Constructions in Contact 2. Language change, multilingual practices, and additional language acquisition
Abstract
The last few years have seen a steadily increasing interest in constructional approaches to language contact. This volume builds on previous constructionist work, in particular Diasystematic Construction Grammar (DCxG) and the volume Constructions in Contact (2018) and extends its methodology and insights in three major ways. First, it presents new constructional research on a wide range of language contact scenarios including Afrikaans, American Sign Language, English, French, Malayalam, Norwegian, Spanish, Welsh, as well as contact scenarios that involve typologically different languages. Second, it also addresses other types of scenarios that do not fall into the classic language contact category, such as multilingual practices and language acquisition as emerging multilingualism. Third, it aims to integrate constructionist views on language contact and multilingualism with other approaches that focus on structural, social, and cognitive aspects. The volume demonstrates that Construction Grammar is a framework particularly well suited for analyzing a wide variety of language contact phenomena from a usage-based perspective.
... DCxG sets out from two basic assumptions, namely that any manifestation of language contact happens in the context of individual and collective multilingualism and that multilingual speakers do not rely on separate modules in cognitive processing, but select the linguistic elements they apply from their multilingual repertoire according to the given communicative setting [27]. It furthermore builds on the capacity of multilingual speakers to notice formal and functional similarities of linguistic material in their different languages. ...
... In DCxG terminology, the repertoire equals a single multilingual construction which includes constructions from different languages and language-unspecific ones. While such constructions can sometimes be described as generalizations across pre-existing language-specific ones, this is not always the case, in particular with schematic constructions [27]. For example, speakers who are part of the multilingual ecology of Ngaoundéré may have a language unspecific presentative construction at their disposal that they might fill with lexical constructions from one of the languages present in their repertoire or with unspecific lexical constructions all together (cp. ...
Speakers of the minority language Mbum (Cameroon) live in a multilingual ecology coping with different degrees of interferences from a wide variety of other languages and dialects. They consciously and/or unconsciously insert constructions from different languages in different communicative contexts and often apply mixed codes altogether. Sometimes, they reckon that a given linguistic unit does not belong to one specific language from their repertoire but feel that it is somehow ‘around’ in the multilingual space they navigate. Such statements highlight an epistemological dilemma that becomes more and more apparent in language contact theory: While it is evident that in multilingual ecologies assumptions of single, articulate, static, and ideally variation-free language systems do not at all reflect speakers’ realities, the concept of individual languages that influence each other to various degrees while keeping their grammars neatly apart is generally presupposed for descriptive and analytic purposes. A possible solution for the dilemma lies in the Diasystematic Construction Grammar approach which conceives of a grammar as community specific and not as language specific.
... S U M Á R I O uma perspectiva homogênea da língua" (WIEDEMER; MACHADO VIEIRA, 2022, p. 235) ou, pelo menos, não destaca claramente o caráter de heterogeneidade da gramática, seja na perspectiva do falante monolíngue ou monodialetal, seja na do falante bi/multilíngue ou multidialetal. Uma das poucas propostas para uma abordagem multilíngue é a delineada na perspectiva diassistêmica de Gramática de Construções (HÖDER, 2014a(HÖDER, , 2014bHÖDER, 2018HÖDER, , 2021, que considera os limites do que chamamos de língua como algo difuso e abarca uma concepção multidialetal da linguagem. Essa perspectiva diassistêmica não é nova e está nas bases da Dialetologia, da Sociolinguística e da Sociolinguística de Contato. ...
... Boas & Gonzálvez-García, 2014), contributing to the knowledge about characteristics like domain-or genre typical constructions (Liegeois et al., this volume) or sound correspondences (Hagel, this volume) within a language family. Furthermore, several of the articles in this volume highlight an important perspective, applying a constructional approach originated in the context of Nordic language contact, namely the one of emerging multilingualism and multilingual practices in societies and individuals (see Section 2.4; Boas & Höder, 2021). To explore the range of applicability of DCxG, multilingualism involving several Nordic languages (see Hagel, this volume), or one Nordic language and another closely related (Germanic) language (see Olofsson & Prentice, this volume), are feasible and important steps, showing the plausibility of diasystematicity and laying the ground for research on emerging multilingualism involving typologically different languages. ...
![Julia Prentice [Grosse]](https://i1.rgstatic.net/ii/profile.image/278460258897921-1443401507158_Q64/Julia-Prentice-grosse.jpg)
This volume presents eight studies of linguistic phenomena in Nordic languages (notably Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish) from a construction grammar perspective. The contributions both deepen and widen the focus of construction grammar applied to Nordic languages by dealing with a variety of topics, such as the constructional network, pseudo-coordination, additional language learning and emerging multilingualism, prototypical semantics in argument structure constructions, and domain-specific discourse and language behavior. The volume showcases the vibrant research activity within part of the construction grammar community dealing with Nordic languages, contributing to the knowledge about the structure, use and learning of these languages, as well as to the field of construction grammar as a whole.
Studies have demonstrated that Dutch has a much stronger tendency towards compounding than French (e.g., Du. badkamer vs Fr. salle de bains ‘bathroom’) when adopting a restrictive approach of compounding in which the presence of prepositions and/or internal inflection in multi-word expressions is considered evidence for their syntactic formation. The example above illustrates that Dutch compounding differs from French in another important aspect: while Germanic compounding is by definition right-headed, French has a general tendency towards left-hand headed compounds and phrases. In this study, we investigate the impact of these typological differences on the acquisition of Dutch nominal compounds by French-speaking learners in the context of multilingual Belgium. We provide an in-depth corpus analysis of the acquisition of Dutch compounds at different levels of abstraction (schematic and substantive compound constructions). Moreover, we investigate the impact of additional target-language input through CLIL programs ( Content and Language Integrated Learning ) on the acquisition of Dutch compounds by French-speaking learners of Dutch. The results are described and interpreted from the perspective of Diasystematic Construction Grammar (DCxG), which conceptualizes the linguistic competence of multilingual speakers as one integrated network of constructions, containing language-specific idioconstructions and shared diaconstructions .
Aims and objectives
This introductory article aims to set the scene for the special issue by discussing existing and future research directions on multiword units (MWUs) in multilingual speakers. It also outlines the purpose and structure of the special issue and presents the individual contributions.
Design, data and analysis
The introductory article reviews the most relevant theoretical and methodological issues as well as the main research gaps related to the processing, learning, and use of MWUs in both mono- and multilingual speakers. In addition, it introduces the contributions to this volume and briefly presents the types of MWUs, the types of multilingual speakers and the data and methodologies that are in focus.
Conclusions, originality and implications
The contributions in this special issue on different types of MWUs in different groups of multilingual speakers using different methodologies shed new light on open questions in various areas of multilingualism research, including psycholinguistic approaches to second-language learning and processing, contact linguistics as well as research on heritage speakers and language attrition. In this regard, the special issue contributes to a more complete and differentiated picture of the role of MWUs in multilingual speakers but also in language processing, learning, and use in general.
Steffen Höder is a Full Professor of Scandinavian Linguistics at the Institute of Scandinavian Studies, Frisian Studies and General Linguistics at Kiel University . He has a PhD from University of Hamburg (Scandinavian Studies) and his main research interest regards Language contact, Areal linguistics, Language change and variation, Construction Grammar. Professor Höder is the author of several articles in international peer-reviewed journals and some of his current researches are about the Diasystematic Construction Grammar model. The present interview offers explanations that reveal mature reflections on the cognitive representation of grammar in a diasystematic perspective, contributing to interpretations of acquisition and descriptive phenomena of languages. Steffen Höder é professor titular de Linguística Escandinava no Instituto de Estudos Escandinavos, Estudos Frísios e Linguística Geral da Universidade de Kiel. Ele possui PhD pela Universidade de Hamburgo (Estudos Escandinavos) e seus principais interesses de pesquisa dizem respeito ao contato linguístico, à linguística regional, à mudança e variação linguísticas, à Gramática de Construções. Professor Höder é autor de vários artigos em periódicos internacionais revisados por pares e algumas de suas pesquisas atuais são sobre o modelo da Gramática de Construções Diassistêmica. A presente entrevista traz explicações que revelam maduras reflexões sobre a representação cognitiva da gramática em perspectiva diassistêmica, a contribuírem para interpretações de fenômenos aquisicionais e descritivos das línguas.
Over the past decades, research on the linguistic impact of globalization has foregrounded the socio-pragmatic meaning potential and mental categorization of anglicisms, looking for signs of agentivity and contextual sensitivity in the way receptor language users incorporate borrowed English resources into their speech, both in form and in function. This brought attention to understudied phenotypes of contact-induced variation and change that go beyond the borrowing of individual lexical items (loanwords) from English. This paper aims to contribute to this endeavor, illustrating the potential of construction grammar to uncover the integration of borrowed chunks. In focus is the emergence of the verb pimpen “to pimp” in Dutch, a rapid innovation from the English proper name Pimp My Ride . A sample of 4,561 Dutch tweets containing (strings of) pimp posted between January 2007 and April 2020 was coded manually for formal and semantic properties. This allowed us to calculate an aggregate score of “deconstructionalization” both within and outside of the target construction [ pimp POSS N]. Results indeed reveal a gradual blurring of the sharp contours of the construction, but also indicate that this process mainly affects the instantiations closest to the original. Linked up with the mediatized origin of the construction, our results add to our understanding of the relationship between media, language contact, and what is referred to as glocalization.
The global spread of English, manifest in multiple Englishes around the world, and its role as a global language continue to be dynamically evolving areas of investigation. A range of studies have emerged along related strands of research concerned with the global spread and creation of Englishes (World Englishes); the use of English as an additional language, international language, and lingua franca; and the functions of English as the language of globalization mediating global cultural flows. An explicit and implicit corollary of the global spread of English is the contact that Englishes have with other languages and the influences that emerge from this contact.
This Research Topic aims at foregrounding the effects that surface from the interplay of Englishes with other languages. The interaction scenarios may differ widely, ranging from remote language contact (e.g. English influence being mediated) to the presence of English in everyday multilingual practices - both individually (as emerging from multilingual minds) and socially (e.g. English impacting on the communal use of other languages). By showcasing current research that investigates different contexts in which Englishes interact with other languages, this Research Topic aims at furthering our understanding of the processes of language contact and multilingualism in various domains of language use, including their social implications for speakers of Englishes and other languages.
Steffen Höder is a Full Professor of Scandinavian Linguistics at the Institute of Scandinavian Studies, Frisian Studies and General Linguistics at Kiel University. He has a PhD from University of Hamburg (Scandinavian Studies) and his main research interest regards Language contact, Areal linguistics, Language change and variation, Construction grammar. Professor Höder is the author of several articles in international peer-reviewed journals and some of his current researches are about the Diasystematic Construction Grammar model. The present interview offers explanations that reveal mature reflections on the cognitive representation of grammar in a diasystematic perspective, contributing to interpretations of acquisition and descriptive phenomena of languages.
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