Abstract A large percentage of the world’s languages – anywhere from 50 to 90% – are currently spoken in what we call shift ecologies, situations of unstable bi- or multilingualism where speakers, and in particular younger speakers, do not use their ancestral language but rather speak the majority language. The present paper addresses several interrelated questions with regard to the linguistic effects of bilingualism in such shift ecologies. These language ecologies are dynamic: language choices and preferences change, as do speakers’ proficiency levels. One result is multiple kinds of variation in these endangered language communities. Understanding change and shift requires a methodology for establishing a baseline; descriptive grammars rarely provide information about usage and multilingual language practices. An additional confounder is a range of linguistic variation: regional (dialectal); generational (language-internal change without contact or shift); contact-based (contact with or without shift); and proficiency-based (variation which develops as a result of differing levels of input and usage). Widespread, ongoing language shift today provides opportunities to examine the linguistic changes exhibited by shifting speakers, that is, to zero in on language change and loss in process, rather than as an end product.
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Sociolinguistics and language shift: toward understanding the processes of shift through the prism of speakers
The study of language shift, the replacement of one language by another in a community, or subgroup of a speech community, is a prime topic for sociolinguistic analysis: shift is almost always the result of social factors. This paper argues for focusing research on the study of shift in process and, to that end, studying the different kinds of speakers in shifting communities.
The prevalent response to massive, global language shift by linguists is language documentation. Although the need for documentation is clear, there have been inadvertent consequences: valorizing last speakers, promoting linguistic purism, and devaluing L2 language learners who, in many communities, represent the future of the language. The urgency of documenting and describing languages with relatively small numbers of elderly speakers has led the linguistic community to focus almost exclusively on such groups and ignore both larger speech communities in earlier stages of shift, and overlook the wide range of speaker types in shift communities. From a social standpoint, the result is that we are often failing to do the language work in precisely those communities where reversing language shift is still relatively easy. From a scientific standpoint, we are missing the opportunity to study language change in process, and missing the chance to study speaker variation in a shift situation. Variation in proficiency and performance across shifting speakers is not random but systematic and correlates with a set of social and cognitive factors.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1761551
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10332179
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Sociolingvistika
- Volume:
- 2
- Issue:
- 6
- ISSN:
- 2713-2951
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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This paper presents a phonetic analysis of variation and change in the production of voiceless aspirated stops in Diné bizaad, or Navajo, a Southern Dene language spoken in the American Southwest. Diné aspirated stops are typologically famous for having exceptionally long release periods (Cho and Ladefoged 1999), and earlier studies report that the variable aspiration carries social meaning (Reichard 1945). This study revisits phonetic measures of aspiration given increasing levels of English bilingualism in the Diné speech community. Voice onset time (VOT) and spectral center of gravity (CoG) were measured in tokens of aspirated velar and alveolar stops, elicited during interviews with 51 bilingual Diné bizaad-English speakers of different ages, genders, regions, and linguistic backgrounds. Results indicate that the releases of aspirated /kh/ have shortened when compared with earlier studies, while releases of aspirated /th/ have not, likely due to the salience of their affrication rendering them perceptibly distinct from English /t/. Mixed-effects linear regression models show that region, age, and gender are significant predictors of variation and that there are ongoing changes led by women, a frequent pattern in sociolinguistics, but notable here due to its relevance in an indigenous minority language community, a rare site for variationist sociolinguistic research. Overall these findings suggest that despite encroaching language shift, Diné bizaad is not simply converging with English, and results underscore the importance of perceptual awareness in analyses of subphonemic linguistic change.more » « less
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Design and methodology: This study compares production data from small groups of speakers of a moribund language. Study tasks include a controlled production task in which speakers are asked to construct sentences using provided lexical items. The lexical items were conditioned so as to trigger NI in certain stimuli (on the basis of verbal valency and argument animacy).
Data and analysis: The production data was transcribed and coded for the occurrence and structural type of NI (compounding vs. syntactic incorporation). The results were compared across three groups of speakers: conservative older speakers, younger attriting speakers, and new speakers.
Findings/conclusions: NI frequency and productivity clearly differ among the three groups. CSs use incorporation frequently and productively in the expected contexts, while ASs use productive incorporation only in familiar contexts, followed by NSs who make little to no use of incorporation. All speaker groups display knowledge of the appropriate circumstances in which to use incorporation.
Originality: This study makes use of a novel experimental methodology in studying several under-researched areas: variation in traditional Chukchi, shift-induced variation in a polysynthetic language, and NI as a locus of variation.
Significance/implications: This study contributes to our understanding of the behavior of non-normative speakers of endangered languages and demonstrates that they play a role in language preservation. The study shows that the diffuse nature of the Chukchi speech community is different from comparatively well-studied shift settings (especially in the North American and European contexts) in its lack of a community of use or practice, which presents unique challenges in language maintenance.
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Previous research in speech perception has shown that perception is influenced by social factors that can result in behavioral consequences such as reduced intelligibility (i.e., a listeners’ ability to transcribe the speech they hear). However, little is known about these effects regarding Spanish speakers’ perception of heritage Spanish, Spanish spoken by individuals who have an ancestral and cultural connection to the Spanish language. Given that ideologies within the U.S. Latino community often equate Latino identity to speaking Spanish “correctly” and proficiently, there is a clear need to understand the potential influence these ideologies have on speech perception. Using a matched-guised methodology, we analyzed the influence of speaker social background information and listener social background information on speech perception. Participants completed a transcription task in which four different Spanish heritage speakers were paired with different social guises to determine if the speakers were perceived as equally intelligible under each guise condition. The results showed that social guise and listener social variables did not significantly predict intelligibility scores. We argue that the unique socio-political culture within the U.S. Latino community may lead to different effects of language ideology and social expectation on speech perception than what has been documented in previous work.more » « less
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Significance/implications: These results are interpreted as arising due to literacy practices, language usage networks, and community values. The orthographic representation of the affricates is thought to inhibit sound change. At the same time, due to their more formal language learning background, new speakers have developed a self-monitored speech style oriented toward the prestigious, older speakers. A lack of peer group language usage is thought to prevent the development of linguistically or ideologically distinct new speaker varieties. The confluence of these factors means that instead of constituting agents of language change, new speakers are more similar to older participants.
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.37892/2713-2951
