Kolloquium - From Language Mixing to Fused Lects

This colloquium seeks to bring together researchers working on different language constellations who share an interest in the linguistic and sociolinguistic description of the emergence of bilingually or multilingually mixed language structures (“fused lects”) from language mixing.

The idea that fused lects such as mixed languages arise from language mixing is not new (see Myers-Scotton 1998; Auer 1999; Thomason 2001). It is supported not only by the plenteous structural similarities between fused lects and language mixing but also by well-documented historical facts (McConvell and Meaking 2003; O’Shannessy 2012; Schaengold 2004). Fusion is thus a process whereby certain bilingual mixing patterns become regularized, conventionalized and grammaticalized in specific communities. To provide a better understanding of how fused lects emerge, we need not only consider the sociolinguistic factors facilitating extensive fusion but also scrutinize intermediate stages of fusion, such as partial fusion (Auer 2014).

Download program

Zur Anmeldung: https://frias.wufoo.com/forms/w6usd961vm9jkn/

Organizers:

Peter Auer, University of Freiburg (peter.auer@germanistik.uni-freiburg.de)

Nikolay Hakimov, University of Innsbruck (nikolay.hakimov@uibk.ac.at)

Keynote speakers:

Evangelia Adamou, LACITO (CNRS), Paris

Carmel O’Shannessy, University of Michigan

Brigitte Pakendorf, DDL (CNRS), Lyon

References:

Auer, Peter. 1999 From codeswitching via language mixing to fused lects: Toward a dynamic typology of bilingual speech. International Journal of Bilingualism 3-4: 309–32.

———. 2014. Language mixing and language fusion: When bilingual talk becomes monolingual. In: Besters-Dilger, Juliane, Cynthia Dermarkar, Stefan Pfänder, and Achim Rabus (eds.), Congruence in Contact-Induced Language Change: Language Families, Typological Resemblance, and Perceived Similarity, 294–334. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter.

McConvell, Patrick, and Felicity Meakins. 2005. Gurindji Kriol: A mixed language emerges from code-switching. Australian Journal of Linguistics 25-1: 9–30.

Myers-Scotton, Carol. 1998. A way to dusty death: The Matrix Language turnover hypothesis. In: Grenoble, Lenore A. and Lindsay J. Whaley (eds.), Endangered Languages: Language Loss and Community Response, 289–316. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press.

O’Shannessy, Carmel. 2005. Light Warlpiri: A new language. Australian Journal of Linguistics 25-1: 31–57.

———. 2012. The role of codeswitched input to children in the origin of a new mixed language. Linguistics 50-2: 305–40.

Schaengold, Charlotte C. 2004. Bilingual Navajo: Mixed Codes, Bilingualism, and Language Maintenance. PhD dissertation, Ohio State University.

Thomason, Sarah Grey. 2001. Language Contact: An Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.