studies
Byzantine Studies
Browse content in Classical Studies
Classical Literature
Classical Reception
Classical History
Classical Philosophy
Classical Mythology
Classical Art and Architecture
Classical Oratory and Rhetoric
Greek and Roman Papyrology
Greek and Roman Archaeology
Greek and Roman Epigraphy
Greek and Roman Law
Late Antiquity
Religion in the Ancient World
Digital Humanities
Browse content in History
Colonialism and Imperialism
Diplomatic History
Environmental History
Genealogy, Heraldry, Names, and Honours
Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing
Historical Geography
History by Period
History of Agriculture
History of Education
History of Gender and Sexuality
Industrial History
Intellectual History
International History
Labour History
Legal and Constitutional History
Local and Family History
Maritime History
Military History
National Liberation and Post-Colonialism
Oral History
Political History
Public History
Regional and National History
Revolutions and Rebellions
Slavery and Abolition of Slavery
Social and Cultural History
Theory, Methods, and Historiography
Urban History
World History
Browse content in Language Teaching and Learning
Language Learning (Specific Skills)
Language Teaching Theory and Methods
Browse content in Linguistics
Applied Linguistics
Cognitive Linguistics
Computational Linguistics
Forensic Linguistics
Grammar, Syntax and Morphology
Historical and Diachronic Linguistics
History of English
Language Evolution
Language Reference
Language Variation
Language Families
Language Acquisition
Lexicography
Linguistic Anthropology
Linguistic Theories
Linguistic Typology
Phonetics and Phonology
Psycholinguistics
Sociolinguistics
Translation and Interpretation
Writing Systems
Browse content in Literature
Bibliography
Children's Literature Studies
Literary Studies (Romanticism)
Literary Studies (American)
Literary Studies (Modernism)
Literary Studies (Asian)
Literary Studies (European)
Literary Studies (Eco-criticism)
Literary Studies - World
Literary Studies (1500 to 1800)
Literary Studies (19th Century)
Literary Studies (20th Century onwards)
Literary Studies (African American Literature)
Literary Studies (British and Irish)
Literary Studies (Early and Medieval)
Literary Studies (Fiction, Novelists, and Prose Writers)
Literary Studies (Gender Studies)
Literary Studies (Graphic Novels)
Literary Studies (History of the Book)
Literary Studies (Plays and Playwrights)
Literary Studies (Poetry and Poets)
Literary Studies (Postcolonial Literature)
Literary Studies (Queer Studies)
Literary Studies (Science Fiction)
Literary Studies (Travel Literature)
Literary Studies (War Literature)
Literary Studies (Women's Writing)
Literary Theory and Cultural Studies
Mythology and Folklore
Shakespeare Studies and Criticism
Browse content in Media Studies
Browse content in Music
Applied Music
Dance and Music
Ethics in Music
Ethnomusicology
Gender and Sexuality in Music
Medicine and Music
Music Cultures
Music and Media
Music and Culture
Music and Religion
Music Education and Pedagogy
Music Theory and Analysis
Musical Scores, Lyrics, and Libretti
Musical Structures, Styles, and Techniques
Musicology and Music History
Performance Practice and Studies
Race and Ethnicity in Music
Sound Studies
Browse content in Performing Arts
Browse content in Philosophy
Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art
Epistemology
Feminist Philosophy
History of Western Philosophy
Metaphysics
Moral Philosophy
Non-Western Philosophy
Philosophy of Language
Philosophy of Mind
Philosophy of Perception
Philosophy of Action
Philosophy of Law
Philosophy of Religion
Philosophy of Science
Philosophy of Mathematics and Logic
Practical Ethics
Social and Political Philosophy
Browse content in Religion
Biblical Studies
Christianity
East Asian Religions
History of Religion
Judaism and Jewish Studies
Qumran Studies
Religion and Education
Religion and Health
Religion and Politics
Religion and Science
Religion and Law
Religion and Art, Literature, and Music
Religious Studies
Browse content in Society and Culture
Cookery, Food, and Drink
Cultural Studies
Customs and Traditions
Ethical Issues and Debates
Hobbies, Games, Arts and Crafts
Lifestyle, Home, and Garden
Natural world, Country Life, and Pets
Popular Beliefs and Controversial Knowledge
Sports and Outdoor Recreation
Technology and Society
Travel and Holiday
Visual Culture
Browse content in Law
Arbitration
Browse content in Company and Commercial Law
Commercial Law
Company Law
Browse content in Comparative Law
Systems of Law
Competition Law
Browse content in Constitutional and Administrative Law
Government Powers
Judicial Review
Local Government Law
Military and Defence Law
Parliamentary and Legislative Practice
Construction Law
Contract Law
Browse content in Criminal Law
Criminal Procedure
Criminal Evidence Law
Sentencing and Punishment
Employment and Labour Law
Environment and Energy Law
Browse content in Financial Law
Banking Law
Insolvency Law
History of Law
Human Rights and Immigration
Intellectual Property Law
Browse content in International Law
Private International Law and Conflict of Laws
Public International Law
IT and Communications Law
Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law
Law and Society
Law and Politics
Browse content in Legal System and Practice
Courts and Procedure
Legal Skills and Practice
Primary Sources of Law
Regulation of Legal Profession
Medical and Healthcare Law
Browse content in Policing
Criminal Investigation and Detection
Police and Security Services
Police Procedure and Law
Police Regional Planning
Browse content in Property Law
Personal Property Law
Study and Revision
Terrorism and National Security Law
Browse content in Trusts Law
Wills and Probate or Succession
Browse content in Medicine and Health
Browse content in Allied Health Professions
Arts Therapies
Clinical Science
Dietetics and Nutrition
Occupational Therapy
Operating Department Practice
Physiotherapy
Radiography
Speech and Language Therapy
Browse content in Anaesthetics
General Anaesthesia
Neuroanaesthesia
Clinical Neuroscience
Browse content in Clinical Medicine
Acute Medicine
Cardiovascular Medicine
Clinical Genetics
Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics
Dermatology
Endocrinology and Diabetes
Gastroenterology
Genito-urinary Medicine
Geriatric Medicine
Infectious Diseases
Medical Toxicology
Medical Oncology
Pain Medicine
Palliative Medicine
Rehabilitation Medicine
Respiratory Medicine and Pulmonology
Rheumatology
Sleep Medicine
Sports and Exercise Medicine
Community Medical Services
Critical Care
Emergency Medicine
Forensic Medicine
Haematology
History of Medicine
Browse content in Medical Skills
Clinical Skills
Communication Skills
Nursing Skills
Surgical Skills
Medical Ethics
Browse content in Medical Dentistry
Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery
Paediatric Dentistry
Restorative Dentistry and Orthodontics
Surgical Dentistry
Medical Statistics and Methodology
Browse content in Neurology
Clinical Neurophysiology
Neuropathology
Nursing Studies
Browse content in Obstetrics and Gynaecology
Gynaecology
Occupational Medicine
Ophthalmology
Otolaryngology (ENT)
Browse content in Paediatrics
Neonatology
Browse content in Pathology
Chemical Pathology
Clinical Cytogenetics and Molecular Genetics
Histopathology
Medical Microbiology and Virology
Patient Education and Information
Browse content in Pharmacology
Psychopharmacology
Browse content in Popular Health
Caring for Others
Complementary and Alternative Medicine
Self-help and Personal Development
Browse content in Preclinical Medicine
Cell Biology
Molecular Biology and Genetics
Reproduction, Growth and Development
Primary Care
Professional Development in Medicine
Browse content in Psychiatry
Addiction Medicine
Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
Forensic Psychiatry
Learning Disabilities
Old Age Psychiatry
Psychotherapy
Browse content in Public Health and Epidemiology
Epidemiology
Public Health
Browse content in Radiology
Clinical Radiology
Interventional Radiology
Nuclear Medicine
Radiation Oncology
Reproductive Medicine
Browse content in Surgery
Cardiothoracic Surgery
Critical Care Surgery
Gastro-intestinal and Colorectal Surgery
General Surgery
Neurosurgery
Paediatric Surgery
Peri-operative Care
Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
Surgical Oncology
Transplant Surgery
Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery
Vascular Surgery
Browse content in Science and Mathematics
Browse content in Biological Sciences
Aquatic Biology
Biochemistry
Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
Developmental Biology
Ecology and Conservation
Evolutionary Biology
Genetics and Genomics
Microbiology
Molecular and Cell Biology
Natural History
Plant Sciences and Forestry
Research Methods in Life Sciences
Structural Biology
Study and Communication Skills in Life Sciences
Systems Biology
Zoology and Animal Sciences
Browse content in Chemistry
Analytical Chemistry
Computational Chemistry
Crystallography
Environmental Chemistry
Industrial Chemistry
Inorganic Chemistry
Materials Chemistry
Medicinal Chemistry
Mineralogy and Gems
Organic Chemistry
Physical Chemistry
Polymer Chemistry
Study and Communication Skills in Chemistry
Theoretical Chemistry
Browse content in Computer Science
Artificial Intelligence
Audio Processing
Computer Architecture and Logic Design
Game Studies
Human-Computer Interaction
Mathematical Theory of Computation
Programming Languages
Software Engineering
Systems Analysis and Design
Virtual Reality
Browse content in Computing
Business Applications
Computer Games
Computer Security
Computer Networking and Communications
Digital Lifestyle
Graphical and Digital Media Applications
Operating Systems
Browse content in Earth Sciences and Geography
Atmospheric Sciences
Environmental Geography
Geology and the Lithosphere
Maps and Map-making
Meteorology and Climatology
Oceanography and Hydrology
Palaeontology
Physical Geography and Topography
Regional Geography
Soil Science
Urban Geography
Browse content in Engineering and Technology
Agriculture and Farming
Biological Engineering
Civil Engineering, Surveying, and Building
Electronics and Communications Engineering
Energy Technology
Engineering (General)
Environmental Science, Engineering, and Technology
History of Engineering and Technology
Mechanical Engineering and Materials
Technology of Industrial Chemistry
Transport Technology and Trades
Browse content in Environmental Science
Applied Ecology (Environmental Science)
Conservation of the Environment (Environmental Science)
Environmental Sustainability
Environmentalist and Conservationist Organizations (Environmental Science)
Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Environmental Science)
Management of Land and Natural Resources (Environmental Science)
Natural Disasters (Environmental Science)
Nuclear Issues (Environmental Science)
Pollution and Threats to the Environment (Environmental Science)
Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Environmental Science)
History of Science and Technology
Browse content in Materials Science
Ceramics and Glasses
Composite Materials
Metals, Alloying, and Corrosion
Nanotechnology
Browse content in Mathematics
Applied Mathematics
Biomathematics and Statistics
History of Mathematics
Mathematical Education
Mathematical Finance
Mathematical Analysis
Numerical and Computational Mathematics
Probability and Statistics
Pure Mathematics
Browse content in Neuroscience
Cognition and Behavioural Neuroscience
Development of the Nervous System
Disorders of the Nervous System
History of Neuroscience
Invertebrate Neurobiology
Molecular and Cellular Systems
Neuroendocrinology and Autonomic Nervous System
Neuroscientific Techniques
Sensory and Motor Systems
Browse content in Physics
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics
Biological and Medical Physics
Classical Mechanics
Computational Physics
Condensed Matter Physics
Electromagnetism, Optics, and Acoustics
History of Physics
Mathematical and Statistical Physics
Measurement Science
Nuclear Physics
Particles and Fields
Plasma Physics
Quantum Physics
Relativity and Gravitation
Semiconductor and Mesoscopic Physics
Browse content in Psychology
Affective Sciences
Clinical Psychology
Cognitive Psychology
Cognitive Neuroscience
Criminal and Forensic Psychology
Developmental Psychology
Educational Psychology
Evolutionary Psychology
Health Psychology
History and Systems in Psychology
Music Psychology
Neuropsychology
Organizational Psychology
Psychological Assessment and Testing
Psychology of Human-Technology Interaction
Psychology Professional Development and Training
Research Methods in Psychology
Social Psychology
Browse content in Social Sciences
Browse content in Anthropology
Anthropology of Religion
Human Evolution
Medical Anthropology
Physical Anthropology
Regional Anthropology
Social and Cultural Anthropology
Theory and Practice of Anthropology
Browse content in Business and Management
Business Ethics
Business History
Business Strategy
Business and Technology
Business and Government
Business and the Environment
Comparative Management
Corporate Governance
Corporate Social Responsibility
Entrepreneurship
Health Management
Human Resource Management
Industrial and Employment Relations
Industry Studies
Information and Communication Technologies
International Business
Knowledge Management
Management and Management Techniques
Operations Management
Organizational Theory and Behaviour
Pensions and Pension Management
Public and Nonprofit Management
Strategic Management
Supply Chain Management
Browse content in Criminology and Criminal Justice
Criminal Justice
Criminology
Forms of Crime
International and Comparative Criminology
Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice
Development Studies
Browse content in Economics
Agricultural, Environmental, and Natural Resource Economics
Asian Economics
Behavioural Finance
Behavioural Economics and Neuroeconomics
Econometrics and Mathematical Economics
Economic History
Economic Methodology
Economic Systems
Economic Development and Growth
Financial Markets
Financial Institutions and Services
General Economics and Teaching
Health, Education, and Welfare
History of Economic Thought
International Economics
Labour and Demographic Economics
Law and Economics
Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics
Microeconomics
Public Economics
Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics
Welfare Economics
Browse content in Education
Adult Education and Continuous Learning
Care and Counselling of Students
Early Childhood and Elementary Education
Educational Equipment and Technology
Educational Strategies and Policy
Higher and Further Education
Organization and Management of Education
Philosophy and Theory of Education
Schools Studies
Secondary Education
Teaching of a Specific Subject
Teaching of Specific Groups and Special Educational Needs
Teaching Skills and Techniques
Browse content in Environment
Applied Ecology (Social Science)
Climate Change
Conservation of the Environment (Social Science)
Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Social Science)
Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Social Science)
Browse content in Human Geography
Cultural Geography
Economic Geography
Political Geography
Browse content in Interdisciplinary Studies
Communication Studies
Museums, Libraries, and Information Sciences
Browse content in Politics
African Politics
Asian Politics
Chinese Politics
Comparative Politics
Conflict Politics
Elections and Electoral Studies
Environmental Politics
European Union
Foreign Policy
Gender and Politics
Human Rights and Politics
Indian Politics
International Relations
International Organization (Politics)
International Political Economy
Irish Politics
Latin American Politics
Middle Eastern Politics
Political Behaviour
Political Economy
Political Institutions
Political Theory
Political Methodology
Political Communication
Political Philosophy
Political Sociology
Politics and Law
Public Policy
Public Administration
Quantitative Political Methodology
Regional Political Studies
Russian Politics
Security Studies
State and Local Government
UK Politics
US Politics
Browse content in Regional and Area Studies
African Studies
Asian Studies
East Asian Studies
Japanese Studies
Latin American Studies
Middle Eastern Studies
Native American Studies
Scottish Studies
Browse content in Research and Information
Decision Theory
Research Methods
Browse content in Social Work
Addictions and Substance Misuse
Adoption and Fostering
Care of the Elderly
Child and Adolescent Social Work
Couple and Family Social Work
Developmental and Physical Disabilities Social Work
Direct Practice and Clinical Social Work
Emergency Services
Human Behaviour and the Social Environment
International and Global Issues in Social Work
Mental and Behavioural Health
Social Justice and Human Rights
Social Policy and Advocacy
Social Work and Crime and Justice
Social Work Macro Practice
Social Work Practice Settings
Social Work Research and Evidence-based Practice
Welfare and Benefit Systems
Browse content in Sociology
Childhood Studies
Community Development
Comparative and Historical Sociology
Economic Sociology
Gender and Sexuality
Gerontology and Ageing
Health, Illness, and Medicine
Marriage and the Family
Migration Studies
Occupations, Professions, and Work
Organizations
Population and Demography
Race and Ethnicity
Social Theory
Social Movements and Social Change
Social Research and Statistics
Social Stratification, Inequality, and Mobility
Sociology of Religion
Sociology of Education
Sport and Leisure
Urban and Rural Studies
Browse content in Warfare and Defence
Defence Strategy, Planning, and Research
Land Forces and Warfare
Military Administration
Military Life and Institutions
Naval Forces and Warfare
Other Warfare and Defence Issues
Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution
Weapons and Equipment

The Oxford Handbook of Applied Linguistics (2nd edn)

< Previous chapter
Next chapter >

25 Language Contact

Peter Hans Nelde died on August 31, 2007, after a long illness. Despite his passing, the contribution he wrote for the Oxford Handbook of Applied Linguistics was considered to be of such importance that it was decided to retain it in its original form. Dr. Nelde established contact linguistics as an integral part of the discipline, supported by annual international symposia dealing with contact and conflict between linguistic minorities and majorities. In addition, he established the series Plurilingua that he maintained as editor-in-chief during his life. Dr. Nelde was professor and chair of German and general linguistics at the Katholieke Universiteit Brussel (Belgium) and visiting professor in Nijmegen (the Netherlands) and Leipzig (Germany). He directed Languages in a Network of European Excellence (LINEE), the international research project on linguistic diversity sponsored by the European Union. In 1977 he founded the Research Centre on Multilingualism and had been its director ever since. He was responsible for the publication of the Euromosaic reports on the linguistic minorities of Europe. He was also one of the editors of Sociolinguistica: International Yearbook of Sociolinguistics (Niemeyer, Tübingen) and the editor in chief of Contact Linguistics: An International Handbook of Contemporary Research. His main research areas were multilingualism, contact linguistics, language policy, and language planning. He shall be sorely missed.

Published: 18 September 2012
Cite Icon Cite
Permissions Icon Permissions

This article focuses on the ideas of multilingualism and language contact against the backdrop of applied linguistics. In the last four decades, scientific research on multilingualism has experienced numerous stimuli, the majority of which can be attributed to language contact research in the Weinreich tradition, going back to his famous Languages in Contact . Although multilingualism and language contact between individuals and groups are age old, language contact research first obtained a secure position in applied linguistics in the 1970s through the development of the social sciences. The great significance of multilingualism in the future of Europe and North America and its greater importance in many other parts of the world led to an interdisciplinary interest in contact linguistics. As an interdisciplinary branch of multilingual research, contact linguistics incorporates three areas of inquiry: language use, language user, and language sphere. This article explains the field of contact linguistics along with its significant parameters.

I. Language Contact, Multilingualism, and Applied Linguistics

In the last 40 years, scientific research on multilingualism has experienced numerous stimuli, the majority of which can be attributed to language contact research in the Weinreich tradition, going back to his famous Languages in Contact (1953). Weinreich's work is based on the fact that speakers or language communities, rather than languages on an abstract level, are in contact with one another, and that any analysis of multilingual behavior is useless without consideration of the linguistic and cultural roots of the given situation. Today, research into language contact is manifest in two volumes of an international handbook ( Contact Linguistics ) which appeared for the first time in Dirven and Pütz ( 1996 and 1997 ). The interest of applied linguistics in language contact research or contact linguistics—a term used since the Brussels “Contact and Conflict” congress in 1979—begins with the recognition that the majority of the world's population is multilingual, so that multilingualism is to be regarded as the norm rather than the exception. Although multilingualism and language contact between individuals and groups are as old as the Babylonian confusion of tongues, language contact research first obtained a secure position in applied linguistics in the 1970s through the development of the social sciences. The great significance of multilingualism in the future of Europe and North America and its greater importance in many other parts of the world led to an interdisciplinary interest in contact linguistics, whose relation to multilingualism can be portrayed graphically: see figure 25.1 .

Reprinted in Memory of Dr. Nelde.

The relation of contact linguistics to multilingualism

II. What is Contact Linguistics?

As an interdisciplinary branch of multilingual research, contact linguistics incorporates three areas of inquiry: language use, language user, and language sphere.

The significant parameters of contact linguistics are linguistic levels (phonology, syntax, lexicon) and also discourse analysis, stylistics, and pragmatics. In addition there are the external linguistic factors: for example, nation, language community, language boundaries, migration, and many others.

The type of multilingualism is also relevant; in other words, whether it manifests itself as individual, institutional, or state bilingualism, as social multilingualism, as diglossia or dialect, or as natural or artificial multilingualism, for which the immediate levels—such as so-called semilingualism or interlinguistics—also must be considered. In the process it is helpful to make a basic, simplifying distinction between autochthonous (native) and allochthonous (migrant, refugee) groups, because instances of language contact can rarely be isolated as single phenomena but, rather, usually as a cluster of characteristics.

The structuring of social groups is of crucial importance to the language user. Besides the conventional differences of age, sex, and social relationship, minority status receives special attention from researchers of multilingualism.

Above and beyond these factors, all of the sectors responsible for the social interplay of a language community play an essential role. Added to traditional sectors like religion, politics, culture, and science in the last few decades are others like technology, industry, city and administration and, most recently, also media, advertising, and data processing. In the educational/cultural sector, the schools occupy a special place, as they are constantly exposed to new forms and models of multilingual instruction from North America and—above all—from Canada. The question of whether bilingual and multilingual education will interfere with a child's right to use his/her mother (home, first, colloquial) tongue depends mainly on the intentions of the respective language planners, so that conformity and integration, instead of language maintenance, constitute the motivating forces of multilingual instruction. To oversimplify the issue, the underprivileged must submit to bilingual education and thus to assimilation, while foreign language instruction is available to the sociological elite. Contact processes that have concerned researchers in multilingualism since the beginning are partly diachronic and partly synchronic in nature. Besides language change, borrowing processes, interference, and language mixing, there are linguae francae , language alternation, language maintenance and loss, code-switching, pidginization, and creolization.

The effects of such language contact processes can be registered by measuring language consciousness and attitude. Language loyalty and prestige play a decisive role in the linguistic identity of a multilingual person, and extreme care must be taken in interpreting so-called language statistics (censuses and public opinion surveys).

The language spheres in which considerations of multilingualism have become indispensable extend over numerous areas of study and are, furthermore, dependent on the respective level of development and interest. These include, to name a few, language policy, language planning, language ecology, language contact in multinational industries and organizations, language care and revitalization among minorities, as well as single development, planned languages, and the role of English as a world language with all the concomitant effects on the respective individual languages. (For a complete list of topics see Nelde et al., 1996 .)

Such a bird's-eye view shows well enough how extensive, interdisciplinary, and yet specialized the field of multilingualism is as related to contact linguistics.

III. Contact and Conflict

Ethnic contact and conflict and sociology.

Most contact between ethnic groups does not occur in peaceful, harmoniously coexisting communities. Instead, it exhibits varying degrees of tension, resentment, and differences of opinion that are characteristic of every competitive social structure. Under certain conditions, such generally accepted competitive tensions can degenerate into intense conflicts, in the worst case ending in violence. The possibility of conflict erupting is always present, because differences between groups create feelings of uncertainty of status, which could give rise to conflicts. Sociologists who have dealt with contact problems between ethnic groups define conflicts as contentions involving real or apparent fears, interests, and values, in which the goals of the opposing group must be opposed, or at least neutralized, to protect one's own interests (prestige, employment, political power, etc.; Williams, 1947 ). This type of contention often appears as a conflict of values, in which differing behavioral norms collide, because usually only one norm is considered to be valid. Conflicts between ethnic groups, however, occur only very rarely as openly waged violent conflicts and usually consist of a complex system of threats and sanctions in which the interests and values of one group are endangered. Conflicts can arise relatively easily if—as is usually the case—interests and values have an emotional basis.

The magnitude and the development of a conflict depend on a number of factors determined by level of friction between two or more ethnic groups, the presence of equalizing or mitigating elements, and the degree of uncertainty of all the participants. Thus, a one-sided explanation of the conflict, or one based on irrational prejudices, will fail. Very different factors that influence each other can reinforce and escalate to cause group conflict. This group conflict is part of normal social behavior in which different groups compete with each other, and should therefore not be connoted only negatively, because in this way new—and possibly more peaceful—forms of coexistence can arise. On the other hand, tensions between ethnic groups brought about by feelings of intimidation can give rise to new conflicts at any time—conflicts that can be caused by a minority as well as by a majority group. As long as society continues to create new fears, because of its competitive orientation, the creation of new conflicts appears unavoidable.

Political Language Contact and Conflict

Along with sociologists, political scientists also assume that language contact can cause political conflict. Language conflicts can be brought about by changes in an expanding social system when there is contact between different language groups (Inglehart and Woodward, 1972 ). Belgium and French Canada are examples of this. The reasons for such a situation are the following: A dominant language group (French in Belgium, English in Canada) controls the crucial authority in the areas of administration, politics, and the economy, and gives employment preference to those applicants who have command of the dominant language. The disadvantaged language group is then left with the choice of renouncing its social ambitions, assimilating, or resisting. Although numerically weak or psychologically weakened language groups tend toward assimilation, in modern societies numerically stronger, more homogeneous language groups possessing traditional values, such as their own history and culture, prefer political resistance, the usual form of organized language conflict in this century. This type of conflict becomes especially salient when it occurs between population groups of differing socioeconomic structures (urban/rural, poor/wealthy, indigenous/immigrant) and when the dominant group requires its own language as a condition for the integration of the rest of the population. Although in the case of French-speaking Canada, English appeared to be the necessary means of communication in trade and business, nearly 80% of the francophone population spoke only French, thus being excluded from social elevation in the political/economic sector. A small French-speaking elite, whose original goal was political opposition to dominant English, ultimately precipitated the outbreak of the latent, socioeconomically motivated language conflict.

Most current language conflicts are the result of differing social status and preferential treatment of the dominant language on the part of the government. In these cases, there are the religious, social, economic, or psychological fears and frustrations of the weaker group that may be responsible for the language conflict. However, a critical factor in the expansion and intensification of such conflict remains the impediment to social mobility, particularly of a disadvantaged or suppressed ethnic group (e.g., the numerous language conflicts in multiethnic Austria-Hungary).

Language problems in very different areas (politics, economics, administration, education) appear under the heading of language conflict. In such cases, politicians and economic leaders seize upon the notion of language conflict, disregarding the actual underlying causes, and thus continue to inflame “from above” the conflict arisen “from below,” with the result that language assumes much more importance than it may have had at the outset of the conflict. This language-oriented “surface structure” is used to obscure the more deeply rooted, suppressed “deep structure” (social and economic problems). Furthermore, multilingual conflicts in Europe, especially in urban societies, show quite clearly that language conflicts are caused primarily by attempts on the part of the dominant group to block social mobility.

Language Conflict and Contact Linguistics

Even in contact linguistics the term conflict remains ambiguous, at least when it refers generally to social conflict that can arise in a multilingual situation. The notion appears to us essential here that neither contact nor conflict can occur between languages; they are conceivable only between speakers of languages. Oksaar (1980 ) correctly points out the ambiguity of the term language conflict as either conflict between languages within an individual or as conflict by means of language(s), including processes external to the individual. Similarly, Haarmann 1980 , 191) distinguishes between interlingual and interethnic language conflicts.

Among the founders of modern research in language contact—running parallel to the rapidly developing sociolinguistics and sociology of language (e.g., Weinreich and Fishman), the term conflict rarely appears. Although Weinreich views multilingualism (bilingualism) and the accompanying interference phenomena as the most important form of language contact, without regard to conflict between language communities on the basis of ethnic, religious, or cultural incompatibilities, Fishman 1972 : 14) grants language conflict greater importance in connection with language planning. Haugen ( 1966 ) was the first to make conflict presentable in language contact research with his detailed analysis of Norwegian language developments. Indeed, even linguists in multilingual countries (e.g., Yugoslavia, Switzerland, Belgium) resisted, up until the end of the 1970s, treating conflict methodically as part of language contact research, since such an “ideologicalization” of language contact appeared to them as “too touchy” (Fishman, 1980 : xi). One reason for the late discovery of a term indispensable in today's contact research is to be found in the history of contact linguistics itself: In traditional language contact research (as well as in dialectology and research on linguistic change) the emphasis tended toward closed, geographically homogeneous and easily describable socioeconomic groups, rather than on urban industrial societies, ripe for social and linguistic strife, whose demand for rapid integration laid the groundwork for conflict. However, it is precisely in modern urban society that conflicts result essentially from the normative sanctions of the more powerful, usually majority, group, which demands linguistic adaptation to the detriment of language contact, and thus preprograms conflict with those speakers who are unwilling to adapt.

Despite a less than ideal research situation essentially limited to empirical case studies of language contact, the following statements can be made. Language conflict can occur anywhere there is language contact, chiefly in multilingual communities, although Mattheier (1984 : 200) has also demonstrated language conflicts in so-called monolingual local communities. Language conflict arises from the confrontation of differing standards, values, and attitude structures, and strongly influences self-image, upbringing, education, and group consciousness. Thus, conflict can be viewed as a form of contact or, in terms of a model, as a complementary model to the language contact model.

Contact linguists have either described conflict research as an integral part of language contact research (Nelde et al., 1996 ) or have dealt with special topics from the perspective of conflict. The methods used are heterogeneous and come from numerous neighboring disciplines (psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics, communication research, sociology, etc.). For lack of its own methods, research still employs predominantly empirical procedures. Along with interview and polling techniques, privileged informants and representative sampling, prejudice research and stereotype and attitude observation, the past few years have seen combined investigation models such as socioprofiles and ethnoprofiles, community and polarity profiles (Nelde, 1995 ).

IV. Essential Principles of Contact Linguistics

These observations on language contact and conflict situations lead to some basic premises of contact linguistic, which, despite their occasional seeming triviality, merit consideration at this juncture:

1. Language contact exists only between speakers and language communities, not between languages. Comparison of one and the same language in different contexts is therefore possible only in a quite limited way. 2. The statement that there can be no language contact without language conflict (“Nelde's Law”; K. de Bot, 1997: 51) may appear exaggerated, but there is in the realm of the European languages at present no imaginable contact situation that cannot also be described as language conflict. 3. Contact linguistics usually sees language as a significant secondary symbol of fundamental causes of conflict of a socioeconomic, political, religious, psychological, or historical sort. Thus, in a way, language conflict appears to be the lesser evil, because it apparently can be more easily corrected and neutralized than primary sociopolitical conflicts. 4. Contact linguistics, at the same time, makes it clear that conflicts should not be condemned as only negative, but, rather, it proves that new structures that are more advantageous than the foregoing ones can often result from conflicts.

V. Typology of Conflict

The current language conflicts in Europe, North and Central America, Southeast Asia, and parts of Africa can be viewed as situations of either natural or artificial language conflict.

Natural Language Conflict

Natural language conflicts are those situations that have traditionally existed between indigenous majorities and minorities. The extensive literature of language conflict abounds with examples of this type, particularly those of minorities pitted against official national or regional languages. Conflict has frequently arisen in these situations of language contact because the linguistic minority was not in a position to assimilate. This type of conflict can be found, for example, in Europe along the Germanic-Romance and the Slavic-Germanic linguistic boundaries, and in Canada involving the French-speaking minority and among a few indigenous peoples. Natural language conflicts can become problematic when ideology on either side—not only the majority but the minority as well—is used to intensify the differences that exist, and peaceful coexistence between language communities can easily be threatened when the banner of language is hoisted as the defining symbol of a people.

The conflict between Belfast (Northern Ireland) and Connemara (North of Galway in the Irish republic), for example, involves considerably more than just language: An urban, Protestant, working environment (Belfast) in fact has little if anything in common with a rural, Catholic region of high unemployment (Connemara). The issue of language only exacerbates these differences.

A similar situation is reflected in the ideologically motivated opposition between Afrikaans and English in Namibia (and also in South Africa). The vast majority of the Namibian populace, regardless of race or social status, speaks or at least understands Afrikaans. The country's official language, however, is English, cast as the “language of freedom,” though less than 3% of the population speak it as their first language. Afrikaans, the former language of instruction and administration, remains the “language of oppression.”

More recently, the study of Russian has witnessed a rapid decline in the former Eastern Bloc countries, and one can only speculate on the relationship between the sudden lack of interest in Russian and the “de-ideologicalization” of that language in the new republics. After 1992, in the Croatian part of Bosnia-Herzegovina ( Herzeg ), all mentions of the term Serbo-Croatian have been expunged from schoolbooks and replaced, not on linguistic but on ideological grounds, by the term Croatian .

Artificial Language Conflict

Artificial, or self-imposed, conflict arises out of situations of compromise in which one or more language communities are disfavored. These situations have existed in every society from Babel to Brussels. Symmetric multilingualism, in which equal numbers of speakers are invested with equal rights and in which both language prestige and linguistic identities are congruent, is impossible, because one of the language groups will always be subject to stigmatization and/or discrimination, with conflict the inevitable result.

Artificial language conflict occurs especially when, motivated by the need for rapid international communication, politically influential economic powers export their languages (and their resulting socioeconomic influence) to their trading partners. Thus, Russian (before 1990) and English have become languages of great economic expansion, despite a noteworthy lack of formal educational planning. Secondary schools in Strasbourg, for example, have abandoned study of the native German dialect for English (as the first foreign language), with the result that German is being lost as a local working language. It is offered as a second “foreign” language only to students over 12 years old, with the result that a passive knowledge of the mother tongue (a German dialect) is now all that remains.

The European Union has provided interesting examples of artificial language conflict. In the “Which language(s) for Europe?” debate, the Danes years ago, in a spirit of genuine cooperation, seemed to have opted to forgo the use of Danish. In retrospect, Denmark may appear to have resolved the issue, in the early years of the European Union, of reducing the number of official languages to at most two, with English and French destined to be the languages of international communication. The initial delight of London and Paris at this helpful suggestion was quickly dampened, however, because the Danes also suggested that the English should use French and the French should use English. After that suggestion, enthusiasm for the Danish solution quickly withered.

The presence of almost 4,000 translators and interpreters in Brussels suggests a return to the Tower of Babel. At the present time (the year 2000), the 11 working languages of the 15 member states generate a total of (10 × 11 =) 110 language combinations. The enlargement of the European Union by six or more additional member states in the coming years, with several new languages, leads to so many mathematical combinations that no assembly hall in the world would be able to accommodate meetings for all the interpreters.

These examples amply demonstrate that the language contacts and conflicts that threaten the peaceful coexistence of peoples are not always the consequence of long-standing historical contacts and conflicts among language communities. The new orders and restructurings of recent years have also led to sources of conflict that were not fully grasped just a few years ago. In any event, neither natural nor artificial conflict should be judged only negatively; rather, we should hope that out of conflict there may ensue new alliances and new solutions that will function better than any of the efforts of the past.

VI. Future Prospects

There are hardly any areas of human life that do not have to do with language contact and multilingualism in some way. Since its renaissance in the 1950s and 1960s, research on multilingualism has been carried out on contact linguistic initiatives due to the inclusion of neighboring disciplines like sociology, psychology, and many others. In the new century, younger subdisciplines will probably play a leading role because of their pronounced orientation to practical applications. The difference between the so-called internal and external linguistic criteria that was stressed in the past will be abandoned, because the interdependence and inseparability of these factors has become apparent in the most recent research results. In addition to the traditional (“hyphenated”) linguistic disciplines, these areas of research will surely include ecolinguistics, which has already provided research on language contact with many new stimuli. In the area of the conflict issues mentioned before, ecolinguistic initiatives have proved to be particularly successful, so much so that the constantly changing forms of language contact and multilingualism can be described more satisfactorily. More and more new migrant groups (evacuees, asylum seekers, refugees, expatriates) are being included in the traditional autochthonous and allochthonous forms of multilingualism, in addition to the native minorities. Here, we see, at the beginning of the new century, new language contact research fields arising. One example is connected to the development of the new media and their dominant role in changing societal structures by destroying traditional fields in the society. This also has an enormous influence on the central concept of contact linguistics that remains multilingualism. In future research, we have to develop new forms of multilingualism that are emerging from virtual contacts and from new economic-based minorities. It is one of the chief tasks of contact linguistics to meet this challenge and concern itself more intensively than in the past with a field that can serve as an outstanding example of applied science, the significance of which for life and survival on an overpopulated planet with hundreds of different languages cannot be overvalued.

About Oxford Academic
Publish journals with us
University press partners
What we publish
New features
Open access
Institutional account management
Rights and permissions
Get help with access
Accessibility
Advertising
Media enquiries
Oxford University Press
Oxford Languages
University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

Copyright © 2023 Oxford University Press
Cookie settings
Cookie policy
Privacy policy
Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

This site is under construction, and will be improved over time.

Language Shift and the Speech Community: Sociolinguistic Change in a Garifuna Community in Belize

Degree type

Graduate group, grant number, copyright date, distributor, related resources, contributor.

Language shift is the process by which a speech community in a contact situation (i.e. consisting of bilingual speakers) gradually stops using one of its two languages in favor of the other. The causal factors of language shift are generally considered to be social, and researchers have focused on speakers’ attitudes (both explicit and unstated) toward a language and domains of language use in the community, as well as other macro social factors. Additional research has focused on the effects of language shift, generally on the (changing) structure of the language itself. The goal of this thesis is to examine the relationship between social and linguistic factors in considering the causes and effects of language shift, focusing on age-based variation in the speech community. This dissertation examines the linguistic and social correlates of early language shift in a Garifuna community in Belize. An apparent time analysis shows an externally-motivated change in the status of the sociolinguistic variable (ch) that is evidence for a shift in the dominant language in the community. A second change in progress, variable deletion of intervocalic r, is described for the first time as an internally-motivated change, albeit progressing alongside contact-induced changes. Evidence is also presented to propose that the behavior of the transitional generation (speakers aged 30-49) shows interesting characteristics with regard to these two variables as a result of shifting language ideologies in the village. These ideological shifts are examined along with changing attitudes in the community toward English, Belizean Creole, and Garifuna.

Date of degree

Date range for data collection (start date), date range for data collection (end date), digital object identifier, series name and number, volume number, issue number, publisher doi, journal issue, recommended citation, usage statistics.

Frequently downloaded items
Most read researchers
Popular subjects
International readership

Cookie settings
Privacy policy
End User Agreement
Send Feedback

Handbook of Research and Practice in Heritage Language Education pp 301–311 Cite as

A Language Contact Perspective on Heritage Languages in the Classroom

Suzanne Pauline Aalberse 3
Reference work entry
First Online: 02 September 2017

1707 Accesses

1 Citations

Part of the Springer International Handbooks of Education book series (SIHE)

This chapter provides an overview of possible outcomes of language contact as a starting point for discussion on contact-induced linguistic variation in the heritage classroom. The rationale for this discussion is that variation awareness will enable students to reflect on their language use without evaluative labels like correct and incorrect. An open mind to language variation is especially important in the heritage classroom, because the heritage language connects the students directly to their parents. Criticizing the variant the student speaks implies indirect critique on their parents and might cause the student to feel that they do not belong to their ethnic linguistic community because they do not speak properly. Knowledge of sources of contact-induced variation and sources of social values on variation will facilitate linguistic awareness and linguistic self-confidence.

Variation awareness
Language contact
Cross-linguistic influence
Additive complexity
Incomplete acquisition

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution .

Buying options

Available as PDF
Read on any device
Instant download
Own it forever
Available as EPUB and PDF
Durable hardcover edition
Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Aalberse, S., & Moro, F. (2014). Stability in Chinese and Malay heritage languages as a source of divergence. Stability and Divergence in Language Contact: Factors and Mechanisms, 16 , 141–162.

Google Scholar

Backus, A. (1996). Two in one. Bilingual speech of Turkish immigrants in the Netherlands . Tilburg: Tilburg University Press.

Backus, A. (2010). The role of codeswitching, loan translation and interference in the emergence of an immigrant variety of Turkish (Vol. 5, pp. 225–241). Working Papers in Corpus-based Linguistics and Language Education, Unknown Publisher.

Backus, A., Doğruöz, A. S., & Heine, B. (2011). Salient stages in contact-induced grammatical change: Evidence from synchronic vs. diachronic contact situations. Language Sciences, 33 (5), 738–752.

CrossRef Google Scholar

Carreira, M. (2004). Seeking explanatory adequacy: A dual approach to understanding the term “heritage language learner”. Heritage Language Journal, 2 (1), n1.

Heine, B., & Kuteva, T. (2005). Language contact and grammatical change . Cambridge, UK/New York: Cambridge University Press.

Johanson, L. (2002). Contact-induced change in a code-copying framework. Contributions to the Sociology of Language, 86 , 285–314.

Keim, I., & I. Cindark (2003). Deutsch-türkischer Mischcode in einer Migrantinnengruppe: Form von “Jugendsprache” oder soziolektales Charakteristikum? In: E. Neuland (Hg.), Jugendsprache – Spiegel der Zeit. Tagungsband der internationalen Fachkonferenz in Wuppertal 2001 (S. 377–394). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lange.

Kupisch, T., & Rothman, J. (2016). Terminology matters! Why difference is not incompleteness and how early child bilinguals are heritage speakers. International Journal of Bilingualism . doi: 10.1177/1367006916654355 .

Leeman, J. (2005). Engaging critical pedagogy: Spanish for native speakers. Foreign Language Annals, 38 (1), 35–45.

Li, W. (2011). Moment analysis and translanguaging space: Discursive construction of identities by multilingual Chinese youth in Britain. Journal of Pragmatics, 43 (5), 1222–1235.

Martínez, G. (2003). Classroom based dialect awareness in heritage language instruction: A critical applied linguistic approach. Heritage Language Journal, 1 (1), 1–14.

Moro, F. R. (2016). Dynamics of Ambon Malay: Comparing Ambon and the Netherlands . PhD-thesis, Radboud University.

Moro, F., & Klamer, M. (2015). Give-constructions in heritage Ambon Malay in the Netherlands. Journal of Language Contact, 8 (2), 263–298.

Muysken, P. (2013). Language contact outcomes as the result of bilingual optimization strategies. Bilingualism: Language and cognition, 16 (4), 709–730.

Pires, A., & Rothman, J. (2009). Disentangling sources of incomplete acquisition: An explanation for competence divergence across heritage grammars. International Journal of Bilingualism, 13 (2), 211–238.

Polinsky, M. (2016). Bilingual children and adult heritage speakers: The range of comparison. International Journal of Bilingualism . doi: 10.1177/1367006916656048 .

Queen, R. (2012). Turkish-German bilinguals and their intonation: Triangulating evidence about contact-induced language change. Language, 88 (4), 791–816.

Rothman, J. (2007). Heritage speaker competence differences, language change and input type: Inflected infinitives in Heritage Brazilian Portuguese. International Journal of Bilingualism, 11 (4), 359–389.

Schoenmakers-Klein Gunnewiek, M. J. (1997). Dutch language loss and the conceptual hypothesis. In J. Klatter-Folmer & S. Kroon (Eds.), Dutch overseas: Studies in maintenance and loss of dutch as an immigrant language (pp. 99–119) (21 p.). Tilburg: Tilburg University Press.

Silva-Corvalán, C. (1994). Language contact and change: Spanish in Los Angeles . New York: Oxford University Press.

Silva-Corvalán, C. (2016). Simultaneous bilingualism: Early developments, incomplete later outcomes? International Journal of Bilingualism . doi: 10.1177/1367006916652061 .

Showstack, R. E. (2015). Institutional representations of ‘Spanish’and ‘Spanglish’: Managing competing discourses in heritage language instruction. Language and Intercultural Communication, 15 (3), 341–361.

Trudgill, P. (2011). Sociolinguistic typology: Social determinants of linguistic complexity . Oxford University Press.

Valdés, G. (1981). Pedagogical implications of teaching Spanish to the Spanish-speaking in the United States. In Teaching Spanish to the Hispanic bilingual: Issues, aims, and methods (pp. 3–20). New York: Teachers College Press.

Van Hout, R., & Muysken, P. (1994). Modeling lexical borrowability. Language variation and change, 6 (01), 39–62.

Witteman, S. (2013). Veel gezelliger dan bij u thuis. Breikous, bordspel en ander kosteloos vermaak. Amsterdam: Nijgh & van Ditmar.

Zentella, A. C. (1997). Growing up bilingual: Puerto Rican children in New York . Oxford & Malden (MA): Blackwell Publishers.

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Faculty of Humanities, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Suzanne Pauline Aalberse

You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Suzanne Pauline Aalberse .

Editor information

Editors and affiliations.

OISE/University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Peter Pericles Trifonas

CERES/University of Toronto Munk School of Global Affairs, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Themistoklis Aravossitas

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

Copyright information

About this entry

Cite this entry.

Aalberse, S.P. (2018). A Language Contact Perspective on Heritage Languages in the Classroom. In: Trifonas, P., Aravossitas, T. (eds) Handbook of Research and Practice in Heritage Language Education. Springer International Handbooks of Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44694-3_51

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44694-3_51

Published : 02 September 2017

Publisher Name : Springer, Cham

Print ISBN : 978-3-319-44692-9

Online ISBN : 978-3-319-44694-3

eBook Packages : Education Reference Module Humanities and Social Sciences

Share this entry

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

Find a journal
Publish with us

A study in language contact

Permanent link to this item, supervisors, journal title, link to journal, journal issn, volume title.

University of Cape Town

Description

Makoe, B. 1999. A study in language contact. University of Cape Town.

Collections

Do a more advanced search »

Search for dissertations about: "language contact"

Showing result 1 - 5 of 64 swedish dissertations containing the words language contact .

1. The Acquisition of Russian in a Language Contact Situation : A Case Study of a Bilingual Child in Sweden

Author : Natalia Ringblom ; Milan Bily ; Stella Ceytlin ; Maria Voeikova ; Stockholms universitet ; [] Keywords : HUMANITIES ; HUMANIORA ; Language acquisition ; childhood bilingualism ; bilingual first language acquisition ; language contact ; language separation ; input ; dominance ; mother tongue ; Russian ; Swedish ; weaker language ; Sweden ; slaviska språk ; Slavic Languages ;

Abstract : This case study investigates the acquisition of Russian in a language contact situation. It examines a simultaneous Swedish-Russian bilingual child born and raised in Sweden. Qualitative analysis is provided from age 1;4 to 8;5 focusing especially on the earliest stages (before the end of the critical period at 4;5). READ MORE

2. The Sango Language and Its Lexicon (S�nd�-y�ng� t� S�ng�)

Author : Christina Thornell ; Allmän språkvetenskap ; [] Keywords : HUMANIORA ; HUMANITIES ; HUMANIORA ; HUMANITIES ; Linguistics ; lexical semantics ; lexicology ; language planning ; language contact ; functional linguistics ; language typology ; Ubangi language ; pidgin creole ; Sango ; Central African Republic ; Lingvistik ;

Abstract : This doctoral dissertation is an overview of the recently arisen Sango language spoken in the Central African Republic. The overview contains a sociolinguistic and linguistic dimension with a lexical-semantic focus. READ MORE

3. Language contact and structural change : An Old Finnish case study

Author : Merlijn De Smit ; Erling Wande ; Kaisa Häkkinen ; Raimo Anttila ; Stockholms universitet ; [] Keywords : HUMANITIES ; HUMANIORA ; HUMANIORA ; HUMANITIES ; Finnish ; historical linguistics ; language contact ; Whitehead ; Finnish language ; Finska språket ;

Abstract : The object of this study is to shed new light on both the influence exerted on Finnish by the Swedish language, and on the mechanisms by which language contact in structural domains takes place. It is argued that syntactic borrowing should be regarded as a subtype of reanalysis and extension rather than as an independent mechanism. READ MORE

4. Age differences in first language attrition : A maturational constraints perspective

Author : Emanuel Bylund Spångberg ; Kenneth Hyltenstam ; Niclas Abrahamsson ; Silvina Montrul ; Stockholms universitet ; [] Keywords : HUMANITIES ; HUMANIORA ; HUMANIORA ; HUMANITIES ; first language attrition ; age differences ; maturational constraints ; critical period ; language acquisition ; bilingualism ; international adoptees ; conceptual proficiency ; language aptitude ; Bilingualism ; Tvåspråkighet ; tvåspråkighetsforskning ; Bilingualism ;

Abstract : This thesis investigates age-related differences in first language (L1) attrition in a second language (L2) setting. The thesis is based on four individual studies. READ MORE

5. The transience of American Swedish

Author : Staffan Klintborg ; Engelska ; [] Keywords : HUMANIORA ; HUMANITIES ; transfer ; pragmatic markers ; nonce-borrowing ; markedness ; language loss ; language death ; language attrition ; language alternation ; divergence ; convergence ; continuum ; contact linguistics ; codeswitching ; avoidance ; American Swedish ; automaticity ; triggering ; English language and literature ; Engelska språk och litteratur ;

Abstract : This thesis concerns two languages in contact: English and Swedish. It is based on interviews with Swedes who came to North America with the last major wave of emigration. READ MORE

Searchphrases right now

Development potential
Online support
nano medicine
local democracy process
work and study
system design
urban governance

Popular dissertations yesterday (2023-11-15)

Environmental conflicts and deliberative solutions? : A case study of public participation in EIA in Sweden
Design preferences concerning example products in the USA, South Korea and Germany
Exchange Rates, Exports, Inflation, and International Monetary Cooperation
Multidimensional Constellation Shaping for Coherent Optical Communication Systems
Essays on Soil Conservation, Social Capital and Technology Adoption
Designing Community Economies : Exploring Alternatives for Infrastructuring Food Waste Activism
The vagina morphological, functional and ecological aspects
Knee joint laxity and kinematics after anterior cruciate ligament rupture : roentgen stereophotogrammetric and clinical evaluation before and after treatment
DEVELOPING CHILD PROTECTION STRATEGIES: A Critical Study of Offenders’ Use of Information Technology for the Sexual Exploitation of Children
How Does it Feel and how is it measured? Assessing Sitting Comfort and Postures of Rear-Seated Car Passengers in Stationary and Driven Scenarios Over Time
Popular complementary terms: essays, phd thesis, master thesis, papers, importance, trend, impact, advantages, disadvantages, role of, example, case study.

See yesterday's most popular searches here . Dissertations.se is the english language version of Avhandlingar.se .

Skip to primary navigation
Skip to main content

Baruch College Writing Center

Useful Language for Thesis Statements

This resource highlights language that frequently appears in argumentative writing. It is designed to draw your attention to common linguistic forms in thesis statements.

Using this resource

We recommend reading this list twice:

The first time you read, focus on the language itself. What verbs (like illustrates, demonstrates, shows ) make for strong claims? What dependent clauses (like In this passage ) introduce the sentences? Where have you seen phrases like these before? In what genre of essay would you expect to see the phrase (in literary analysis or a policy paper)?
The second time you read, focus on the conceptual relationships. Note that many introduce their evidence— Based on X, or Through examination of Y —before making a claim. Which phrases emphasize differences or similarities? Which phrases introduce complication?

Once you’ve read through, try using these phrases in your own writing.

Basic sentence structures:

Identifying something significant to analyze:.

In this play, the character of Joseph s ymbolizes … This passage illustrates the importance of… The author sheds light on the crucial point of… The text highlights the difference between… In both [text 1] and [text 2], the authors demonstrate how…

Affirming what you believe:

From my perspective, the idea that… In my view, the author… I strongly agree with the argument that… I disagree with the notion that…

Challenging an author’s argument:

The article fails to address… The author overlooks… The argument lacks clear evidence about… The author’s point is questionable in that it…

Complex sentence structures:

Linking key background information or evidence to your claim:.

Keywords: Based on, As, Through, In + (verb)-ing Based on the facts concerning the “Molotov” case study, it is apparent that… Based on the analysis of the “Molotov” case study, I believe that… In examining the controversy surrounding artists’ rights , [author’s name] demonstrates… Through the examination of Molotov Man, [author’s name] identifies… Considering the debate over the reproduction of images , it is clear that copyright law fails to… In light of the Molotov Man controversy, it is useful to reconsider/re-examine… As this case demonstrates, it is important to…

Expressing a less obvious claim by challenging commonly held beliefs:

Keywords: While, Although, Though While it is true that _______________, the more significant problem with X is… Although it may seem that _______________, the more significant issue relates to… Though X seems to suggest that _______________, a crucial part of this debate involves… While I acknowledge that _______________, it is necessary to take into account the fact that.. While Garnett makes a strong case for the reproduction of Molotov Man , she fails to address the deeper problem of…

Emphasizing an important similarity:

While it may seem that A and B have little in common apart from ________________, they actually share ________________.
Despite many clear differences, both A and B ______________________________.
While it may seem that Democrats and Republicans disagree fundamentally on how the U.S. should be run, the fact that both parties supported the Defense Authorization Act—permitting the indefinite detention of American citizens on U.S. soil— suggests they share a core set of beliefs about government power.
Despite the schools’ different curricula, both serve the same overarching mission …

Emphasizing an important difference:

Although A and B share ________________, they significantly differ in that ______________________________.
A and B appear to have many commonalities, but depart from one another when ______________________________.
While T-Mobile and Verizon may appear to have similar marketing strategies, they target their audiences differently : T-Mobile caters to a niche audience of young people who live in cities, while Verizon emphasizes their nationwide coverage.
Although Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn” and Rilke’s “Archaic Torso of Apollo” are both ekphrastic poems about ancient Greek artifacts, they offer very different perspectives on antiquity…

Providing reasons for your claim:

Keywords: Due to, Because of Due to unfair restrictions imposed by copyright law, artists struggle to Due to the fact that copyright law imposes unfair restrictions, artists struggle to… Because they put aesthetic effect before historical context, artists often misrepresent historical events in their images. Artists often misrepresent historical events in their images because they… Given the fact that American soldiers cannot refuse to be photographed in combat , we recommend…

Providing multiple reasons for your claim:

Keywords: Both, Due to, Among the reasons, Not only Both _______ and _______ offer evidence for / explain why… Due to both [reason 1] and [reason 2], I consider… Not only does [reason 1] contribute to the problem of the reproduction of images , but so does [reason 2]. The emotional appeal of the painting together with the omission of any signs of war conveys a sense of…

Fall Hours of Operation

In-Person Office Hours: Monday-Thursday: 9AM-8PM Friday: 9AM-3PM

Online/In-person Sessions Available: Monday-Thursday: 9AM-8PM Friday: 9AM-3PM Saturday: 10AM-4PM

Concept of Language Contact in Linguistic Essay

Language contact only happens when two or more people speaking different languages come together, or spend time together. Contact linguistic is the study of language contact. When people speaking different languages stay together and interact freely, the different languages they speak influence each other resulting to neologism.

Languages usually grow bit by bit and with time they become popular (Sun, 2006). Commonly, languages influence each other through the exchange of words. The influence increases leading to even an exchange of grammar structuring and formation of sentences.

Other times, the contact of two languages can lead to a partial replacement of one language by the other. In other cases like in a situation where people without a common language interact, language contact can lead to the formation of new languages. As time goes by, the two languages develop to become one common language. The influence that impacts one language is usually as a result of the neighborhood one is in. This is because when one group is more populated than the other, people tend to get more used to one language than the other.

In most cases, changes brought about by language contact affect one language more than the other. For example, Chinese has had a significant effect on Japanese and their word formation. On the other hand, Chinese remains free of Japanese influence even after playing a crucial role in formation of Japanese words.

A great deal of Chinese Neologism is either from European missionaries or retrieved from the Japanese. The modern Chinese uses the word culture to represent culture . It is also widely used as a neologized term for the European borrowed word from Japanese (Stemmer & Whitaker, 2008).

Chinese people in modern China cause neologism when they come to contact with people of different foreign cultures, and who speak different languages. Trade between the Chinese people and the Europeans has contributed to the occurrence of neologism. Chinese people sell their wares to people who speak other languages.

When individuals from nations that do not have a common language come together for business purposes the necessity for a common language comes up for the transaction to take place. This has considerably contributed to the evolution of new words that probably never existed in either Chinese or European languages.

The origin of Indo-European family of languages in china was as a result of migration. This is a combination of English and other European languages.

The majority of people who use this language are believed to have been pastoralist, and when they came together they gradually formed a new language. Missionary activities also contributed to Neologism. This happened when they translated some European words to Chinese. The exposure of China to European philosophy and academic rules also contributed to neologism (Jung, 2002).

It is notable that most morphemes from European language initially became popular in Japan, before they were introduced to China. This is because Chinese people have developed a better understanding of European opinion on matters that affect them. The English words commonly used are ok and bye and almost all the Chinese people in modern china understand them.

The most successful neologisms from European are those that are semantic and phonemic at the same time like the Chinese word mÍ-nÍ-qÚn (charm-you-skirt) for miniskirt. Note that it is initially a loan blend because qui is not a transliteration for the English work skirt. Mi-ni is phonemic as it transliterates mini in English (Liu, 1999).

In modern China, cases of intermarriage with European Japanese and also other people who come from other parts of the world are unusually many. As a result, these different languages come together leading to the occurrence of neologism. Young people who leave China for Europe for the purpose of further education return to china later in their lives speaking other languages. They return carrying the effect of living in a country that speaks another language (Cha, 2001).

Others move from Japan to china for sports purposes and vice versa. Because of the need to communicate, the people learn the basics from each other, and the interaction form a common language. It does not have to be an entirely new language, the essential thing is that these people can easily relate, and communicate with each other.

The need for leisure activities has seen people move from one country to another. Tourism has seen many people move from one country to another contributing to the alteration of the original language of the places mostly visited by tourists (Liu, 1999). Once they stay there for some time, the languages they speak interact and chances of one language taking other the other are extremely high.

For a person whose origin is Europe working in China, he/she has to learn Chinese. In this case, because of his European origin, some altered Chinese terms produce entirely new terms, but with a meaning. At times, the need for a new name to describe something leads to a development or borrowing of words from other languages.

Cha, T. H. K. (2001). Dictée . Berkeley, Calif. [u.a.: Univ. of California Press.

Jung, H. Y. (2002). Comparative political culture in the age of globalization: An introductory anthology . Lanham [u.a.: Lexington Books.

Liu, L. H. (1999). Tokens of exchange: The problem of translation in global circulations . Durham, N.C: Duke Univ. Press.

Stemmer, B., & Whitaker, H. A. (2008). Handbook of the neuroscience of language . Amsterdam: Elsevier/Academic Press.

Sun, C. (2006). Chinese: A linguistic introduction . Cambridge [u.a.: Cambridge Univ. Press.

Chicago (A-D)
Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2019, April 10). Concept of Language Contact in Linguistic. https://ivypanda.com/essays/language-contact/

"Concept of Language Contact in Linguistic." IvyPanda , 10 Apr. 2019, ivypanda.com/essays/language-contact/.

IvyPanda . (2019) 'Concept of Language Contact in Linguistic'. 10 April.

IvyPanda . 2019. "Concept of Language Contact in Linguistic." April 10, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/language-contact/.

1. IvyPanda . "Concept of Language Contact in Linguistic." April 10, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/language-contact/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Concept of Language Contact in Linguistic." April 10, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/language-contact/.

“Inflation Rise Hits US Consumers” BBC Article
Phonemic Awareness and Word Recognition in Kindergarten
Phonemic Awareness in Young Deaf Children
Teaching Language Arts: Phonemic Awareness
Phonics and Phonemic Awareness: Assessment Plan
Validity of a Non-Speech Dynamic Assessment of Phonemic Awareness
An Energetic but Practical Mini Cooper Car
Interventions for Children Experiencing Early Reading Difficulties
Decoding and Word Recognition: Phonic Instructions
Mini-Games as Educational Tools
Clausal Nominalization in Spoken Language
Linguistics and the Word 'Like' Usage
Figurative Language versus Literal Language
Crossing Over: Dialects Superiority
The Context of a Swear Words

Bibliography
More Referencing guides Blog Automated transliteration Relevant bibliographies by topics
Automated transliteration
Relevant bibliographies by topics
Referencing guides

Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Language contact'

Create a spot-on reference in apa, mla, chicago, harvard, and other styles.

Select a source type:

Journal article
Video (online)
All types...
Archival document
Book chapter
Complete reference
Conference paper
Copyright certificate
Dictionary entry
Dissertation / Thesis
Encyclopedia
Encyclopedia article
Extended abstract of dissertation
Newspaper article
Press release
Religious text
Social media post

Consult the top 50 dissertations / theses for your research on the topic 'Language contact.'

Next to every source in the list of references, there is an 'Add to bibliography' button. Press on it, and we will generate automatically the bibliographic reference to the chosen work in the citation style you need: APA, MLA, Harvard, Chicago, Vancouver, etc.

You can also download the full text of the academic publication as pdf and read online its abstract whenever available in the metadata.

Browse dissertations / theses on a wide variety of disciplines and organise your bibliography correctly.

Andrade, Ciudad Luis. "Language Contact and Language Boundaries in Prehispanic Cajamarca." Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 2012. http://repositorio.pucp.edu.pe/index/handle/123456789/113478.

Makoe, Bridgitte Pinky. "A study in language contact." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 1999. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/18873.

Reindl, Donald F. "Language contact: German and Slovenian." Bochum Brockmeyer, 2005. http://d-nb.info/990069427/04.

Wolf, Göran. "Language contact, change of language status : ‘Celtic’ national languages in the British Isles and Ireland." Universität Potsdam, 2007. http://opus.kobv.de/ubp/volltexte/2008/1936/.

McDonald, Katherine Louise. "Language contact in South Oscan epigraphy." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2014. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/245201.

Anderson, Gregory D. S. "Language contact in South Central Siberia." Wiesbaden Harrassowitz, 2000. http://deposit.ddb.de/cgi-bin/dokserv?id=2674956&prov=M&dok_var=1&dok_ext=htm.

Hawkey, James William. "Language policy and language contact in Barcelona : a contemporary perspective." Thesis, Queen Mary, University of London, 2012. http://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/3085.

Alang, Jaapar. "The effect of language contact and language use on second language competence and language attitude." Thesis, Bangor University, 1994. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.296186.

Curtis, Matthew Cowan. "Slavic-Albanian Language Contact, Convergence, and Coexistence." The Ohio State University, 2012. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1338406907.

Aiestaran, Jokin. "Aspects of language contact in Rioja Alavesa." Thesis, Bangor University, 2003. https://research.bangor.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/aspects-of-language-contact-in-rioja-alavesa(7f48c69f-b04f-417a-b5d0-3681f70ed105).html.

Beauchamp, Hanna O. (Hanna Olga). "Languages in Contact: Polish and English." Thesis, University of North Texas, 1990. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc500811/.

Tan, Siew Imm. "Languages in contact: a corpus-based study ofMalaysian newspaper English." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2006. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B45015673.

Reindl, Donald F. "The effects of historical German-Slovene language contact on the Slovene language." [Bloomington, Ind.] : Indiana University, 2005. http://wwwlib.umi.com/dissertations/fullcit/3162281.

Ratte, Alexander Takenobu. "Contact-Induced Phonological Change in Taiwanese." The Ohio State University, 2011. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1313497239.

Hickey, Raymond. "Syntax and prosody in language contact and shift." Universität Potsdam, 2007. http://opus.kobv.de/ubp/volltexte/2008/1930/.

Yoshizumi, Yukiko. "A Canadian Perspective on Japanese-English Language Contact." Thesis, Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/34328.

Turolla, Claudia. "Language contact as innovation: the case of Cimbrian." Doctoral thesis, Università degli studi di Trento, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/11572/243188.

Hadjidemetriou, Chryso. "The consequences of language contact : Armenian and Maronite Arabic in contact with Cypriot Greek." Thesis, University of Essex, 2009. https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.502173.

Côté, Pierre. "Ethnolinguistic contact: An interactive situated approach." Thesis, University of Ottawa (Canada), 1992. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/7502.

Gultzow, Simone. "First language development in a bilingual setting : the role of first language contact." Thesis, Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10019.1/97027.

Stamp, R. J. "Sociolinguistic variation, language change and contact in the British Sign Language (BSL) lexicon." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 2013. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1393284/.

O'Shannessy, Carmel. "Language contact and children's bilingual acquisition learning a mixed language and Warlpiri in northern Australia /." Connect to full text, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/1303.

Lammervo, Tiina. "Language and culture contact and attitudes among first generation Australian Finns /." [St. Lucia, Qld.], 2005. http://www.library.uq.edu.au/pdfserve.php?image=thesisabs/absthe.pdf.

Méndez-Rivera, Nelson José. "Linguistic Outcomes of the Wayuunaiki-Spanish Language Contact Situation." Thesis, Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa, 2020. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/40732.

Rogers, Brandon M. "Vowel Quality and Language Contact in Miami-Cuban Spanish." BYU ScholarsArchive, 2012. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/3129.

Diez, Martini Ana Laura. "Rewiring color categories: the neural consequences of language contact." Doctoral thesis, SISSA, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11767/3868.

O'Shannessy, Carmel Therese. "Language contact and children's bilingual acquisition: learning a mixed language and Warlpiri in northern Australia." Thesis, The University of Sydney, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/1303.

O'Shannessy, Carmel Therese. "Language contact and children's bilingual acquisition: learning a mixed language and Warlpiri in northern Australia." University of Sydney, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/1303.

Dȩ̮bicka-Dyer, Anna Michalina. "French and Spanish in contact." Master's thesis, Mississippi State : Mississippi State University, 2006. http://library.msstate.edu/etd/show.asp?etd=etd-11072006-174521.

Wroblewski, Michael. "Voices of Contact: Politics of Language In Urban Amazonian Ecuador." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/195199.

Barnett, Ruthanna. "Language contact corpora as a window on language : noun phrases, grammaticalization and (in)definiteness." Thesis, Lancaster University, 2000. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.391982.

Refatto, Antonella 1967. "Contact phenomena between Veneto, Italian and English in the third generation in Australia." Monash University, Dept. of Linguistics, 2002. http://arrow.monash.edu.au/hdl/1959.1/7734.

Dede, Keith Randall Sean. "Language contact, variation and change : the locative in Xining, Qinghai /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 1999. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/11076.

Bélair, Lockhead Joanne. "Le contact inter-ethnique : antécédents, processus et conséquents." Thesis, University of Ottawa (Canada), 1988. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/5401.

Gadacha, Ali. "Language planning and language conflict : the case of multilingual Tunisia : aspects of status, function and structure of the languages and language varieties used and sociolinguistic implications of the language shift on the new century's eve : thèse." Nice, 1998. http://www.theses.fr/1998NICE2030.

Kurz, Claudia. "Function words and simplification in contact varieties of German /." The Ohio State University, 1998. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1487949150071939.

Somerholter, Kerstin Evelyn. "Language contact and shift in the Soviet German speech community /." Digital version accessible at:, 1999. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/utexas/fullcit?p9947394.

Loulidi, Rafik. "Language contact and language conflict in Morocco : a survey of language use and attitudes among school bilingual learners." Thesis, University of Ulster, 1999. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.284846.

Martínez, Ramón Antonio. "Spanglish is spoken here making sense of Spanish-English code-switching and language ideologies in a sixth-grade English language arts classroom /." Diss., Restricted to subscribing institutions, 2009. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1971760601&sid=1&Fmt=2&clientId=1564&RQT=309&VName=PQD.

Stüber, Karin. "Effects of Language Contact on Roman and Gaulish Personal Names." Universität Potsdam, 2007. http://opus.kobv.de/ubp/volltexte/2008/1921/.

De, Smit Merlijn. "Language contact and structural change : An Old Finnish case study." Doctoral thesis, Stockholms universitet, Institutionen för baltiska språk, finska och tyska, 2006. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-1402.

Sankar, Gopal Ravi. "An investigation into a natural language interface for contact centers." Thesis, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10948/890.

Smit, Merlijn de. "Language contact and structural change an old Finnish case study /." Stockholm : Stockholm University, 2007. http://www.diva-portal.org/su/abstract.xsql?dbid=1402.

Kelkar-Stephan, Leena. "Bonjour maa : the French Tamil language contact situation in India /." Aachen : Shaker, 2005. http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb40242377j.

Iverson, Michael Bryan. "Advanced language attrition of Spanish in contact with Brazilian Portuguese." Diss., University of Iowa, 2012. https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/3316.

Stevralia, Christine M. "Contact." ScholarWorks@UNO, 2018. https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/2535.

Lindbäck, Hannes. "Contact Effects in Swedish Romani Phonology." Thesis, Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för lingvistik och filologi, 2020. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-437346.

Schaengold, Charlotte C. "Bilingual Navajo mixed codes, bilingualism, and language maintenance /." Connect to this title online, 2004. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc%5Fnum=osu1092425886.

Brackney, Noel C. "The origins of Slavonic : language contact and language change in ancient eastern Europe and western Eurasia." Thesis, Muenchen LINCOM Europa, 2004. http://d-nb.info/985960000/04.

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS A lock ( Lock A locked padlock ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

USDA Releases Language Access Plan to Expand Access to Department Resources and Programs

WASHINGTON, Nov. 15, 2023 – Today, the U.S. Department of Agriculture released a department-wide language access plan to ensure individuals with limited English proficiency receive meaningful access to USDA’s resources, programs, and activities. The updated language access plan comes on the one-year anniversary of Attorney General Merrick B. Garland’s language access memorandum to federal agencies.

Timely and accurate communication with the public is essential to USDA’s mission of providing leadership on food, agriculture, natural resources, rural development, nutrition, and related issues based on public policy, the best available science, and effective management. This plan is an important component of a much broader effort at USDA to make its programs and services more accessible, equitable, and inclusive to those who rely on them. Additional information about this effort can be found at usda.gov/equity .

“USDA’s work touches the lives of everyone across the country, and ensuring meaningful and equitable access to our programs is vital,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. “Our staff work hard every day to strengthen the services and programs that deliver on our mission, and the policies included in this plan will help make USDA a better and stronger department.”

Under this plan, USDA mission areas, agencies, staff offices, and staff will continue to plan for and provide individuals with limited English proficiency with timely, accurate, and effective communications within all programs or activities conducted by USDA, and work to ensure that providers of USDA-supported programs are complying with their corresponding obligations.

“Federal civil rights regulations guarantee all individuals in the United States the right to equitable access to services, regardless of their level of English proficiency,” said Dr. Penny Brown Reynolds, USDA’s Deputy Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights. “Language access is a team effort that requires strong support from our agency leaders, and participation from staff across the entire Department to coordinate efforts with the USDA Language Access Plan to ensure accessibility. By working together, we are able to produce information and communication tools that meet the needs of our stakeholders that request services from USDA.”

The policies in this plan are based on the principle that it is USDA’s responsibility, and not that of an individual seeking services, to take reasonable steps to ensure meaningful access to all programs and activities and to foster equity for individuals who interact, or may interact, with USDA over the phone, in writing, in person, or via electronic methods. USDA recognizes that ensuring equity for individuals with limited English proficiency is not limited to the provision of language assistance services and aims to create comprehensive mechanisms that facilitate equity in planning, outreach, stakeholder engagement, allocation of funds, delivery of services, staff training, procurement, as well as performance and evaluation as established by this language access plan.

USDA’s language access plan can now be found at www.usda.gov/oascr/languageaccess and on www.LEP.gov , a website maintained by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division.

USDA also looks forward to joining the new interagency federal working group, the Federal Language Access Working Group, led by the Department of Justice, which will allow federal agencies to exchange best practices and share language access resources for federal agencies and recipients of federal financial assistance.

USDA touches the lives of all Americans each day in so many positive ways. In the Biden-Harris Administration, USDA is transforming America’s food system with a greater focus on more resilient local and regional food production, fairer markets for all producers, ensuring access to safe, healthy, and nutritious food in all communities, building new markets and streams of income for farmers and producers using climate smart food and forestry practices, making historic investments in infrastructure and clean energy capabilities in rural America, and committing to equity across the Department by removing systemic barriers and building a workforce more representative of America. To learn more, visit www.usda.gov .

USDA is an equal opportunity provider, employer, and lender.

School of Criminology

Taylor Dube-Mather successfully defends her MA thesis

Administration and Staff
Criminology Faculty
Applied Legal Studies Faculty
Adjunct Professors & Associate members
Emeritus & retired faculty
In Memoriam
Visiting Faculty & Term Lecturers
Director's Welcome
Why study criminology
Honours Program
Post Baccalaureate Diploma Programs
Second Degree Option
Directed Readings and Directed Studies
Application Process
Placement Opportunities
Guidelines for Field Placement Descriptions
Responsibility of the Agency Field Supervisor
Advising FAQ
Contact an Advisor
Sample Course Plan A (3 Term)
Sample Course Plan B (2 Term)
Sample Course Plan C (Lighter Option)
Program Completion Check Sheets
Alumni Testimonials
Graduate Director's Welcome
Faculty & Administration
Program Overview
BC Notaries Public
Research group
Alumni Profiles
Graduate Students' Association
MA Students
PHD Students
Upcoming Thesis Defence
Institute & Centres
Research Connections
Presentations & Videos
Student Association (CSA)
Publications

Congratulations to Taylor Dube-Mather for an outstanding job defending her MA thesis "Is Being a Police Officer Fundamental for Processing Crime Scenes?: Investigating Civilianization in Canadian Forensic Identification Units."

Crime Scene Investigation within Canada has traditionally been a function carried out by police officers. Recently, civilians have been introduced into Canadian Forensic Identification Units (FIUs) in a limited capacity, but the experiences of civilian personnel have yet to be explored. The current study uses a qualitative thematic analysis of interviews conducted with 45 forensic identification personnel, regarding their experiences with the integration of civilians into FIUs across Canada to better understand the cultural barriers that impede civilians from successfully integrating into law enforcement. The aim of this study was to explore the benefits and challenges of civilianization. Though the findings suggest that there are extensive benefits associated with civilianizing FIUs, there are deeply rooted systemic challenges hindering entirely civilianized units from coming into fruition. The implications of these findings for law enforcement policy and future research are explored.

We thank you for your dedication and wish you the best in your future endeavours.

Help | Advanced Search

Computer Science > Computation and Language

Title: argumentation element annotation modeling using xlnet.

Abstract: This study demonstrates the effectiveness of XLNet, a transformer-based language model, for annotating argumentative elements in persuasive essays. XLNet's architecture incorporates a recurrent mechanism that allows it to model long-term dependencies in lengthy texts. Fine-tuned XLNet models were applied to three datasets annotated with different schemes - a proprietary dataset using the Annotations for Revisions and Reflections on Writing (ARROW) scheme, the PERSUADE corpus, and the Argument Annotated Essays (AAE) dataset. The XLNet models achieved strong performance across all datasets, even surpassing human agreement levels in some cases. This shows XLNet capably handles diverse annotation schemes and lengthy essays. Comparisons between the model outputs on different datasets also revealed insights into the relationships between the annotation tags. Overall, XLNet's strong performance on modeling argumentative structures across diverse datasets highlights its suitability for providing automated feedback on essay organization.

Submission history

Access paper:.

Download PDF
Other Formats

References & Citations

Google Scholar
Semantic Scholar

BibTeX formatted citation

Bibliographic and Citation Tools

Code, data and media associated with this article, recommenders and search tools.

Institution

arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators

arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website.

Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them.

Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs .

IMAGES

(PDF) Language contact in bilingualism: Phonetic system interactions
(PDF) A usage-based approach to “language” in language contact
PPT
(PDF) Language Contact
Language contact
PPT

VIDEO

PHD Thesis Writer Help In Uk
Academic reading and writing in English Part 14: Tentative and objective language
Crafting The Perfect Thesis: Strong vs. Weak Statements
Master Thesis
Drafting an Introduction to an Opinion Essay Using a Completed Graphic Organizer
Crafting the Perfect Thesis for Literary Analysis

COMMENTS

PDF Linguistic Outcomes of Language Contact
In this review, I will concentrate on research that, following Weinreich, (1) takes the speech community, rather than the individual, as its angle of vision; (2) focuses on the linguistic results of contact; and (3) and seeks to elucidate the social structuring of diversity internal to the speech community.
(PDF) Language Contact and Grammatical Change
Language Contact Language Contact and Grammatical Change Authors: Bernd Heine University of Cologne Tania Kuteva Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf Abstract The phenomenon of language...
(PDF) Language contact
Language contact Authors: Peter Auer University of Freiburg Discover the world's research Content uploaded by Peter Auer Author content Content may be subject to copyright. The Matrix Language...
Theories of Language Contact
The field of contact linguistics has progressed very rapidly, particularly since Weinreich's pioneering attempt to formulate a unified interdisciplinary approach to the study of language contact.The roots of the field go back to nineteenth-century studies of various kinds of contact situations and their outcomes, including the foundational work of Hesseling (1899, 1905), Schuchardt (1882 ...
2016. Languages in Contact. 240 pages
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Key Topics in Sociolinguistics. Considering the impressive body of general (introductory) literature on language contact already published, studies, moreover, that treat the subject from all conceivable perspectives (starting with the seminal study of Weinreich (1953); followed by, a.o. Appel and Muysken (1987); Thomason (2001); Winford (2003); Matras ...
Language Contact: An international handbook (edited volume)
Over the past decades, research on language contact in general as well as research on minority languages and communities has experienced a degree of theoretical and methodological...
(PDF) Language contact research: scope, trends, and possible future
Language Contact Language contact research: scope, trends, and possible future directions DOI: In book: Language Contact: An International Handbook. Volume 1. (pp.1-12) Publisher: De...
Methodology of Language Contact Studies and Their Result
January 1992 Antoinette Camilleri Grima This paper provides a sociolinguistic description of English language use in Malta at present in terms of who speaks what language, where and when. Some...
A unified approach to the study of language contact: Cross-language
The connection between language contact and the bilingual speaker goes back to foundational authors in the field of contact linguistics. ... with funding from PSL Research University. His thesis was on the phenomenon of grammaticalization from a corpus-based and modeling-heavy perspective. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher at Clesthia ...
The Routledge Handbook of Language Contact
The Routledge Handbook of Language Contact provides an overview of the state of the art of current research in contact linguistics. Presenting contact linguistics as an established field of investigation in its own right and featuring 26 chapters, this handbook brings together a broad range of approaches to contact linguistics, including: experimental and observational approaches and formal ...
PDF Language Contact
Language contact occurs when speakers of different languages interact and their languages influence one another. Drawing on the author's own first-hand observations of child and adult bilingualism, this book combines his original research with an up-to-date introduction to key concepts, to provide a holistic, original theory of contact linguistics.
Language Contact
Today, research into language contact is manifest in two volumes of an international handbook (Contact Linguistics) which appeared for the first time in Dirven and Pütz (1996 and 1997). The interest of applied linguistics in language contact research or contact linguistics—a term used since the Brussels "Contact and Conflict" congress in ...
Language Shift and the Speech Community: Sociolinguistic Change in a
Language shift is the process by which a speech community in a contact situation (i.e. consisting of bilingual speakers) gradually stops using one of its two languages in favor of the other. The causal factors of language shift are generally considered to be social, and researchers have focused on speakers' attitudes (both explicit and unstated) toward a language and domains of language use ...
Languages in Contact
Towards a model of language contact and change in the English-lexifier creoles of Africa and the Caribbean. English World-Wide. A Journal of Varieties of English, Vol. 38, Issue. 1, p. 50. ... Unpublished PhD thesis, University College London. Bautista, Maria Lourdes S. and Gonzales, Andrew B.. 2009. Southeast Asian Englishes.
A Language Contact Perspective on Heritage Languages in the ...
Figure 1 illustrates the types of possible variation that results from direct and indirect effects of language contact. The yellow box in picture 1 represents the dominant language and the blue box the heritage language. Outcome 1 with a large blue box represents stability or in other words the absence of change.
Multilingual Realities of Language Contact at the University of Zambia
Gabriel Simungala holds a Master of Arts in Linguistic Science from the University of Zambia and has wide research interests in language education, youth and pop culture, critical and multimodal discourse analysis, globalization and mobility, linguistic/semiotic landscapes, Bantu linguistics and the sociolinguistics of language contact. His recent publications include "Semiotic Creativity ...
Linguistic Outcomes of Language Contact
Summary This chapter contains sections titled: Sociolinguistics and Second Language Acquisition The Sociohistorical Context Linguistic Outcomes of Contact The State of the Art
A study in language contact
At a general level the concept of language contact is the superordinate linguistic and philosophical category underpinning the thesis. At a more specific level, the thesis examines three related concepts; code-switching, code-mixing and borrowing. It is based on theoretically and empirically founded distinctions between code-switching, code ...
Rephrase and Respond: Let Large Language Models Ask Better Questions
Misunderstandings arise not only in interpersonal communication but also between humans and Large Language Models (LLMs). Such discrepancies can make LLMs interpret seemingly unambiguous questions in unexpected ways, yielding incorrect responses. While it is widely acknowledged that the quality of a prompt, such as a question, significantly impacts the quality of the response provided by LLMs ...
(PDF) English-Russian language contacts: English-Russian ...
This thesis is a part of the problematic of linguistic contacts from the angle of the analysis of the semantic and pragmatic functions of English borrowings in Russian and French, as well as in ...
Dissertations.se: LANGUAGE CONTACT
Abstract : This thesis concerns two languages in contact: English and Swedish. It is based on interviews with Swedes who came to North America with the last major wave of emigration. READ MORE Result pages:
Useful Language for Thesis Statements
Useful Language for Thesis Statements Referrals, syllabus language, and other FAQs We recommend reading this list twice: Once you've read through, try using these phrases in your own writing.
Concept of Language Contact in Linguistic
Contact linguistic is the study of language contact. When people speaking different languages stay together and interact freely, the different languages they speak influence each other resulting to neologism. We will write a custom Essay on Concept of Language Contact in Linguistic specifically for you for only 9.35/page.
Dissertations / Theses: 'Language contact'
List of dissertations / theses on the topic 'Language contact'. Scholarly publications with full text pdf download. Related research topic ideas.
The Viability of Doctoral Thesis and Oral Exams in Student's Native
Amrita Kaur is an Assistant Professor at the College of Liberal Arts, Wenzhou-Kean University, China. She is also the coordinator for the psychology program at her university. She is a is a UK Council of Graduate Education recognized doctoral supervisor.
USDA Releases Language Access Plan to Expand Access to Department
Press Release. Release No. 0237.23. Contact: USDA Press. Email: [email protected]. WASHINGTON, Nov. 15, 2023 - Today, the U.S. Department of Agriculture released a department-wide language access plan to ensure individuals with limited English proficiency receive meaningful access to USDA's resources, programs, and activities.
Taylor Dube-Mather successfully defends her MA thesis
Congratulations to Taylor Dube-Mather for an outstanding job defending her MA thesis "Is Being a Police Officer Fundamental for Processing Crime Scenes?: Investigating Civilianization in Canadian Forensic Identification Units." Abstract. Crime Scene Investigation within Canada has traditionally been a function carried out by police officers.
thesis
289. thesis work. Show more. Translations in context of "thesis" in English-Russian from Reverso Context: doctoral thesis, master's thesis, phd thesis, defended his thesis, master thesis.
Argumentation Element Annotation Modeling using XLNet
This study demonstrates the effectiveness of XLNet, a transformer-based language model, for annotating argumentative elements in persuasive essays. XLNet's architecture incorporates a recurrent mechanism that allows it to model long-term dependencies in lengthy texts. Fine-tuned XLNet models were applied to three datasets annotated with different schemes - a proprietary dataset using the ...