Language contact occurs when speakers of two or more languages or varieties interact with and influence each other. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics. Language contact can occur at language borders,[1] between adstratum languages, or as the result of migration, with an intrusive language acting as either a superstratum or a substratum.
When speakers of different languages interact closely, it is typical for their languages to influence each other. Intensive language contact may result in language convergence or relexification. In some cases a new contact language may be created as a result of the influence, such as a pidgin, creole, or mixed language. In many other cases, contact between speakers occurs with smaller-scale lasting effects on the language; these may include the borrowing of loanwords, calques, or other types of linguistic material.
Multilingualism has been common throughout much of human history, and today most people in the world are multilingual.[2] Multilingual speakers may engage in code-switching, the use of multiple languages in a single conversation.
Methods from sociolinguistics[3] (the study of language use in society), from corpus linguistics and from formal linguistics are used in the study of language contact.
^Hadzibeganovic, Tarik, Stauffer, Dietrich & Schulze, Christian (2008). Boundary effects in a three-state modified voter model for languages. Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 387(13), 3242–3252.
^"CAL: Digests: A Global Perspective on Bilingualism and Bilingual Education". Archived from the original on 2012-08-22. Retrieved 2012-05-16. A Global Perspective on Bilingualism and Bilingual Education (1999), G. Richard Tucker, Carnegie Mellon University
^Gooden, Shelome. "Language Contact in a Sociolinguistics Context." in The Routledge Companion to the Work of John R. Rickford (2019).
Languagecontact occurs when speakers of two or more languages or varieties interact with and influence each other. The study of languagecontact is called...
intelligence First contact (anthropology), an initial meeting of two cultures Languagecontact, the interaction of two or more languages The Contact (1963 film)...
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestral language or parental language, called the proto-language of that...
on language structure. One source of language change is contact and the resulting diffusion of linguistic traits between languages. Languagecontact occurs...
experienced intensive contact with the Nivkhs during the course of their history. It is not known to what extent this has affected the language. Linguists believe...
A contact sign language, or contact sign, is a variety or style of language that arises from contact between deaf individuals using a sign language and...
archaic features. Another distinguishing feature is the centuries-long languagecontact with German, which is most noticeable in the vocabulary and to a lesser...
A mixed language, also referred to as a hybrid language, contactlanguage, or fusion language, is a language that arises among a bilingual group combining...
most specialists in languagecontact do not consider English to be a true mixed language. English is classified as a Germanic language because it shares...
ethnography, a contact zone is a conceptual space where different cultures interact. In a 1991 keynote address to the Modern Language Association titled...
Polynesian languages), some Indigenous languages of the Americas (such as Cherokee), and Vietnamese. Through languagecontact, some words that are originally...
characteristics between the languages are attributed presently to extensive prehistoric languagecontact. Turkic languages are null-subject languages, have vowel harmony...
"Multilingualism and languagecontact | Languages In Danger". Retrieved 2020-04-09. "The study of pidgin and creole languages" (PDF). "Language varieties: Pidgins...
regard it as a gestural system rather than a true sign language. The earliest records of contact between Europeans and Indigenous peoples of the Gulf Coast...
result of prolonged language contact and mutual interference, regardless of whether those languages belong to the same language family, i.e. stem from a common...
The Cambridge Handbook of LanguageContact: Volume 1: Population Movement and Language Change. Cambridge Handbooks in Language and Linguistics. Cambridge...
School for the Deaf (ASD) in Hartford, Connecticut, from a situation of languagecontact. Since then, ASL use has been propagated widely by schools for the...
Germanic language, spoken by about 25 million people as a first language and 5 million as a second language and is the third most spoken Germanic language. In...
electrical contact is an electrical circuit component found in electrical switches, relays, connectors and circuit breakers. Each contact is a piece of...
several dozen loanwords from one or more Baltic languages. These may have been mediated by contacts with the Eastern Balts along the river Oka. In regards...
Barbary Coast, developed a contactlanguage known as Mediterranean Lingua Franca or sabir. It was influenced by the languages of Italy, Catalan, Occitan...
morphology and syntax were also affected by languagecontact with Parthian, but to a lesser extent. Contact with Greek, Persian, and Syriac also resulted...
Parthian was a Western Middle Iranian language. Languagecontact made it share some features of Eastern Iranian languages, the influence of which is attested...
sprachbund rather than common ancestry, with the languages showing influence from prolonged contact. The continued use of the term "Altaic" to refer to...
languages have been subject to phenomena like languagecontact, language expansion, language shift and language death. A case in point is the Bantu expansion...
Maltese has many languagecontact features and is most commonly described as a language with a large number of loanwords. The Maltese language has historically...
Global Information