dynamics of contact-induced language change
DESCRIPTION
The volume deals with previously undescribed morphosyntactic variations and changes appearing in settings involving language contact. Contact-induced changes are defined as dynamic and multiple, involving internal change as well as historical and sociolinguistic factors. A variety of explanations are identified and their relationships are analyzed. Only a multifaceted methodology enables this fine-grained approach to contact-induced change. A range of methodologies are proposed, but the chapters generally have their roots in a typological perspective. The contributors recognize the precautionary principle: for example, they emphasize the difficulty of studying languages that have not been described adequately and for which diachronic data are not extensive or reliable.TRANSCRIPT
Language contact in language obsolescence
Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald
1. Preamble
The di¤erence between language change in ‘‘healthy’’ and in endangered
or obsolescent languages very often lies not in the sorts of change, which
tend to be the same (Campbell and Muntzel 1989). It tends to lie in the
quantity of change and in the speed with which the obsolescent language
changes (see Schmidt 1985: 213; Aikhenvald 2002: 243–264). Language
displacement frequently results in reduction of paradigms, simplification
and loss of the language’s own features, and, ultimately, language shift
and loss. As the obsolescent language is ‘‘retreating, contracting, as it
gradually falls into disuse’’ (Dixon 1991a: 199), we expect it to be flooded
with an influx of patterns and forms from the dominant language.
Contact-induced changes can roughly be divided into three sorts, in
terms of their stability. Following Tsitsipis (1998: 34), it appears useful to
divide changes into completed, ongoing (or continuous), and discontinuous.
Completed changes cover those aspects of the grammatical system of a lan-
guage which do not show any synchronic variation and which go beyond
speakers’ awareness (see the discussion of a Spanish-influenced passive in
Purepecha by Chamoreau 2005). Ongoing or continuous changes are those
in progress; here the degree of influence of the other language depends on
the speaker’s competence and possibly other, sociolinguistic, variables (such
as age or degree of participation in community life). Discontinuous changes
are one-o¤ deviations characteristic of individual speakers. In the situation
of language attrition, these often di¤erentiate fluent speakers from less
proficient ones.
This classification of changes is particularly important for distinguishing
between old and established di¤usional processes – characterized by com-
pleted changes – and new, in-coming continuous changes making their
way into a speech community. In a situation of language obsolescence,
one expects to encounter a multiplicity of sporadic changes which would
be considered to be mistakes by fluent speakers (if they existed). Such
aberrant individual innovations are tantamount to Tsitsipis’ ad hoc or
discontinuous changes. The impact of language shift as seen through
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discontinuous changes in the context of displacive language contact is the
topic of this article.
2. The various facets of language obsolescence
An obsolescent language is no longer actively used or transmitted. We dis-
tinguish several kinds of social context in which this occurs.1
Firstly, an obsolescent language is no longer actively spoken by a com-
munity, and is not transmitted to the next generation. Its knowledge is often
confined to a handful of last fluent speakers – as is the case for Ingrian
Finnish in Estonia (Riionheimo 2002), Bare (Aikhenvald 1995), Dyirbal
and Yidiny (Dixon 1991a, b), Mawayana (Carlin 2006), and Resıgaro
(Allin 1975) – or to a handful of not-very-fluent speakers or semi-speakers,
or even rememberers – as in the case of Nivkh, a Paleo-Siberian isolate
(Gruzdeva 2002), or Nyulnyul, an Australian language (McGregor 2002;
see Hill and Hill 1986, Hill 1985, for a definition of the terms). We will
refer to this as ‘‘global’’ language obsolescence.
Alternatively, language obsolescence can a¤ect individuals or groups of
individuals living away from the language community. This is often the
case with speakers of immigrant languages, spoken by groups of varied
size whose major language is the dominant language of the country. These
varieties are sometimes called ‘‘heritage’’ languages. The existing studies
include Heritage Russian (Pereltsvaig 2008, and references there; Kagan
and Dillon 2001), Heritage Italian, Heritage Norwegian, Heritage Swedish,
and Heritage Czech (see Bettoni 1991; Milani 1996; Hjelde 1996; Klintborg
1999; Henzl 1981).
Along similar lines, people who live away from the community where
the language is actively spoken also display signs of obsolescence. Obsoles-
cent speakers of many indigenous languages of Papua New Guinea form
part of urban communities whose dominant language is overwhelmingly
Papua New Guinea English and also Tok Pisin. The domain of their
ancestral language is often limited to token symbolic use in speech formu-
las. And when the speakers attempt to use the language, its make-up is
markedly di¤erent from the way it is spoken by the speech community in
the original area. I have observed this ‘‘individual’’ or ‘‘localized’’ language
obsolescence among Manambu speakers – see Section 3.1 (example (1)).
1. The examples discussed here reflect what Campbell and Muntzel (1989) call‘‘gradual death’’ of a language. We do not consider instances of ‘‘suddendeath’’ or ‘‘radical death’’ of a language, nor of ‘‘bottom-up death.’’
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Instances of individual or localized language obsolescence may occur
within a broader context of a ‘‘global’’ obsolescence of a language. Paumarı,
an Arawa language from Southern Amazonia, is gradually falling out of
use, and more rapidly so in the communities on the River Ituxı than on
the River Purus. As a result, speakers from the Ituxı communities display
more signs of language obsolescence (Aikhenvald 2010; Chapman and
Derbyshire 1991).
The interest of individual language obsolescence for a student of lan-
guage change lies in the possibility of comparing the obsolescent or heri-
tage language with the variety still actively spoken in the ‘‘homeland.’’
In the case of ‘‘global’’ obsolescence, we are sometimes fortunate to have
access to a description of a pre-obsolescent variety of a language. For
instance, Krejnovich’s work gives us access to Nivkh as it used to be
before the language stopped being transmitted to the next generation.
Numerous descriptions of Ingrian Finnish allow us to trace the obsoles-
cence of this language as it is currently spoken in Estonia (Riionheimo
2002). The grammar of traditional Paumarı by Chapman and Derbyshire
(1991) allows us to trace the nature of obsolescence in the present-day lan-
guage. The obsolescent Dyirbal (Schmidt 1985; Dixon 1991a) can be con-
trasted and compared with the language described by Dixon (1972) when
it was still fluently spoken. And the Tariana spoken by traditional repre-
sentatives of the older generation (nowadays in their late eighties) can be
contrasted with the speech of younger people who are gradually relinquish-
ing their ancestral language.
A situation of language obsolescence presupposes obsolescent speakers.
Their proficiency in the given language may, of course, vary (some may
be considered barely ‘‘rememberers,’’ others may conserve a degree of
fluency). The di¤erence between obsolescent speakers of obsolescent lan-
guages and obsolescent speakers of languages in active use elsewhere may
be compared to a well-known di¤erence between societal multilingualism
and individual multilingualism. The former is a social phenomenon and is
of prime concern to sociolinguists. The latter reflects personal history and
is of interest to psychologists more than to sociolinguists. However, we do
find that processes of language obsolescence appear to be similar in the
context of ‘‘global’’ and of ‘‘local’’ obsolescence (at the level of the individual
speaker). This suggests the presence of shared mechanisms which could,
and should, be investigated.
A word of caution is in order. Even if we do have access to what can be
considered a ‘‘pre-obsolescent’’ variety, we cannot always be sure that this
variety did not already bear some signs of decay. When R. M. W. Dixon
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started his fieldwork on Dyirbal in 1963, the language was actively spoken,
in the domestic sphere, by several score people, including children. Over a
quarter of a century, Dixon has seen the language decline ‘‘from a state in
which there was an abundance of speakers . . . to one in which there is just
one good consultant left for each of three dialects, with no one to go to for
a second opinion’’ (Dixon 1991a: 183). But even in the good old days of
the early sixties, older speakers would comment on the fact that ‘‘words
used to be longer’’ in the language as they can recall it spoken in their
childhood by those old people who had passed away. That is, the process
of language contraction may have started long before the linguist came to
the scene, and this ‘‘discourse of nostalgia’’ (Hill 1998) may reflect speakers’
awareness of this. The few older representatives of the Tariana-speaking
community – the late Candido Brito, Americo and Jose Manoel Brito –
can be viewed as keepers of the traditional language. However, by the time
they were born (between 1911 and 1920), Tariana communities were already
a¤ected by Brazilian influence, and their traditional lives were under destruc-
tion. None of the three elders could remember the full version of tradi-
tional rituals and the ritual language. We can safely assume that even their
Tariana, fluent as it is compared to that of the younger generation, has
already su¤ered from a certain amount of loss. We can hypothesize that
this could have been accompanied by a shift to a dominant language.
Sadly, in many cases the obsolescent variety is the only one which is
professionally described. Allin (1975) is based on fieldwork with a handful
of last speakers of Resıgaro, a North Arawak language. Carlin (2006) is
based on her fieldwork with two last speakers of Mawayana, also Arawak.
The same applies to Nyulnyul (McGregor 2002), Araki (Francois 2002),
and quite a few other languages from many parts of the world. In none
of these cases do we have access to a full ‘‘pre-obsolescent’’ variety. Most
likely, we are dealing with ‘‘a mere remnant of what the language must
have been like when many speakers used it as their only means of commu-
nication’’ (Haas 1941).
Linguistic consequences of language obsolescence – ‘‘global,’’ ‘‘individ-
ual,’’ or ‘‘localized’’ – include simplification and reduction of grammar
and lexicon. Categories absent from the dominant language are particu-
larly endangered. So the system of numeral classifiers becomes reduced to
just a few in Korean as it is spoken by young people in Canberra (Lee
1997) whose major language of communication is English. (This is also
known as ‘‘negative borrowing.’’) The obsolescent language often su¤ers
from stylistic reduction and dialect mixing, and also speakers’ insecurity
(see Campbell and Muntzel 1989; Chamoreau 2000; Grenoble and Whaley
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1998; Aikhenvald 2002: Chapter 11; Dixon 1991a, b, for Dyirbal and
Yidiny; Helimsky 2007: 218, for Selkup).
The impact of the increasingly dominant language on the receding,
obsolescent language gradually falling into disuse tends to involve a
massive influx of non-native forms. The outcome of this influx may result
in unusual phenomena, which may include occasional borrowed bound
morpheme and mixed paradigms (Section 3). If speakers tend to avoid
imported forms, impending language shift may result in a spread and
expansion of look-alikes and a massive calquing of structures from the
dominant language and accelerated di¤usion of patterns (Section 4).2
Speakers of obsolescent languages vary in their proficiency, from fluent
language users to semi-speakers with limited competence (Dorian 1973:
417, 1977). In some cases, evaluation may be possible using internal or
external clues. But in many cases we have no information about the level
of speakers’ knowledge: if a typologically unusual phenomenon is based
on such uncertain sources, the validity of the phenomenon is cast in doubt.
3. Non-native forms in language obsolescence
An influx of non-native forms is a typical feature of obsolescent speakers.
In Haugen’s (1989: 67) words, ‘‘the adoption of English loans’’ was the
‘‘first great step in the direction of English’’ for immigrant speakers of
Norwegian. The adoption of non-native forms often involves lexical items
and also grammatical forms. Conjunctions and discourse markers, highly
susceptible to borrowing under any circumstances of language contact, are
the ‘‘usual suspects.’’
In Section 3.1, we discuss relevant examples of individual language obso-
lescence in Manambu, comparing a fluent and an obsolescent speaker. We
2. Language contact does not explain all the discontinuous changes in languageobsolescence. For instance, terminal speakers of Arvanitika Albanian in Greecesporadically lose gender and number agreement; their entire system of tense-aspect-mood categories is disintegrating – imperfective past forms are notused at all, and the marking of grammatical person is ‘‘morphologically dis-torted’’ (Tsitsitpis 1998: 44–62). This ‘‘agrammatism’’ cannot be explained by‘‘negative borrowing,’’ that is, loss of categories not present in the dominantlanguage, Greek, since Greek possesses all the categories now lost in the obso-lescent Arvanitika (Sasse 1992b: 69–70). Changes in language obsolescencemay be motivated by language-internal processes (see, for instance, Dixon1991b; also Gruzdeva 2002).
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then turn to the obsolescent Bare, a North Arawak language from Vene-
zuela and Brazil, and compare two sources on the language which display
varying degree of obsolescence. In these instances we can argue that
language contact in the situation of obsolescence does not produce any
remarkable results – the e¤ects are the same as may have occurred in
language contact of a non-replacive nature. This is consistent with the
idea that an increase in the quantity and the speed of change is the major
e¤ect of language obsolescence.3
Language shift in the context of language obsolescence may also result
in inclusion of some less likely candidates for borrowing – personal pro-
nouns, both free and bound. In Section 3.2 we look at Mawayana, a
North Arawak language with its last two speakers in Suriname in Trio
and Waiwai-speaking communities, and then turn to Resıgaro, a moribund
North Arawak language in northeastern Peru, which has undergone a
massive impact of Bora and Witotoan.
Can the influx of non-native forms in language obsolescence obscure its
genetic a‰liation? This is the topic of Section 3.3.
3.1. Non-native free forms: following a beaten path
3.1.1. Manambu
Those speakers of Manambu (a Ndu language from the East Sepik area)
who live in urban centers and rarely use the language employ numerous
non-native forms. An obsolescent speaker who had spent much of his life
in an urban town speaking Tok Pisin (the major lingua franca of Papua
New Guinea) produced (1). Later on, a fluent speaker volunteered (2), as
something she would have said. The Tok Pisin forms are in italics. The
form okey comes from English. It is also widely used by speakers of Tok
Pisin. Non-native forms are in bold.
3. I have undertaken extensive fieldwork on Manambu (see, for instance, Aikhen-vald 2008b), Tariana (see, for instance, Aikhenvald 2002) and also Bare (Iworked with the last fluent speaker of the language). For each language,I have recorded a substantial number of texts and natural conversations.ALL the examples in this paper (as in my other work) come from spontaneousdiscourse. In my fieldwork, I avoid elicitation as being methodologicallyflawed (see Aikhenvald 2007, Dixon 2007 for further fundamentals of linguisticfieldwork).
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Obsolescent speaker:
(1) asa:y kiya-d�-k aw wuna amay namba tufather die-3sg.m-compl.ds conn Iþlkþf.sg mother number two
du-ak ra:l okeyman-dat marryþ3f.sg.subj OK
ata lukautim-d�-d�wun tasol a taimthen look.after-3sg.m.subj-1sg.m.o but,only that.f.sg time
sikul-�r yi-d�wunschool-all go-1sg.m.subj
‘After my father died, then my mother married a second man, OK,
then he looked after me, only that at that time I went to school.’
Fluent speaker:
(2) asa:y kiya-d�-k aw wuna amay
father die-3sg.m-compl.ds conn Iþlkþf.sg mother
n�k�-d� du-ak ra:l ya:kya
another-sg.m man-dat marryþ3f.sgsubj all.right
ata yakwiya-d�-d�wun aw a s�k�rthen look.after-3sg.m.subj-1sg.m.o conn that.f.sg time
sikul-�r yi-d�wunschool-all go-1sg.m.subj
‘After my father died, then my mother married a second man, all
right, then he looked after me, only that at that time I went to school’
The two versions share one established loan word, sikul ‘school.’ Non-
native forms are not necessarily restricted to lexical items. Example (1)
shows that discourse markers, numerals, and conjunctions are imported
from the dominant language.4 Influx of loan forms is a striking feature of
‘‘globally obsolescent’’ languages. Extensive lexical impact of English has
been observed in the speech of the last speakers of Nyulnyul, an Australian
language (McGregor 2002: 177). Traditional Gooniyandi and Warrwa did
not have coordinating conjunctions: the remaining obsolescent speakers use
English forms nd (from and ) and � (from or). Traditional Nyulnyul did
4. In a situation of obsolescent speakers whose usage is unstable, the boundarybetween loans and code-switches is even harder to draw than in other language-contact situations. This is the reason why I use the term ‘‘import’’ to avoid usingeither ‘‘borrowing’’ or ‘‘code-switch.’’
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have a conjunction agal ‘and’; the two remaining fluent speakers use the
English import nd.
Borrowing conjunctions and discourse markers in itself is not a symptom
of impending language death. Hamp (1989) and Johanson (2002) have
shown that allowing a certain number of loan forms by no means endangers
the language; the opposite can be true. Many fluent speakers of Manambu
in the villages use the English discourse marker okey and some occasionally
slip in the Tok Pisin tasol ‘but’ as a replacement for the polysemous aw
‘then, but, or’ (see Aikhenvald 2008b, 2009a). This confirms the general
assumption that language obsolescence tends to enhance the tendencies
present in a ‘‘healthy’’ language.
3.1.2. Bare
A comparison between two di¤erent stages of language obsolescence of the
same language points in a similar direction, that of increased influx of non-
native forms. Lopez Sanz’s (1972) brief grammatical description of Bare, a
North Arawak language from the Upper Rio Negro area in Venezuela, is
based on the analysis of materials (including several texts) collected in the
late 1960s from two remaining fluent speakers of the language from Santa
Rosa de Amanadona (with a total population of ethnic Bare of 140).
There are hardly any loans from Spanish, either lexical or grammatical.
Nowadays, people in Venezuela who identify themselves as Bare in Vene-
zuela speak Spanish; the Bare in Brazil speak Portuguese (some also know
Nheengatu, or Lıngua Geral, a Tupı-Guaranı-based lingua franca of the
area).
In 1991, I worked with the late Candelario da Silva (1921–1992), from
the Tiburi community, near Cucui, Amazonas, Brazil. Candelario’s family
moved in 1912 from Venezuela, fleeing from an uprising. His family main-
tained links with relatives in Venezuela in the communities of Puerto
Ayacucho, San Fernando de Atabapo, and Santa Rosa de Amanadona.
According to Candelario, all the remaining speakers of Bare in the above
mentioned localities in Venezuela were older than himself. He frequently
referred to his elderly aunts in Puerto Ayacucho as authorities to consult
with on words in Bare he himself could not remember. Candelario under-
went traditional male initiation (his account of it is in Aikhenvald 1995:
52–55), and insisted that he had grown up with Bare as his first language.
He was fluent in Bare, his father’s language. His late mother, herself a
speaker of Mandawaka (another extinct North Arawak language of the
area), had always spoken Bare to him. After her death about 30 years
prior to our encounter, he had kept his ancestral language which he used
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to talk to himself, especially when he used to get drunk (and this, accord-
ing to Candelario, was not infrequent).5 Candelario was quadrilingual: his
main home language was Nheengatu, and he was equally fluent in Spanish
and Portuguese. His children spoke Portuguese and Nheengatu.
The variety of Bare recorded by Lopez Sanz in Santa Rosa de Amana-
dona has a richer morphology than the language of Candelario. For
instance, it has a variety of aspectual and modal markers (e.g. -phei
‘durative’ and -ya ‘dubitative’), and a marker of reported speech -man
not attested in the corpus collected from Candelario. Verb forms attested
in Lopez Sanz (1972) contain up to five su‰xes, whereas Candelario never
used more than one su‰x on the verb.6 Another major di¤erence between
texts and examples in Lopez Sanz (1972) and the corpus recorded from
Candelario is the abundance of Spanish and Portuguese forms, just as
would be expected in the case of advanced language obsolescence.
Many of these are not lexical forms. Candelario made an e¤ort to
avoid Spanish or Portuguese forms: the few consistent exceptions include
playa ‘sand’ (from Spanish playa ‘beach’) instead of either khaadi ‘sand,
earth’ (Arihini variety) or kadieho (Ihini variety: Natterer 1831), precisa-
‘need, require’ (from Portuguese precisar ‘need’), and gata- ‘spend, waste’
from Portuguese or Spanish gastar ‘spend’).
Spanish subordinating conjunctions occur where speakers of the more
traditional variety recorded by Lopez Sanz (1972) would use a sequencing
clitic -ka. This morpheme in Bare, just like in many other Arawak lan-
guages of the area, has a variety of meanings: it marks adverbial clauses
5. My corpus contains over 150 pages of texts and dialogues, and word-lists. SeeAikhenvald (1995) for a grammatical analysis of the material assembled, anda survey of literature on Bare. At the time of my work with Candelario, andwriting the grammar, I did not have access to Lopez Sanz (1972). Materials inLopez Sanz reflect some language attrition. Traditionally, Bare had two majorvarieties – Arihini (‘‘the ones from here’’) and Ihini (‘‘the ones from there’’: seeAikhenvald 1995). Newly available materials collected by Johann Natterer in1831 demonstrate the existence of lexical di¤erences between the two varieties.In the texts and examples in Lopez Sanz (1972), lexical items from the twovarieties appear in free variation. Such dialect mixture, or, in Dixon’s (1991a)words, dialect merging, is typical of language obsolescence. Candelario knewof the two varieties, but could not tell them apart.
6. Some di¤erences between the variety of Santa Rosa de Amanadona recordedby Lopez Sanz and the language of Candelario may be due to additional dia-lectal or idiolectal variation: these include Santa Rosa de Amanadona heinand Candelario’s hena for declarative negation. Note that I preserve the tran-scription given by Lopez Sanz (1972) for the examples from Santa Rosa deAmanadona.
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of most types except purposive, and regularly occurs on conditional, tem-
poral, and complement clauses (see Aikhenvald 2006b for Tariana, and
discussion there). An example of -ka, from Lopez Sanz (1972: 80), is in
(3) (in boldface); note that in a negative construction -ka attaches to the
negation (glosses are supplied by me):
Bare: Santa Rosa de Amanadona
(3) hena-ka i-kasa hein i-nika-waka
neg-seq 3gs-arrive neg 3sg.m-eat-neg
‘If he does not come, he does not eat.’
The polysemous -ka also appears in Candelario’s texts, as shown in the
example below from an autobiographical story (also see Aikhenvald 1995:
48–50). Clauses are in brackets, for ease of reference.
Bare: Candelario da Silva
(4) [nu-mina¸ i ø-maha niku] [a¸ i bi-pa¸ata-ni1sg-master 3sg.m-say 1sgþfor here 2sg-money-poss
kuma¸ehe] [bi-katehesa-ka] [beke badahanaka biku
big 2sg-know-seq fut one.day 2sgþfor
ahaw bi-wakhid’a-ka] [hena-ka bi-katehesa]
with what 2sg-live-seq neg-seq 2sg-know
[phinuka bi-pa¸ata-ni]2sg-throw-decl 2sg-money-poss
‘My master said to me: here is your big money, if you know some-
thing, one day you will have what to live with, if you do not know,
you will throw away your money.’
The sequencing marker is not used to introduce speech reports: as shown
in (4), speech reports are juxtaposed to the verb of speech.
Besides the sequencing -ka, Bare had an adverbial form abeuku ‘when,
as soon as; then’ used both by the two speakers in Santa Rosa de Aman-
dona and by Candelario. If accompanied by the sequencing -ka on the
verb, abeuku is a temporal linker ‘when.’ Example (5) comes from a myth-
ical text recorded by Lopez Sanz (1972: 83):
Bare: Santa Rosa de Amanadona
(5) isınka abeuku ihıwa-ka Puluna-minali. . .
3sg.mþlike when 3sg.mþgo ?-master. . .
‘It was when Pulunaminali (the master of all animals) went (round). . .’
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In (6), from an autobiographical story by Candelario, abeuku is also
accompanied by -ka on the verb (in the last clause).
Bare: Candelario da Silva
(6) da-ya¸aki nu-maha i-ku me-maha ni-ku
dem-whisky 1sg-say 3sg.m-for 3pl-say 1sg-for
ke nihiwa abeuku i-makhi-ka sa ya¸akithat 1sgþgo when 3sg.m-finish-seq dem whisky
‘Then we drank, we managed to drink all the whisky, I said to him,
they said to me that I shall go when the whisky finishes.’
In the few examples of abeuku without an accompanying sequencing
-ka in the variety of Santa Rosa de Amanadona, the form means ‘then’
(Lopez Sanz 1972: 84):
Bare: Santa Rosa de Amanadona
(7) abeuku humadan
then 3f.sgþleave
‘Then she lets (him) go.’
Unlike the two speakers from Santa Rosa de Amanadona, Candelario
used abeuku as a temporal linker without the accompanying -ka on the
verb. In (8), -ka appears in the preceding clause, so its absence in the third
clause (introduced with abeuku) could be explained as an instance of
ellipsis:
Bare: Candelario da Silva
(8) [me-nika kubati ] abeuku idi-ka3pl-eat fish when then/there-seq
abeuku bed’a-waka me-nika matsuka
when nothing 3pl-eat manioc.flour
‘They (dogs) eat fish, when/if it is there, when (there is) nothing, they
eat manioc flour.’
However, in other examples like the one in (9) -ka is simply not used, and
abeuku is the only linker:
(9) bihiwa awehentei abeuku i-makhi
2sgþgo hereþelative when 3sg.m-finish
‘You will go away when it (the drink) finishes.’
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Candelario insisted on translating abeuku as ‘when’ (Portuguese quando).
The conjunction occupies the same clause-initial position as quando in
Portuguese (or cuando in Spanish). The apparent obsolescence of the
sequencing -ka in the presence of abeuku may indicate that Candelario
was adopting a Spanish-Portuguese strategy for temporal linking. He
never used this Spanish-Portuguese form himself. He freely used other
Spanish or Spanish-Portuguese conjunctions. Just occasionally, the verb
in a subordinate clause introduced by a conjunction would be accom-
panied by -ka. The temporal mientre ke (from Spanish mientras que)
‘while, whereas’ is accompanied by -ka in (10):
(10) mientre-ke nu-nakuda-ka i-ma¸e-d’a kubati
while-that 1sg-go-seq 3sg.m-steal-inch fish
‘While I was gone, he (the dog) started stealing the fish.’
The causal purke ‘because’ (from Spanish porque) is used on its own in the
penultimate clause of (11). It is accompanied by -ka in the second clause
of (12):
(11) idi me-maha-ka [ke hena me-yehe-waka
then 3pl-say-decl that neg 3pl-can-neg
me-dia-sa-ka nu] [purke hena hnuwina-waka
3pl-drink-caus-seq i because neg 1sgþfall-neg
ya¸aki ahaw] [hena hnuwina-waka]
whisky from neg 1sgþfall-neg
‘Then they said to me that they could not make me drunk, because I
do not fall down from whisky, I do not fall down.’
(12) [damakaru-kua nu-¸ehedi ] [purke nu-¸ehedi nu-yuwahada-ka]
jungle-locþlong 1sg-like because 1sg-like 1sg-walk-seq
[ pero nu-witi hena-hana yada-ka-na]
but 1sg-eye neg-more 3sg.mþsee-decl-perf
‘I enjoy the jungle, because I like to walk, but my eyes do not see
any more.’
The linker ke (from Spanish, Portuguese que) is used to introduce speech
reports, as in (11) and (6). About 60 percent of speech reports in the
corpus contain ke. This same form occurs in the meaning of ‘so that,’ as
in (13).
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(13) [bihıwa behewa] [kuhu ke id’ua¸ i beke bı ]
2sgþtake 2sgþfrom he that well fut you
‘Take it (poisoned pillow) from you, so that you will be well.’
Candelario used other Spanish conjunctions, for instance, the coordinator
pero ‘but’ (from Spanish pero ‘but’) shown in (12). None of the Spanish-
Portuguese conjunctions appear in the Santa Rosa de Amanadona variety.
Note that conjunctions occupy the same place as in Spanish. In contrast to
the other documented variety of Bare, and to most other Arawak lan-
guages, Bare spoken by Candelario is losing the sequencing enclitic -ka, a
marker which has no equivalent in either Spanish or Portuguese. This is
an instance of ‘‘negative borrowing.’’ We can thus conclude that the influx
of non-native forms into the speech of the last fluent speaker of Bare is
accompanied by leveling of structures. The obsolescent Bare imports
Spanish and Portuguese forms, and also becomes more similar to the
dominant Spanish and Portuguese in terms of its grammatical structure.
Conjunctions – especially free forms – are among the most borrowable
elements of the language (the interested reader is advise to consult Stolz
and Stolz 1996 with special focus on American Indian languages; Matras
1998, and Aikhenvald 2006a). As stated at the end of §3.1.1, the fact that
Spanish and Portuguese conjunctions have been borrowed into Bare
should not be considered as a special phenomenon in language obsoles-
cence. What is indicative of Bare as an obsolescent language is the high
number of loans from the dominant languages. That is, this contact-
induced change in language obsolescence appears to follow a beaten
path, albeit at an increased rate. we can recall, from §1 of this paper, that
the di¤erence between language change in vital, and in obsolescent lan-
guage, may lie in the ‘quantity of change’. It is indeed the case here.
3.2. Influx of non-native free forms: unusual patterns
We now turn to some rather unusual borrowing patterns in obsolescent
languages. In a number of instances, obsolescent languages borrow per-
sonal pronouns from the dominant language. In the examples available,
pronominal forms which express categories attested in the dominant lan-
guage but absent from the obsolescent one may get borrowed.
3.2.1. Mawayana
Mawayana (Carlin 2006) is a highly endangered North Arawak language
spoken by just two elderly people in a village where Trio and Waiwai,
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from the Carib family, are the dominant languages. The two remaining
speakers of Mawayana have little opportunity of using the language, and
are aware that when they go, so will Mawayana.
Just like most other Arawak languages, Mawayana originally had first,
second, and third person, without distinguishing between first person
plural inclusive (I and you) and exclusive (I and a third person, excluding
you). In contrast, Waiwai and Trio have di¤erent forms for first person
inclusive and for first person exclusive. As a result of influence from Waiwai
and Trio as dominant languages with an obligatory distinction between
inclusive and exclusive, the two remaining speakers of Mawayana consis-
tently use the Waiwai pronoun amna to express the concept of first person
plural exclusive (e.g. Waiwai amna krapan ‘our (excl) bow’). The original
first person plural prefix wa- in Mawayana has been reinterpreted as
inclusive.
(14) amna saruuka (14b) wa-saruuka
1þ3pn fishtrap 1pl.poss-fishtrap
‘Our (excl) fishtrap.’ ‘Our (incl) fishtrap.’
The borrowed form comes from Waiwai. However, the behavior of the
verb bears an impact from Trio: in Trio the first person exclusive pronoun
requires a third person prefix on the verb, while in Waiwai the third person
singular prefix is often dropped. Example (15) shows that Mawayana fol-
lows the Trio pattern of person marking:
(15) amna rı-me
1þ3pn 3a-say.pres
‘We (excl) say.’
The first person inclusive is marked with the Mawayana prefix wa- (origi-
nally first person plural):
(16) wa-me
1incl.pl-say.pres
‘We (incl) say.’
Carlin (2006) is the first summary of the grammatical features of the lan-
guage in the light of language contact (and a full grammar is in progress).
The borrowed form amna does not occur in the previous records of the
language, which include longish lists of words and phrases in Howard
(1986), and materials in Farabee (1918: 283–286) and Schomburgk (1848),
all collected when the language was more actively spoken than it is at
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present. This suggests that borrowing a pronoun – something not unheard
of, but rather unusual – could be the result of excessive influx of non-
native forms characteristic of Mawayana as an obsolescent language.
3.2.2. Resıgaro
The genetic a‰liation of Resıgaro – a small language spoken in north-
eastern Peru surrounded by speakers of Bora and Witotoan groups –
with the Arawak family was established by Igualada (1940) and Igualada
and Castellvı (1940); also see Loutkotka (1968: 136). The first extensive
materials on the language published by Rivet and de Wavrin (1951), and
based on the data collected by de Wavrin in the early 1930s, provided
ample evidence in the same direction (see Payne 1985 for a summary).
The group itself comprised not more than a thousand people at the
time of Whi¤en’s (1915) travels in the area. The first mention of Resıgaro
(Recıgaro), by Hardenburg (1910), places it among other Witotoan
groups. Tessmann (1930: 583) does not provide linguistic a‰liation, but
states that culturally they are close to the Bora-Witoto, and linguistically
are ‘‘perhaps close to Bora.’’7 At that time, the language was still actively
spoken. Note that there is no evidence of any genetic relationship between
Bora-Witotoan and Arawak languages (see Loukotka 1968; Aschmann
1993).
In his pioneering salvage grammar of Resıgaro, based on fieldwork
with ten remaining speakers whose major language was Bora, Trevor Allin
(1975) came to a di¤erent conclusion. The sheer number of Bora, and also
Witotoan, forms in Resıgaro indicated to him that the languages were
genetically related. He did not deny that Resıgaro belongs to the Arawak
family, but suggested that, given the high percentage of shared forms
between Bora, Witotoan languages, and Resıgaro, the limits of Arawak
should be expanded, and Bora and Witotoan be included.
There is, however, no doubt that the impressive number of Bora and
Witotoan forms in Resıgaro are due to borrowing (see Payne 1985, and
detailed discussion in Aikhenvald 2001). These lexical loans constitute
about 24 percent of the vocabulary, and include just a few verbs and
numerous nouns, covering body parts plus a few other items such as ‘fish’
and ‘hill.’ The most striking is the fact that ‘‘core’’ lexical items, such as
terms for body parts, are shared with Bora or with Witotoan languages.
7. ‘‘Uber die Ressıgaro ist nichts Naheres bekannt. Sie gehoren kulturell sicherzu der Uitoto-Boragruppe und sprachlich vielleicht in die Nahe der Bora.’’
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However, the lexical data published by Rivet and de Wavrin (limited as
they are) often do not register a loan.
A prime example is the word for ‘tooth,’ Resıgaro -e�hepe ‘tooth,’
which is similar to Muinane Witoto iıpe, Proto-Witoto an *pe (Aschmann
1993). The reflex of the Proto-Arawak form *nene (Aikhenvald 2001) sur-
vives in Resıgaro -onene ‘front teeth’ (Allin 1975). Rivet and de Wavrin
(1951: 213) give the form wo-ne (1pl-tooth) ‘tooth,’ and no form similar
to Bora or to Witotoan.
The Resıgaro described by Allin uses borrowed numbers ‘one’ and
‘two’ (see Table 1). This is quite remarkable for an Arawak language,
since lower numbers (if they exist at all) generally appear to be rather
resistant to borrowing. And the overwhelming majority of Arawak lan-
guages preserve the reflexes of Proto-Arawak forms (fourth column in
Table 1). Once again, Rivet and de Wavrin (1951) register di¤erent forms,
which are clearly Arawak in origin. The form for ‘two’ shows the e¤ects
of the phonological process *y > tz found in other cognates with Proto-
Arawak.
Does this imply that pre-obsolescent Resıgaro was more Arawak-like
in its lexicon and grammar? In all likelihood, yes.
Bora influence on Resıgaro grammar goes further than free forms (see
Aikhenvald 2001 for a detailed discussion of structural influence of Bora on
Resıgaro, and also the discussion of borrowed classifiers). Borrowed bound
morphemes include one pronoun, number markers, oblique case markers,
and also classifiers. The independent pronouns and cross-referencing prefixes
in Resıgaro (where they are mostly used to mark A/Sa and as possessors
of inalienably possessed nouns) are compared to Bora in Table 2 (Allin
1975: 116–117; Thiesen 1996: 33). Borrowed morphemes are in boldface.
Table 1. Numbers ‘one’ and ‘two’ in Resıgaro, Bora and Arawak
No. Resıgaro(Allin 1975)
Bora Resıgaro(Rivet and deWavrin 1951)
Proto-Arawak
one sa-cl tsa-cl ‘apa #(ha)pene *pa
two migaa- mı�ee/mihaa-cl ‘e(i)tza #m� *yama
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Unlike most other Arawak languages but similarly to the Bora-Witotoan
group, Resıgaro has inclusive versus exclusive opposition in first person
non-singular, and also a dual number. The first person plural exclusive
pronoun muu�a was borrowed from Bora, similarly to the way the last
speakers of Mawayana introduced a Waiwai form to cover the same
meaning. In Resıgaro, it was subsequently reanalyzed as consisting of a
Table 2. Pronouns in Resıgaro and in Bora
Resıgaro Bora
Pronouns prefixes PronounsPrefixes(poss)
Prefixes(subj)
1sg no no- oo ta- —
2sg phu, pha p- uu di- —
3sg m tsu, tsa gi- diıbyei-, aadi- —
3sg f tso do- diılle
1incl du m fa-musif-/_hva/_elsewhere
mee
me-
me-
1incl du f fa-mupi
1excl du m muu-musi muu- muhtsi
1excl du f muu-mupi muhp�
2du m ha-musi hu-, i- (impv) a-muhtsi amu� a-
2du f ha-mupi a-muhpi
3du m na-musin-/_hna-
diitye-tsi aathje-
3du f na-mupi diitye-p�
1pl incl fa-�a, fu, fa f/ua- mee me-
1pl excl muu-�a, muu — muuha
2pl ha-�a, hu i- (impv) amuuha amu� a-
3pl na-�a, hna na- diıtye, aatye aathje- —
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prefix muu- and a particle -�a, following the analogy of other non-singular
pronouns in the language itself, such as na-�a ‘third person plural’ and
fa-�a ‘first person plural inclusive.’ This shows the linguistic creativity
of the last speakers, captured by Sasse’s (2001) colorful metaphor, the
‘‘Phoenix from the ashes’’ (in the spirit of Dorian 1999, and Dal Negro
2004).
The Resıgaro dual markers feminine -mupi, masculine -musi (also from
Bora: see Table 2) combine with muu- reanalyzed as a bound form. Unlike
other pronouns, the first person plural exclusive has no corresponding
prefix used with nouns and with verbs, which may point towards its later
origin. The Bora forms in Resıgaro are in bold in Table 2.
In their comparatively detailed discussion of personal pronouns, free
and bound, in Resıgaro, Rivet and de Wavrin (1951: 204–206) do not
mention the first person plural exclusive form (the analysis of pronominal
markers occupies about a half of their short grammatical summary: 204–
209). They do not mention the number markers on nouns at all. We can
hypothesize that the introduction of non-native free and bound pronomi-
nal forms by the last speakers of the language is likely to be a result of
contact-induced change in the situation of extreme linguistic stress.
This is not to say that the Resıgaro described by Rivet and de Wavrin
(1951) had no loans from Bora or Witotoan; to the contrary. One example
is Resıgaro tee� ı (Allin 1975), tehe(y)hı (Rivet and de Wavrin 1951)
‘river,’ Bora thee-� i, Proto-Bora-Muinane *tee-� i. The Proto-Arawak form
is *huni ‘water, river.’ A reflex of this form is attested in Resıgaro’s closest
genetic relatives Tariana, Baniwa, and Piapoco as uni ‘water, river.’
Further bound morphemes borrowed from Bora into Resıgaro include
markers of masculine and feminine dual, oblique cases, and numerous
classifiers (see Aikhenvald 2001; Allin 1975; Thiesen 1996). None of these
are mentioned by Rivet and de Wavrin (1951): we may hypothesize that
the influx of borrowed morphemes into the obsolescent language is a
recent phenomenon, but we have no means of definitely proving this.
Borrowing a pronoun, free or bound, is not unheard of, but is quite
unusual (Gardani 2005). Third person plural pronouns they, their, them
in English are considered to be borrowings from a Scandinavian source
(Campbell 1997; Baugh 1957: 120). Miskito, a vibrant Misumalpan lan-
guage, is said to have borrowed first and second person singular pronouns
from Northern Sumu (Campbell 1997, based on Ken Hale, p.c.), also
Misumalpan. Further examples of borrowing individual free pronominal
forms come from Matiso¤ (1990: 113) and Newman (1977, 1979a, b).
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Campbell (1994) reports that Alsea, an isolate from Oregon, borrowed a
whole set of Salishan pronominal su‰xes.8 However, the instances such
as Mawayana and Resıgaro should be treated with caution as bona fide
examples of borrowing pronouns. The fact that these borrowings were
documented at a stage when both Mawayana and Resıgaro are used by
just a handful of speakers whose major language is di¤erent alerts us to a
potential e¤ect of a massive influx of non-native forms characteristic of
the last stages of a language’s life. Can a massive influx of borrowed forms
obscure a language’s a‰liation? This takes us to our next section.
3.3. Language obsolescence and language a‰liation
It is well known that teasing apart similarities due to genetic inheritance
from those due to borrowing of varied kinds is one of the hardest prob-
lems in comparative linguistics (cf. the classic controversy between Boas
and Sapir: see Swadesh 1951). Ideally, if two languages descend from the
same ancestor, the forms and their meanings must be easily relatable, via
the application of established rules for phonological change and semantic
change. In reality, the distinction between inherited and di¤used similarities
may be di‰cult to draw, especially in a situation of prolonged and un-
interrupted di¤usion of cultural and linguistic traits across an area; see,
for instance, Dixon (1997; 2002), Dench (2001), and Heath (1978), for
the Australian area, and further examples in Aikhenvald (2006a). Simi-
larities between languages can be suggestive of a genetic relationship,
but not su‰cient to postulate it with full assurance. Murrinh-patha and
Ngan.gitjemerri, two languages spoken in the Daly River region of North-
ern Australia, share just cognate paradigms for portmanteau forms of
inflective simple verbs, but scarcely anything else in grammar and almost
no lexicon (Dixon 2002: 675). The paradigm of free pronouns is the only
fully ‘‘Chadic’’ feature of the Tangale group (Jungraithmayr 1995). Such
examples are bound to remain ‘‘fringe’’ puzzles to comparative linguists.
The case of Resıgaro is rather instructive in this respect. The influx of
Bora and Witotoan forms into this language led Trevor Allin to believe
that the language was related to Bora and to Witotoan (Allin 1975). Payne
8. Another frequently given example of a putative borrowing of part of the pro-nominal paradigm comes from Kambot (or Botin), from the Grass family inNew Guinea (Foley 1986: 210–211). A closer look at the paradigm of Kambotpronouns in the original sources (Laycock and Z’graggen 1975; Pryor 1990)shows that this hypothesis is based on misinterpretation of the data (seeAikhenvald 2009b, for a full analysis).
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(1985) undertook a careful reconstruction and comparison with the previ-
ous stage of the language captured by Rivet and de Wavrin (1951), to
prove that the language is not Bora-Witotoan. But what if all we have is
a highly obsolescent stage?
An almost extreme example of influx of non-native forms into a pro-
nominal paradigm and its restructuring comes from Marrku, the tradi-
tional language of Croker Island (Australian area) (Evans et al. 2006;
Evans 2007). Like many Australian languages, Marrku has been on the
decline for many decades. It was reported that by 1939 there were only
five speakers left (Evans et al 2006: 2); by 1991 there were only two semi-
speakers who were then highly proficient in other indigenous languages of
the area (especially Iwaidja). The verb paradigms accessible to Evans (2007)
show a curious picture: while there is strong evidence from body-part pre-
fixes (Evans 2000) in favor of an erstwhile genetic relationship between
Marrku and other Iwaidjan languages, verbal paradigms in Marrku –
collected from obsolescent speakers – contain massive borrowings from
Iwaidja and its relative Ilgar. This massive influx, without any previous
stage of the language to be compared with, makes exact genetic classifica-
tion of Marrku an almost impossible task (Evans 2007).
4. Further outcomes of language contact in language obsolescence
An influx of foreign forms is not a universal outcome of language obsoles-
cence.9 We saw above that an obsolescent language may tend to rapidly
become structurally similar to the dominant one. Almost all the categories
present in Bora are expressed in Resıgaro; Mawayana replicates the Trio
and Waiwai patterns (without necessarily borrowing the forms). Nivkh,
a Paleo-Siberian isolate on the path towards extinction, has undergone
massive restructuring of imperative paradigms under the influence of
Russian (see Gruzdeva 2002). Similar examples abound.
9. Last speakers often avoid consciously using loan forms, even if they were usedin the language. R. M. W. Dixon reports that Dick Moses, one of the very lastfluent speakers of Yidiny, made sure his language was free of English intru-sions. As Dixon (1977: 29) reported, ‘‘Moses has eliminated what were cer-tainly established English loan words’’; ‘‘in place of mudaga ‘motor car’ andbiligan ‘billy can,’ he uses dundalay and gunbu:l which he said were originallythe avoidance style forms for these items.’’ Similar examples of purism havebeen documented for Arizona Tewa (Kroskrity 1993).
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Intensive language contact in the situation of language obsolescence
goes together with enhancement of already existing similarities. Forms in
the obsolescent language which are similar to those in the dominant one
tend to become more frequent, and to assume the meanings influenced by
the dominant language.
Ingrian Finnish spoken by a handful of Finns scattered around Estonia
is a case in point. Most speakers are undergoing a rapid shift to Estonian.
The two languages are closely related and structurally similar; as a result,
it is not always possible to distinguish Estonian and Finnish forms. The
most striking foreign form recorded in the language of the few remaining
speakers is the past tense marker -si- employed instead of the Ingrian
Finnish -i- (Riionheimo 2002: 201–202). This past tense marker is highly
productive in Estonian; its appearance in Ingrian Finnish can thus be
explained by the influence of the dominant language. But there is also
a language-internal explanation: there is a subclass of verbs in Ingrian
Finnish which requires -si- past rather than -i- past. Similarity in form of
the Ingrian Finnish and the Estonian past marker is a strong contributing
factor to its increased frequency in the moribund Ingrian Finnish. Other
than that, speakers tend to avoid using Estonian forms.
In a situation of traditional inhibition against borrowed forms, growing
language obsolescence may go hand in hand with expansion of those mor-
phemes that have the same form in the obsolescent and in the dominant
language. Tariana is the only Arawak language spoken in the Vaupes basin
in northwest Amazonia (spanning adjacent areas of Brazil and Colombia).
This used to be a well-established linguistic area, characterized by obliga-
tory multilingualism based on the principle of linguistic exogamy: ‘‘those
who speak the same language as us are our brothers, and we do not marry
our sisters’’ (see Aikhenvald 2002 and references there). Languages spoken
in this area traditionally included the East Tucanoan languages Tucano,
Wanano, Desano, Piratapuya, Tuyuca (and a few others), and the Arawak
language Tariana (now spoken by over 100 speakers in two villages).
Speakers of these participate in the exogamous marriage network which
ensures obligatory multilingualism. Nowadays, Tariana is no longer spoken
by children, and fewer and fewer people use the language even in domestic
settings. The growing obsolescence of Tariana and its rapid replacement
by now dominant Tucano is accompanied by a rapidly increasing number
of calqued forms and constructions from Tucano.
The long-term interaction based on institutionalized societal multi-
lingualism between East Tucanoan languages and Tariana has resulted in
the rampant di¤usion of grammatical and semantic patterns (though not
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so much of forms) and calquing of categories. Comparison of Tariana
with closely related Arawak languages (such as Baniwa/Kurripako and
Piapoco) helps identify the di¤used and the inherited features in Tariana.
A striking feature of the Vaupes linguistic area is a strong cultural inhibi-
tion against language mixing, viewed in terms of borrowing forms, or
inserting bits of other languages, in one’s Tariana. This inhibition operates
predominantly in terms of recognizable loan forms. Speakers who use
non-native forms are subject to ridicule which may a¤ect their status in
the community. What often happens in the language of obsolescent speakers
is reinterpreting Tariana morphemes in accordance with the meaning their
look-alikes may have in Tucano.
Consider the Tariana clitic -ya ‘emphatic.’ This clitic is now increas-
ingly used by obsolescent insecure speakers as a marker of immediate
command (17), mirroring the Tucano imperative -ya (18):
(17) Tariana
pi-nha-ya
2sg-eat-impv
‘Eat!’
(18) Tucano
ba’a-ya
play-impv
‘Play!’
The -ya imperative in Tariana is frequently used by younger speakers, and
hardly ever by the few traditional older speakers, who concur that this is
not ‘‘proper Tariana.’’ The morpheme -ya in an imperative construction is
condemned as a token of identifiable language-mixing (see Aikhenvald
2008a, for cognates of the emphatic -ya in other Arawak languages, and
the imperative marker -ya in Tucanoan languages).
Another similar example comes from the increased use of nominaliza-
tions marked with -¸i in Tariana commands. This is an alternative to simple
imperatives, but with a somewhat di¤erent meaning, ‘make sure you do.’
(19) Tariana
pi-nha-¸ i!2sg-eat-nominalization
‘Eat!’ (make sure you eat, lest you go hungry)
This usage is restricted to casual speech by younger people for whom Tucano
is the main language of day-to-day communication. Tucano, just like most
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other East Tucanoan languages, has a su‰x -ri used in commands with
an overtone of warning, with the meaning of ‘or else’ (see Ramirez 1997,
Vol. 1: 146–147). The usage of nominalizations as commands in Tariana
has in all likelihood been influenced by the -ri marked imperative in Tucano.
That the form in (19) is a nominalization is corroborated by the transla-
tions given by traditional speakers of Tariana, who themselves avoid using
commands like (19), using an apprehensive construction instead.
Traditional Tariana did not use to have any special morpheme for first
person plural imperative (or hortative). Nowadays, obsolescent speakers
employ a hortative -da/-¸a. Compare Traditional Tariana, in (20a), with
(20b), recorded from an obsolescent speaker:
(20a) Traditional Tariana
wa-i¸a1pl-drink
(20b) Obsolescent Tariana
wa-i¸a-da1pl-drink-hortative
‘Let’s drink!’
Functionally and formally this morpheme is reminiscent of the Tucano
hortative -ra/-da (Ramirez 1997, Vol. I: 145) which is shared with other
Tucanoan languages:
(21) Tucano
sı ’ri-da!
drink-hortative
‘Let’s drink!’
The Tariana hortative is likely to be a recent borrowing from Tucano. Or
it could be the result of a reinterpretation of already existing Tariana mor-
pheme -da/-¸a ‘dubitative’ which is sometimes used to express politeness.
Traditional speakers of Tariana are aware of the similarity between the
Tariana and the Tucano morphemes, and treat the hortative (as in (20b))
as ‘‘incorrect’’ Tariana ‘‘mixed’’ with Tucano. This is typical of Tariana
language attitudes: given the general prohibition on mixing languages viewed
in terms of lexical loans, the hortative is, not surprisingly, a marginal feature
of the language (see Aikhenvald 2002: 213–222 on language awareness in
the Vaupes area).
Or a look-alike can oust another, non-shared morpheme. Tariana has
numerous verbal markers to do with extent and type of action, among
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them the enclitic -pita ‘repetitive action: do again.’ This enclitic is being
replaced by the form -ta ‘repetitive’, shared with related languages, but
infrequent in the traditional language. The form -ta is similar to Tucano
taha, often reduced to -ta (Ramirez 1997: 343–4).
These instances of a semantic extension of a native morpheme under
the influence of a look-alike in a contact language (known as grammatical
accommodation: see Aikhenvald 2006a) are symptomatic of language shift
in language obsolescence. This is an alternative to influx of non-native
forms.
Obsolescent Tariana o¤ers curious examples of drastic restructuring.
Tucanoan languages and Tariana are genetically unrelated, and typologically
di¤erent. Like many Arawak languages, Tariana employs prefixes for subject
cross-referencing, while Tucanoan languages are predominantly su‰xing. As
a result of long-term contact, Tariana has developed numerous un-Arawak
features, including cases for core arguments and a complex system of eviden-
tials. (These are instances of completed changes.) Obsolescent Tariana is
developing a system of cross-referencing enclitics, as exemplified by (22b),
mirroring the Tucanoan pattern.
The following example is a typical beginning of a story. It was recorded
from a fluent middle-aged speaker who always tried to speak the tradi-
tional language. The structural parallelism with Tucano is striking, but not
complete. The major di¤erence lies in the person that is marked: Tariana
employs a prefix ( just like any Arawak language would), while Tucano em-
ploys a su‰x (portmanteau with a tense-evidential marker). The relevant
forms are in bold.
(22a) Traditional Tariana
Tariana Payape-se-nuku paita nawiki
Tucano Diporo-pi-re ni’ki masi
long.ago-loc-top.non.a/s oneþcl:human person
Tariana dy-uka-na aı-nuku
3sgnf-arrive-rem.p.vis here-top.non.a/s
Tucano eta-wı a’to-re
arrive-3sgnf.rem.p.vis here-top.non.a/s
‘A long time ago a man arrived here.’
A similar story told by an obsolescent speaker (now in his early thirties)
started in a subtly di¤erent way:
100 Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald
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(22b)
Tariana Payape-se-nuku paita nawiki
Tucano Diporo-pi-re ni’ki masi
long.ago-loc-top.non.a/s oneþcl:human person
Tariana dy-uka-na¼diha aı-nuku
3sgnf-arrive-rem.p.vis¼he here-top.non.a/s
Tucano eta-wı a’to-re
arrive-3sgnf.rem.p.vis here-top.non.a/s
‘A long time ago a man arrived here.’
The Tariana in (22b) is structurally closer to Tucano since the speaker
employs an encliticized personal pronoun following the evidential. When
(22b) was uttered, no one commented on the language di¤erence. Speakers
are more aware of non-native forms than they are of non-native patterns.
Nevertheless, when I played (22b) back to a traditional elder, he com-
mented that ¼diha should not have been there.
Instances like (22b) demonstrate that Tariana is becoming almost like
relexified Tucano. But since language change in language obsolescence is
unstable and discontinuous, chances are that this relexified variety will not
live beyond the life-span of the last speakers.
5. What can we conclude?
A study of contact-induced change in the situation of language obsoles-
cence poses specific problems. Basically, the same or similar issues arise
when we investigate the speech behavior of obsolescent speakers of other-
wise well-spoken languages, and processes of change in those languages
which are on their way out.
Independently of whether we are dealing with obsolescent languages or
just with obsolescent speakers, the influx of non-native forms tends to be
pervasive. This is understandable: language obsolescence is typically asso-
ciated with word-retrieval problems, and it is easier to just use an item
from the dominant language.
In other instances of language obsolescence, we encounter instances
of influx of non-native forms beyond lexicon. Mawayana and Resıgaro
have borrowed pronouns, while Resıgaro has also restructured its cross-
referencing system, e¤ectively incorporating a non-native bound form of
a pronoun. This is in addition to borrowing numbers ‘one’ and ‘two,’ and
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numerous further bound morphemes. These instances of borrowing mem-
bers of closed classes and even bound forms are typologically unexpected
and unusual. However, a question arises: are these really borrowings, or
are they just instances of nonce forms? That the last speakers’ usage is
unstable and ephemeral is a well-known fact. Typologists and historical
linguists need to be wary of that when they encounter unusual patterns of
borrowed forms in obsolescent languages.
A further, commonly attested, e¤ect of language contact in obsolescence
is the enhancement of forms already shared with the dominant language.
This often concerns frequently used forms and constructions, such as the
expression of commands. In addition, enhanced structural di¤usion may
result in one language becoming like a reflection of the other: the obsoles-
cent Tariana may sound like relexified Tucano. This is an extreme – but
again, often ephemeral – outcome of language shift.
In Johanson’s (2002) words, ‘‘languages do not die of ‘structuritis’ ’’ –
that is, contact-induced change does not result in language extinction.
But the processes of language obsolescence may promote structural changes
amazing in their extent. Before passing into extinction, an obsolescent lan-
guage may become a ‘‘carbon copy’’ of the dominant idiom. This exces-
sive copying is hardly surprising. The dominant language is the one used
on a day-to-day basis by speakers of an obscolescent language, and so the
structures from the dominant language get calqued and transferred into
the language falling into disuse. (More discussion and examples can be
found in Aikhenvald 2002, Grenoble 2000, and classic work by Hill and
Hill 1986, Tsitsipis 1998 and Campbell and Muntzel 1989).
Contact-induced changes in the situation of language obsolescence are
inherently unstable (as was pointed out by Tsitsipis 1998). Ephemeral
as they are, their outcomes may go against generalizations obtained in
‘‘healthy’’ language situations.
Acknowledgments
I am deeply grateful to the late Candelario da Silva, the last speaker of Bare,
to the members of the Brito family who taught me their native Tariana, and
my adopted family at Avatip who taught me their native Manambu. Special
thanks go to R. M. W. Dixon, who provided invaluable comments on this
article. I am also grateful to Claudine Chamoreau for her careful editing.
102 Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald
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Abbreviations
a Transitive subject
all Allative
caus Causative
cl Classifier
compl.ds Completed di¤erent subject
conn Connective
dat Dative
decl Declarative
dem Demonstrative
du Dual
exc Exclusive
f Feminine
fut Future
impv Imperative
inc Inclusive
inch Inchoative
lk Linker
loc Locative
m Masculine
neg Negative
nf Nonfeminine
o Object
perf Perfective
pl Plural
pn Pronoun
poss Possessive
rem.p.vis Remote past visual
seq Sequencing
sg Singular
subj Subject
top.non.a/s Topical non-subject.
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