Excercises - Übungen Language maintennce, shift, death PDF

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Übungen Language maintennce, shift, death...

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Summer term 2020 LMU Munich Diana Wengler S Language Contact April 28, 2020

Language maintenance, shift, and death If you have to hand in the following tasks as part of the Übungsaufgaben, please save your answers a separate document. By the way, notes are fine; you needn’t write complete texts. :) 1. Take a look at the following Japanese lexemes: sarada (‘salad’), keeki (‘cake’), sofutu (aisu) kariimu (‘soft ice cream’), sangurasu (‘sunglasses’), bodiibiru (dingu) (‘bodybuilding’), terbi (jon) (‘television’) (from Winford 2003: 32) a. Name and briefly define the linguistic process which led to these word forms. b. Describe two phonological processes these word forms underwent. 2. Name one example each for: a. language shift including death, b. language shift without language death, c. language death without shift. 3. Briefly summarise the main reasons for language shift. 4. Name one example of a language shift scenario where the speech community promoted the abandonment of their L1. What was the main reason for it? 5. “Although there are no Gaelic speakers in East Sutherland today whose English is anything less than fluent, there does exist an interesting group of English-dominant bilinguals whose Gaelic is conspicuously aberrant in terms of older-generation norms.” (Dorian 1981: 115) Name the term used to characterise the Gaelic competence of the speakers referred to by this quote. 6. Pennsylvania German is a minority language, predominantly spoken by Amish and Mennonite communities in eastern and central Pennsylvania. Like German, the traditional pronominal system of Pennsylvania German distinguishes between three cases, i.e. nominative, dative and accusative. In order to assess the use of personal pronouns, Huffines (1991) asked her informants to translate the English sentence I helped them yesterday into Pennsylvania German. Here are some of the results (adapted from Huffines 1991: 129-30): Speaker A B C

Translation iç hap 1SG have iç hap 1SG have iç hap 1SG have

inǝ 3PL.DAT si 3PL.ACC si 3PL.ACC

gEšdǝr yesterday gEšdǝr yesterday ghɔlfǝ help.PASTPART

ghɔlfǝ help.PASTPART ghɔlfǝ help.PASTPART gEšdǝr yesterday

a. Describe the different uses of pronouns in these examples. b. In how far do they pose an example of language obsolescence? Name the linguistic process to which this phenomenon can be ascribed.

7. Briefly outline the landscape of Native American languages, means of inter-tribal communication and the impact of the European conquest. 8. True or false? a. Borrowing requires the mastery of at least two different languages. b. Only lexical items can be borrowed into another language. c. By definition, gradual language death always excludes language shift. d. Bilingualism is a necessary precondition for language shift. e. Language shift often involves negative attitudes towards the ancestral language. f. The Europeans’ conquest of America caused the death of several hundred indigenous languages. References: Dorian, N. C. 1981. Language Death. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Huffines, M.L. 1998. Pennsylvania German: convergence and change as strategies of discourse. In H.W. Seliger & R. M. Vago (eds.). First Language Attrition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Winford, D. 2003. An Introduction to Contact Linguistics. Malden: Blackwell Publishing....