Language convergence

Last updated October 15, 2023

Language convergence is a type of linguistic change in which languages come to resemble one another structurally as a result of prolonged language contact and mutual interference, regardless of whether those languages belong to the same language family, i.e. stem from a common genealogical proto-language.^[1] In contrast to other contact-induced language changes like creolization or the formation of mixed languages, convergence refers to a mutual process that results in changes in all the languages involved.^[2] The term refers to changes in systematic linguistic patterns of the languages in contact (phonology, prosody, syntax, morphology) rather than alterations of individual lexical items.^[3]

Contexts

Language convergence occurs in geographic areas with two or more languages in contact, resulting in groups of languages with similar linguistic features that were not inherited from each language's proto-language.^[1] These geographic and linguistic groups are called linguistic areas, or Sprachbund areas.^[1]^[4] Linguistic features shared by the languages in a language area as a result of language convergence are called areal features.^[1] In situations with many languages in contact and a variety of areal features, linguists may use the term language convergence to indicate the impossibility of locating a singular source for each areal feature.^[2] However, as the classification of linguistic areas and language convergence depends on shared areal features, linguists must distinguish between areal features resulting from convergence and internally motivated changes resulting in chance similarities between languages.^[5]

Language convergence can also occur for a particular person's grammar. It sometimes occurs in children who are acquiring a second language. Because the grammar of the child's native language is still developing, the grammar patterns of the first and second language can influence each other. Singaporean students learning both English and Mandarin showed use of common Mandarin grammatical structures when speaking English.^[6]

Mechanisms

Language convergence occurs primarily through diffusion, the spread of a feature from one language to another.^[1] The causes of language convergence are highly dependent on the specifics of the contact between the languages involved. Often, convergence is motivated by bilingual code-switching or code-alternation.^[2] Seeking full expressive capacity in both languages, bilingual speakers identify preexisting parallels between languages and use these structures to express similar meanings, eventually leading to convergence or increasing the frequency of the similar patterns.^[3] Sociolinguistic factors may also influence the effects of language convergence, as ethnic boundaries can function as barriers to language convergence. Ethnic boundaries may help to explain areas in which linguists’ predictions about language convergence do not align with reality, such as areas with high inter-ethnic contact but low levels of convergence.^[3]

Results

Language convergence often results in the increased frequency of preexisting patterns in a language; if one feature is present in two languages in contact, convergence results in increased use and cross-linguistic similarity of the parallel feature.^[3] As contact situations leading to language convergence lack defined substrate and superstrate languages, the outcomes of convergence often resemble structures found in all the languages involved without perfectly replicating any one pattern.^[2] Language convergence is most apparent in phonetics, with the phonological systems of the languages in contact gradually coming to resemble one another.^[5] In some cases, the results of phonological convergence may be limited to a few phonemes, while in other linguistic areas phonological convergence can result in widespread changes that affect the entire phonological system, such as the development of phonemic tone distinctions.^[5] In contrast to the limited effects of lexical borrowing, phonetic, syntactic, or morphological convergence can have greater consequences, as converging patterns can influence an entire system rather than only a handful of lexical items.^[3]

Difficulties

When studying convergence, linguists take care to distinguish between features inherited from a language's proto-language, internally motivated changes, and diffusion from an outside source; in order to argue for language convergence, linguists try to argue for both an outside source and the mechanism that precipitated the change.^[4] The more drastic effects of language convergence, such as significant syntactic convergence and mixed languages, lead some linguists to question the validity of traditional historical linguistic methods.^[1] Because of these far-reaching effects, other linguists are hesitant to accept convergence explanations for similar features and argue that often another explanation better represents changes that might otherwise attributed to language convergence.^[1]

Examples

Balkans Sprachbund: Contact between AD 800 and AD 1700 led to changes in phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexicon of Albanian, Bulgarian, Romanian, and Greek. The Balkans Sprachbund is an extreme case of language convergence.^[4]
Arnhem Land, Australia: Morphosyntactic convergence and massive lexical diffusion in the Yuulgnu languages Ritharngnu, Dhayʔyi, and others and the “Prefixing” languages Ngandi, Nunggubuyu, and others, though long periods of separation helped to preserve language boundaries.^[4]
Spanish and Quechua: Phonological convergence of the palatal /ʎ/ in Spanish and Quechua. Northern variants of Ecuadorian Spanish and Quechua include the innovative [ʒ] while southern variants of both languages maintain the [ʎ] pronunciation.^[5]
Chinese, Thai, and Vietnamese: Form a linguistic area based on the areal feature of phonemic tone distinctions.^[1]
Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages: Include the shared areal feature of retroflex consonants. ^[1]
Chipewyan, Cree, French, and English: Phonological convergence of c and s-series consonants.^[7]
Standard Average European - the convergence of several European languages, both Indo-European and unrelated ones

Related Research Articles

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Comparative method</span> Technique for studying the historical development of languages, based on language comparison

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A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestral language or parental language, called the proto-language of that family. The term "family" reflects the tree model of language origination in historical linguistics, which makes use of a metaphor comparing languages to people in a biological family tree, or in a subsequent modification, to species in a phylogenetic tree of evolutionary taxonomy. Linguists therefore describe the daughter languages within a language family as being genetically related. The divergence of a proto-language into daughter languages typically occurs through geographical separation, with different regional dialects of the proto-language spoken by different speech communities undergoing different language changes and thus becoming distinct languages from each other.

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Ural-Altaic, Uralo-Altaic or Uraltaic is a linguistic convergence zone and discredited language-family proposal uniting the Uralic and the Altaic languages. It is generally now agreed that even the Altaic languages do not share a common descent: the similarities among Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic are better explained by diffusion and borrowing. Just as Altaic, internal structure of the Uralic family also has been debated since the family was first proposed. Doubts about the validity of most or all of the proposed higher-order Uralic branchings are becoming more common. The term continues to be used for the central Eurasian typological, grammatical and lexical convergence zone.

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to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages
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to develop general theories about how and why language changes
to describe the history of speech communities
to study the history of words, i.e. etymology
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A sprachbund, also known as a linguistic area, area of linguistic convergence, or diffusion area, is a group of languages that share areal features resulting from geographical proximity and language contact. The languages may be genetically unrelated, or only distantly related, but the sprachbund characteristics might give a false appearance of relatedness.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Linguistic areas of the Americas</span>

The indigenous languages of the Americas form various linguistic areas or Sprachbunds that share various common (areal) traits.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Albanian–Romanian linguistic relationship</span> Study of the similarities of the Albanian and Romanian languages

The Albanian–Romanian linguistic relationship is a field of the research of the ethnogenesis of both peoples. The common phonological, morphological and syntactical features of the two languages have been studied for more than a century. Both languages are part of the Balkan sprachbund but there are certain elements shared only by Albanian and Romanian and its close relatives descended from Common Romanian. Aside from Latin, and from shared Greek, Slavic and Turkish elements, other characteristics and words are attributed to the Paleo-Balkan linguistic base: Illyrian, Thracian, Dacian and/or Thraco-Illyrian, Daco-Thracian. Similarities between Romanian and Albanian are not limited to their common Balkan features and the assumed substrate words: the two languages share calques and proverbs, and display analogous phonetic changes.

References

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Crowley, Terry; Bowern, Claire (2010). An Introduction to Historical Linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 269–272. ISBN 0195365542.
1 2 3 4 Thomason, Sarah (2001). Language Contact: An Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. pp. 89–90, 152. ISBN 0748607196.
1 2 3 4 5 Hickey, Raymond, ed. (2010). The Handbook of Language Contact. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 19, 68–9, 76, 285–87. ISBN 1444318160.
1 2 3 4 Winford, Donald (2003). An Introduction to Contact Linguistics. Malden, MA: Blackwell. pp. 65, 70–78. ISBN 0631212515.
1 2 3 4 Appel, René; Pieter Muysken (1987). “Language Contact and Language Change,” In Language Contact and Bilingualism. New York: Edward Arnold. pp. 153-163.
↑ Chen, Ee San (2003) Language Convergence and Bilingual Acquisition, Annual Review of Language Acquisition, vol. 3, 89–137, doi : 10.1075
↑ Scollon, Ronald (1 January 1979). "Variable Data and Linguistic Convergence: Texts and Contexts in Chipewyan". Language in Society. 8 (2): 223–243. doi:10.1017/s0047404500007442. JSTOR 4167072.

External links

The Convergence Project

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[:0-1] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Crowley, Terry; Bowern, Claire (2010). An Introduction to Historical Linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 269–272. ISBN 0195365542.

[:1-2] 1 2 3 4 Thomason, Sarah (2001). Language Contact: An Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. pp. 89–90, 152. ISBN 0748607196.

[:2-3] 1 2 3 4 5 Hickey, Raymond, ed. (2010). The Handbook of Language Contact. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 19, 68–9, 76, 285–87. ISBN 1444318160.

[:3-4] 1 2 3 4 Winford, Donald (2003). An Introduction to Contact Linguistics. Malden, MA: Blackwell. pp. 65, 70–78. ISBN 0631212515.

[:4-5] 1 2 3 4 Appel, René; Pieter Muysken (1987). “Language Contact and Language Change,” In Language Contact and Bilingualism. New York: Edward Arnold. pp. 153-163.

[6] Chen, Ee San (2003) Language Convergence and Bilingual Acquisition, Annual Review of Language Acquisition, vol. 3, 89–137, doi : 10.1075

[7] Scollon, Ronald (1 January 1979). "Variable Data and Linguistic Convergence: Texts and Contexts in Chipewyan". Language in Society. 8 (2): 223–243. doi:10.1017/s0047404500007442. JSTOR 4167072.

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