Intermingling speech groups

Morpho-syntactic outcomes of language contact in a linguistic area in Burkina Faso, West Africa

Klaus Beyer | Humboldt University, Berlin

Henning Schreiber | University of Hamburg, Germany

This paper investigates the outcomes of contact-induced language change in two neighboring speech groups (Pana and Northern Samo) in an African multilingual setting. It describes the historical and social conditions of the area as a prerequisite for the understanding of linguistic contact processes. The typological fingerprints of the languages then establish the background for understanding linguistic changes. It demonstrates that morpho-syntactic elements such as negation, copula and focus constructions, phrase-final plural, and definiteness marking are in part the result of contact in this complex setting. Finally, it proposes a possible scenario that accounts for the different contact-induced features and also raises the question of the significance of extra-linguistic parameters for a theory of language contact.

Keywords: contact-induced change, extra-linguistic parameters, Nothern Samo, Pana

Published online: 12 March 2013
https://doi.org/10.1075/silv.12.05bey

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Beyer, Klaus

2020. In The Handbook of Language Contact, ► pp. 649 ff.

Beyer, Klaus

2020. Input limitations in a diffuse linguistic setting: Observations from a West African contact zone. International Journal of Bilingualism ► pp. 136700692093778 ff.

WATSON, RACHEL

2019. Language as category: using prototype theory to create reference points for the study of multilingual data. Language and Cognition 11:1 ► pp. 125 ff.

H. Ekkehard Wolff

2019. In A History of African Linguistics,

H. Ekkehard Wolff

2019. In The Cambridge Handbook of African Linguistics,

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