L330 Contact Languages

(Bilingualism and Language Contact)

Reed College, Fall 2016
Tuesdays and Thursdays 12-1:20pm
ETC 205

Julia Swan
swanj@reed.edu
Eliot 101B
Office Hours: Mondays (9-10am) Tuesdays (1:30-3pm) and by appointment

Prerequisites
L212 or instructor approval

Course Description

Bilingualism has the power to reshape our brains as well as society and linguistic structure. Reasons for
bilingualism vary across communities around the globe ranging from unplanned circumstances to an
increasingly internationally mobile population to deliberate choices made for one’s education or the
education of one’s children. Around the world, bilingualism is more the norm than the exception, and this
holds even in our mythically “monolingual” country. This course will begin with a brief overview of the
varied types of “bilingualism” within the individual and the community. We will then turn our attention to
the outcomes of community bilingualism: language contact. The course will develop a more in depth
understanding of the varied socio-historical contexts of language contact, the societal effects of community
bilingualism, and the structural outcomes with respect to the linguistic varieties involved. We will consider
the following important concepts: lexical and grammatical borrowing, code-switching, diglossia,
convergence, language maintenance and shift, as well as pidgins, creoles, and mixed languages. Finally,
implications for education and policy will be discussed.

Course Requirements

30% Class participation and discussion leadership

15% Assignment 1- TBA
15% Assignment 2- Contact Variety Music Project (due Week 10)
40% Final Paper – Due Tuesday, December 13th at 5pm

Discussion Leader

Discussions are a vital part of class as they strengthen our understanding of the materials and critical
thinking about key theories and concepts in the field. Your class participation will be assessed during
discussions in which you are not the leader and those in which you are the discussion leader. When you are
not the leader, you are expected to post at least one question per assigned reading on the Moodle page (see
Announcements and select the appropriate week to respond to a thread). You may also respond to your
classmate’s questions online or in class. We will have a discussion leader for each class session beginning
in Week 2. The discussion leader will be responsible for guiding the group’s discussion of the assigned
readings and collecting questions from the Moodle page prior to class to generate discussion. You may
choose to compile these in a brief handout or PowerPoint. (It is not your responsibility to answer all of the
questions asked by your classmates, though you may share insights; it is your responsibility to structure
them in a way that will yield fruitful discussion.) There are approximately 20 discussion leader slots, so you
should expect to be a discussion leader for five different class meetings.

Assignments
1- TBA, Due on October 13th (Week 7)
2- Contact Variety in Music, Due on November 10th (Week 10)

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Final Paper

The final paper is a particularly important aspect of this course. This should be a work in progress over the
course of the semester, not just in the last two weeks of the course. It is an opportunity to develop your
understanding of a particular topic or variety that may even serve as a foundation for a thesis project.
Deadlines are structured to facilitate your progress over the semester. The paper should be no longer than
15 pages. Suggested topics: an investigation of a specific contact variety or of a particular structural process
observed in contact languages. I would be happy to discuss your topic with you further and/or provide
additional reading in office hours or in an appointment. Deadlines for the final paper include:

• Before November 15th- Schedule a conference to discuss final paper topic.

• November 22nd- Submit one-page prospectus outlining the topic you will address plus an
annotated bibliography of sources relevant to your topic.

• December 1st- Submit five-page rough draft of your final paper.

• Tuesday, December 13th at 5pm- Final paper due

Course Texts

Winford, Donald. 2003. An Introduction to Contact Linguistics. Blackwell Publishing.

Wei, Li, ed. 2000. The Bilingualism Reader, Second Edition. Routledge: London.

Additional articles and materials will be available on Moodle.

Course Policies

On Accommodations: If you are a student with a disability and believe you will need accommodation for
this class, it is your responsibility to contact and register with Disability Support Services and provide them
with documentation of your disability, so that they can determine what accommodations are appropriate for
your situation. With your permission they will discuss with me those reasonable and appropriate
accommodations. To avoid any delay you should contact the DSS office as early as possible in the
semester, and contact me for assistance in developing a plan to address your academic needs in this course.
Please note that accommodations are not retroactive and that reasonable disability accommodations cannot
be provided until I have received an accommodation letter from and discussed your case with the DSS
office. You can reach Disability Support Services at (503) 517-7921 or disability-services@reed.edu

On Incompletes: I will not give incompletes except in the event of a serious emergency.

On Late Submissions: I will accept one late homework assignment from you during this semester with no
need for explanation. Any additional assignments will be dropped by a full letter grade for every 24 period
after the due date.

On Availability:
Timely communication and feedback between students and instructors are an important part of our learning
community. As such, I will be available by email and strive to respond to your emails within 24 hours
during the school week. I will be more likely to respond to emails in the early morning hours than in the
evenings, especially if you email after 8 or 9pm. Please plan ahead by emailing questions regarding
homework or papers well in advance of their due dates.

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Abbreviated Course Outline
Week Date Readings Leader Due
1 8.30 Wei, Introduction -
9.1 Wei, FIRST EDITION, Mackey chapter -
2 9.6 Wei, Ch. 1
Lambert et al. 1960
9.8 Wei, Ch. 2 & 3
3 9.13 Wei, Ch. 13 & Ch. 14
9.15 Winford, Ch. 7 & Christoffersen 2013
4 9.20 Winford, Ch. 2 & Thomason & Kaufmann
1988
9.22 Winford, Ch. 3 & Heine & Kuteva 2003
5 9.27 Thomason 2000 & Lindstedt 2000
9.29 Campbell et al. 1986, Haspelmath 2002
6 10.4 Winford, Ch. 4 & Wei, Ch. 4
10.6 Winford, Ch. 5 & Wei, Ch. 5
7 10.11 Winford, Ch. 8 & Thomason 1983
10.13 - - Assignment #1
Fall Break
8 10.25 Winford, Ch. 9 & Mufwene 1996
10.27 Bickerton 1984 & Siegel 2007a
9 11.1 Chaudenson 2001 & McWhorter 1998
11.3 Mufwene 1998 & Spears 2008
10 11.8 Irvine 2004 & Lipski 2011 -
11.10 Presenter Assignment #2
1:

- Presenter
2:

Presenter
3:

Presenter
4:

11 11.15 Winford, Ch. 6 & Bakker 2000 Final Paper Conference

11.17 Papen 2004
12 11.22 Tsitsipsis 1983 & Sasse 1992 Final Paper
1-page and
Bibliography
Thanksgiving
13 11.29 Garret 2006 & Rickford & King 2013
12.1 Wassink 1999 & Rigoglioso 2014 5-page Rough Draft
14 12.6 Levine 2011, Ch. 2 & Siegel 2007b -
12.8 Özerk 2013, Wheeler & Thomas 2013 -
15 12.13 Final Paper 5pm
Winter Break
Course Outline

Week 1: Introduction and the Bilingual Individual: What are the characteristics of bilingual
individuals?
August 30
Wei (p.3-25), “Introduction: Dimensions of bilingualism” by Li Wei

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September 1
We, FIRST EDITION, (p.26-56), Ch. 1 “The description of bilingualism” by William Mackey

Supplemental readings and authors

Wei: Introduction to Part 3 p.375 – Ch. 14 & Ch. 15 The Bilingual Brain- p.394
Bialystok, Ellen (for neurological and cognitive benefits of bilingualism)
Green, David W. Control, activation and resource: a framework and a model for the control of speech in
bilinguals in Wei, Ch. 16

Week 2: Social Dimensions of Bilingualism: What are the characteristics of bilingual societies?
September 6 Diglossia and Social Psychology of Bilingualism
Wei, 2nd edition, p.33 – 46, Introduction by Wei plus Ch. 1 “Diglossia” by Charles Ferguson

Lambert, W.E., R.C. Hodgson, R.C. Gardner, and S. Fillenbaum. 1960. Evaluational reactions to spoken
language. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 60.1: 44-51

September 8
Wei (p.47-72), Ch. 2 and Ch. 3 by Joshua Fishman “Bilingualism with and without diglossia; diglossia with
and without bilingualism” and “Who speaks what to whom when?”

Supplemental Readings
Lambert, W.E. (1967) A social psychology of bilingualism. Journal of Social Issues. Volume 23: 2, p. 91-
109.

Week 3: Second Language Acquisition plus Shift

September 13: Early Bilingual Acquisition
Wei (p.301-335), Ch. 13 by Virginia Volterra and Traute Taeschner “The acquisition and development of
language by bilingual children” and Ch. 14 by Fred Genese “Early bilingual language development: one
language or two?”

Discussion Leader: ___________________________

Supplemental Readings
Wei (p. 336- 359), Ch 15 by Jürgen M. Meisel “Code-switching in young bilingual children: the acquisition
of grammatical constraints.”

September 15: Second Language Acquisition and Choice

Winford (p. 208-264), Ch. 7

Christoffersen, Katherine O. 2013. An Ecological View of Language Choice in a Bilingual Program: A

Dynamic Model of Social Structures. In Working Papers in Educational Linguistics, 28:2, p. 37-54.

Discussion Leader: ___________________________

Supplemental Reading
Taeschner, Traute. 1983. The Sun is Feminine: A study on language acquisition in bilingual children.

Borbély, Anna. 2005. “Changes in Bilingual Language Choice Influenced by

Real and Apparent Time: Panel Study in the Process of Language Shift in a Romanian Minority
Community Living in Hungary” In Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Bilingualism, ed.
James Cohen, Kara T. McAlister, Kellie Rolstad, and Jeff MacSwan, 328-340. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla
Press.

Week 4: Structural Effects of Bilingualism and Language Contact- Borrowing

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September 20- Lexical Borrowing
Winford (p.29-60), Ch. 2

Thomason, Sarah Grey and Kaufmann, Terrence. 1988. Contact-induced language change: an analytic
framework. Ch. 3 in Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics. Berkeley: UC Press, 35-64.

Discussion Leader: ___________________________

September 22- Grammatical/Structural Borrowing

Winford, Ch. 3 (p. 61-99) Structural Diffusion in Situations of Language Maintenance

Heine, Bernd & Kuteva, Tania. 2003. “On contact-induced grammaticalization” Studies in Language 27.

Discussion Leader: ___________________________

Supplemental Readings
King, Ruth. 2008. “Chiac in context: Overview and evaluation” In Meyerhoff , Miriam and Nagy, Naomi
(eds). Social Lives in Language- Sociolinguistics in Multilingual Speech Communities: Celebrating the
Work of Gillian Sankoff. John Benjamins: p. 137-178.

Week 5: Structural Effects of Bilingualism- Convergence

September 27: Sprachbunds
Thomason, Sarah Grey. 2000. “Linguistic Areas and Language History.” Dicky Gilbers, John Nerbonne,
and Jos Schaeken (eds)., Languages in Contact. Amsterdam: Rodopi, p. 311-327.

Lindstedt, Jouko. 2000. Linguistic Balkanization: Contact Induced Change by Mutual Reinforcement. In
Dicky Gilbers, John Nerbonne, and Jos Schaeken (eds)., Languages in Contact. Amsterdam: Rodopi, p.
231-246.

Discussion Leader: ___________________________

September 29: Linguistic Areas

Campbell, Lyle, Kaufman, Terence and Smith-Stark, Thomas C. 1986. “Meso-America as a linguistic
area.” Language 62(3): 530-570.

Haspelmath, Martin. 2002. “The European Linguistic Area: Standard Average European.” In Haspelmath et
al. (eds.), Language Typology and Language Universals, vol 2. 1492-1511.

Discussion Leader: ___________________________

Week 6: Bilingual Interactions- Code-Switching

October 4
Winford (p.101-125), Ch. 4 “Code Switching: Social Contexts”

Wei (p.75-96), Ch. 4 Jan-Petter Blom and John J. Gumperz “Social Meaning in Linguistic Structure in
Norway”

Discussion Leader: ___________________________

October 6
Winford (p.126-167), Ch. 5 “Code Switching: Linguistic Aspects”

Wei (p.97-122), Ch. 5 “Code-switching as indexical of social negotiations” by Carol Myers-Scotton

Discussion Leader: ___________________________
Week 7: Pidgins
October 11

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Winford (p268-303), Ch. 8 “Pidgins and Pidginization”

Thomason, Sarah Grey. 1983. Chinook Jargon in areal and historical context. Language 59 (4): 820-870.
Required Sections: 1-5 (820-835) and Section 7 (859-867)

Discussion Leader: ___________________________

October 13: Reflection Day and Homework Discussion

***Assignment #1 due***

Discussion Leader: ___________________________

Fall Break- No Class

Week 8: Creole Genesis: Where do creoles come from? How do they develop?
October 25
Winford (p.304-358), Ch. 9 “Creole Formation”

Mufwene, Salikoko. 1996. “The founder principle in creole genesis.” Diachronica 13: 83-134.

Discussion Leader: ___________________________

Supplemental Reading

Baker, Philip and Mulhausler, Peter. 2007. “Creole Linguistics from its Beginnings through Schuchardt to
the Present Day.” In Stewart, Charles Creolization: History, Ethnography, Theory, ch.5, p. 84- 107.

October 27
Bickerton, Derek. 1984. The language bioprogram hypothesis. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 7: 173-188.

Siegel, Jeff. 2007. Recent evidence against the Language Bioprogram Hypothesis: The pivotal case of
Hawai’i Creole. Studies in Language 31 (1): 51-88.

Discussion Leader: ___________________________

Week 9: Creole Languages: What are the features of creoles? (Social and structural)
November 1
Chaudenson, Robert. 2001. “Theories of Linguistic Creolization: Creolization of Language and Culture,
with Salikoko Mufwene.

McWhorter, John H. 1998. Identifying the creole prototype: Vindicating a typological class. Language 74
(4): 788-813.

Discussion Leader: ___________________________

November 3: Creoles and African American English

Mufwene, Salikoko. 1998. “Creolization is a social, not a structural, process.” Paper presented at the
International Symposium on Degrees of Restructuring in Creole languages, Regensburg, 24-27 June 1998

Spears, Arthur K. 2008. “Pidgins/Creoles and African American English.” In Silvia Kouwenberg and John
Victor Singler (eds.) The Handbook of Pidgin and Creole Studies, p. 512- 542.

Discussion Leader: ___________________________

Week 10: The Creole Continuum & Decreolization
November 8

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Irvine, Alison. 2004. A good command of the English language: Phonological variation in the Jamaican
acrolect. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Studies 19 (1): 41-76.

Lipski, John M. 2011. Decreolization as emergent grammar(s): Some Afro-Bolivian data. Journal of Pidgin
and Creole Languages. 26 (2): 276-340. (skip section 11).

Discussion Leader: ___________________________

Supplemental Readings

Mufwene, Salikoko S. 1994. On Decreolization: The case of Gullah. In The Social Construction of Identity:
Creole Situations. 63-87 (skip notes). Nov 20 1.

Escure, Geneviève. 1982. Contrastive Patterns of Intragroup and Intergroup Interaction in the Creole
Continuum of Belize. In Language (11): 239-264. 2.

November 10: ***Assignment 2 Due*** Presentations

Presenter 1: _______________________

Presenter 2: _______________________

Presenter 3: _______________________

Presenter 4: _______________________

Week 11: Mixed Languages: an alternate outcome

November 15
Winford (p.168-207), Ch. 6 “Bilingual Mixed Languages”

Bakker, Peter. 2000. “Convergence Intertwining: An alternative way towards the genesis of mixed
languages” In Dicky Gilbers, John Nerbonne, and Jos Schaeken (eds)., Languages in Contact. Amsterdam:
Rodopi, p. 29-35.

Discussion Leader: ___________________________

November 17
Papen, Robert. 2004. "Michif spelling conventions: Proposal for a unified Michif writing system. In L.
Barkwell (ed.) La lawng: Michif peekishkwewin. Winnipeg, MB: Pemmican Publications, p. 29-53.

Discussion Leader: ___________________________

Week 12: Language Shift and Language Death

November 22
Tsitsipsis, Lukas D. 1983 “Language shift among the Albanian speakers of Greece.” Anthropological
Linguistics 25: 288-308.

Sasse, Hans-Jürgen. 1992. “Theory of language death.” In Matthia Brenziger (ed.), Language Death:
Factual and Theoretical Explorations with Special Reference to East Africa. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 7-
11.

Discussion Leader: ___________________________

***1-page outline of final paper topic and bibliography due***

Supplemental Reading on Language Death
Dorian, Nancy. 1973. “Grammatical change in a dying dialect.” Language 49: 413-438.

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Campbell, Lyle & Muntzell, Martha C. 1989. “The structural consequences of language death.” In Nancy
C. Dorian (ed.), Investigating Obsolescence. Cambridge University Press, 181-196.

November 24
Thanksgiving- No Class

Week 13: Attitudes and Ideologies toward Bilingualism and Contact Varieties
November 29
Garret, Paul B. 2006. Contact languages as endangered languages: What is there to lose? Journal of Pidgin
and Creole Languages 21 (1): 175-190.

Rickford, John R. and Sharese King. 2013. “Justice for Jeantels: Fighting Linguistic Prejudice and Racial
Inequity in Courts and Schools, after Florida v. Zimmerman.” Presentation at NWAV 42, Pittsburgh,
10/19/2013

Discussion Leader: ___________________________

Supplemental Readings
Wendy Kempsell-Jacinto- Attitudes about Turkish-German Bilinguals in Film, CWSL 2014

December 1
Wassink, Alicia Beckford. 1999. Historic low prestige and seeds of change: Attitudes towards Jamaican
Creole. Language in Society 28: 57-92.

Rigoglioso, Marguerite. 2014. Prejudice toward African American dialect can result in unfair rulings.
Retrieved 30 August 2016 from http://phys.org/news/2014-12-prejudice-african-american-
dialectresult.html

Discussion Leader: ___________________________

*** 5-page rough draft of final paper due ***

Week 14: Policies and Politics of Bilingualism

December 6 Education
Levine, Glenn. 2011. “The Conundrum of Babel: Toward a Theoretical Framework for a Multilingual
Approach.” Ch.2 in Code Choice in the Language Classroom. Multilingual Matters: Bristol, p. 19-44.

Siegel, Jeff. 2007. Creoles and Minority Dialects in Education: An update. Language in Education 21 (1):
66-86.

December 8

Özerk, Kamil. 2013. “The Norwegian Educational System, the Linguistic Diversity in the Country and the
Education of Different Minority Groups.” International Electronic Journal of Elementary Education, 2013,
6(1), 43-60.

Wheeler, Rebecca and Thomas, Julia. 2013. “And still the children suffer: The dilemma of standard
english, social justice, and social access,” JAC: A journal of composition theory, 33(1):363-396.

***Final Paper is due Tuesday, December 13th at 5pm!***