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Typology and languagecontact: word order

Bernd HeineTallinn, 21-24 March 2007

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• (a) Word order changes are due above all to language contact (Smith 1981: 52)

• (b) The effects of linguistic diffusion "seem to be particularly pervasive in the area of word order" (Dryer 1992: 83)

• (c) "In an efficient language, the word order patterns are arranged to make processing easier, thus establishing universals of word order" (Harris & Campbell 1995: 140)

• (d) Thomason (2001: 69-71) observes that, ignoring vocabulary borrowing, word order is among "the next easiest things to borrow".

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Examples• Contact with Germanic and Slavic languages, having SVO order, is

said to have been a strong contributing factor in the shift of the Western Finnic and Hungarian languages from SOV to SVO word order (Kahr 1976: 142; Thomason & Kaufman 1988: 55; Thomason 2001b: 88).

• Akkadian, a Semitic language that inherited VSO order from Proto-Semitic, acquired SOV word order under Sumerian influence (Thomason & Kaufman 1988: 55; Thomason 2001b: 88).

• When the Indo-Aryan language Romani (Romanes) came into contact with languages of the Balkans, it is said to have replaced the verb-final (SOV) order inherited from its Indo-Aryan past by SVO (and VSO), which is characteristic of the Balkan languages (Matras1996: 64).

• Indic Indo-European languages are claimed to have turned rigidly SOV and rigidly postpositional as a result of Dravidian influence (Kahr 1976: 143).

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• The Western Oceanic language Takia is said to have changed from SVO to SOV order under the influence of the Papuan language Waskia (Ross 2001) and, more generally, Austronesian languages are claimed to have changed from SVO to SOV in New Guinea (Thomason & Kaufman 1988: 55).

• The Wutun language of the Chinese family “borrowed” from Tibetan a rigid verb-final word order and postpositional ordering (Li 1983).

• Imitation of Chinese word order is said to have introduced "significant changes into the word order of Japanese" (Miller 1967: 245).

• Contact with Cushitic languages in northeastern Africa is blamed for a shift from a hypothetical SVO, or the VSO of Proto-Semitic, to SOV in Amharic and other Ethio-Semitic languages (Leslau 1945; 1952).

• The East African language Ma'a is said to have shifted from SOV to SVO under Bantu influence (Thomason & Kaufman 1988: 55).

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Other kinds of word order changes

• On the model of Indo-European Balkanic languages such as Macedonian and Albanian, speakers of Turkish dialects on the Balkans have reversed the genitive and its head in possessive constructions; e.g., babasi Alinin'the father of Ali' instead of Standard Turkish Ali'ninbabasI (Friedman 2003: 61).

• Western Oceanic languages commonly have prepositions but Takia has lost the prepositions, having created postpositions on the model of the postpositions of the Papuan language Waskia (Ross 2001).

• Bombay Hindi has switched its question particle from sentence-initial to sentence-final position under Marathi influence (Thomason & Kaufman 1988: 98).

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• Kinds of linguistic transfer

• a Form, that is, sounds or combinations of sounds,

• b Meanings (including grammatical meanings) or combinations of meanings,

• c Form-meaning units or combinations of form-meaning units,

• d Syntactic relations, that is, the order of meaningful elements,

• e Any combination of (a) through (d).

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Terminology

Replica language vs. model language

Replication vs. borrowing

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Contact-induced linguistic transfer

Replication Borrowing

Grammatical replication Lexical replication

Contact-induced grammaticalization Restructuring

Loss Rearrangement

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• Narrowing

• One way of replicating a word order arrangement found in the model language is to choose among the use patterns that are available in the replica language the one that corresponds to the one in the model language and make it the regular one by use it more frequently and in a wider range of contexts.

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Kadiwéu, a Waikurúan language of Brazil, has quite fre e word order, attested orders being OVS, VOS, SOV, OSV, VSO, and SVO. But Kadiwéu-Portuguese bilinguals translate Portugue se sentences into Kadiwéu with SVO word order, and Thomaso n (2001) interprets this as "an adjustment to the basic SVO word order of Portuguese."

• Portuguese SVO

• Kadiwéu OVS VOS SOV OSV VSO SVO• (Waikurúan;• Thomason 2001)

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In colloquial Turkish, there is a volitive construction with the predicate in the optative mood which can be either left- or right-branching (a). The Turkic language Azerbaijanian of Iran follows the Persian model by

using generally right-branching (b).

• (a) Colloquial Turkish (Kiral 2005: 287)– buraya gelsin istemiyorum.– here.DAT come.OPT.3.SG want.NEG.PRES.1.SG

• or

– Istemiyorum buraya gelsin.– want.NEG.PRES.1.SG here.DAT come.OPT.3.SG

• (b) Azerbaijanian (Kiral 2005: 287)– Män istemiräm j&elä bura.– I want.NEG.PRES.1.SG come.OPT.3.SG here

• ‘I don’t want him to come here.’

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• Shift from one construction type to another

• Another kind of word order change can be portrayed as an epi-phenomenal product of change in construction type in situations of language contact . The strategy that appears to be used is to choose a construction type that matches best the word order arrangement of the model language and use it more frequently.

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• Arabic (Afroasiatic; Matras & Sakel forthc.) • l- walad l- kbi ## ##r• DEF- boy DEF- big.M• 'the big boy‘

• Domari (Indo-Aryan; Matras & Sakel forthc.)• a till- a zara• big- M boy• 'the big boy'

• b zara till- e ## ##kboy big- PRED.M'the boy is big'

• c er- a zara till- e ## ##k.came- M boy big- PRED.M'The big boy arrived' (Lit.: 'The boy, being big, arrived').

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• Evidence for replication from Arabic to Domari:

• i Arabic is an important L2 for Domari speakers of this community.

• ii Postposed nominal modifiers are not to be found in Domari.

• iii Domari structure has been influenced by Arabic in a number of other ways.

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In Classical Nahuatl, incorporating nominal objects was highly productive, as illustrated in (a). In modern Hispanized varieties of Nahuatl, incorporation is disfavored, the preferred construction being one that also was available, where the object follows the verb (b).

(a) Classical Nahuatl (Flores Farfán 2004: 86)• ni- xoìchi- teìmoa- O- O.

• 1.SG- flower- seek- PRES- SG• 'I seek flowers.'

(b) Hispanized Xalitla Nahuatl (Flores Farfán 2004: 86)• ni- teemoa- O- O xoochi- meh.

• 1.SG- seek- PRES- SG flower- PL• 'I seek flowers.'

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• Pragmatically marked structures

• Perhaps the major driving force for changing one's word order in the direction of another language is to select a pragmatically marked use pattern that exhibits an ordering corresponding to that in the model language and grammaticalize that pattern to an unmarked syntactic pattern.

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In Finland, Russian “dialect speakers" (Kyyrölä Russians), whose speech has Northern Russian dialect features, show a higher frequency of possessor-possessee order than "nondialect speakers” of Russian.

Relative frequency of genitive and possessive-adjective constructions in two groups of L1 speakers of Russian in Finland (based on Leisiö 2000: 309).

100 % (103)89 %12 %"Dialect (Kyyrölä) speakers" (28)

100 % (141)41 %59 %"Nondialect speakers" (40)

Total (Absolute figures)

Modifier-head

Head-modifier

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• Determiner – noun order (Ross 2001: 142)• a Proto-Western Oceanic• *a tamwata 'the man'

DET man

• b Takia (Western Oceanic)tamol an 'the man'

• man DET

• c Waskia (Papuan)kadi mu 'the man'

• man DET

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• Grammaticalization (based on Ross 2001: 142)• a Proto-Western Oceanic• *a tamwata a- n ‚‚ ‚‚a 'that man'

DET man that- 3.SG

• b Takiatamol an 'the man'man DET

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• Evidence for replication in Takia on the model of Waskia

• i Postposed determiners are unusual in Western Oceanic languages.

• ii There is no plausible basis for an internal explanation of word order change in Takia.

• iii Takia speakers have adopted a large range of structural properties from Waskia.

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• The Topic Schema • [(As for) X, X's Y] > [the Y of X]

• Takia speakers appear to have relied heavily on the Topic Schema to produce a modifier-head order on the model of Waskia

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• (a) Proto-Western Oceanic (Ross 1996:189; 2001:143)• *i lalo- n‚a a Rumaq• PREP inside- its ART house• 'inside the house'

• (b) Takia (Western Oceanic; Ross 1996:190; Ross 2001: 143)• ab lo• house in• 'in the house‘

• (c) From prepositional phrase to postposition• *i lalo-n‚a > i-lo-n > lon > lo

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The Qashqa-Darya dialect of Arabic spoken in Uzbekistan. Having been separated from the Arabic-speaking world for many centuries, this dialect (together with Bukhara, another Arabic dialect) has been in contact with the Indo-European languages Tajik and Dari and the Turkic languages Uzbek and Turkmen; Qashqa-Darya speakers are particularly fluent in Uzbek. In attributive possession, the head-modifier order of Arabic is still widely used (a). But under the influence of Uzbek, a new order modifier-head has evolved via the grammaticalization of the Topic Schema, where the possessor precedes and is cross-referenced on the possessee by means of a possessive suffix.

Qashqa-Darya Arabic (Chikovani 2005: 131)a s8o ìh 8b il-baìgir 'the owner of the cow'

owner the-cow

b äfändi morta 'the effendi's wife'effendi wife.his

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Clause-level word order change

• Under the influence of Macedonian and perhaps other Balkanic verb-medial (= SVO) languages, speakers of West Rumelian Turkish dialects have developed one of their pragmatically marked minor use patterns into an unmarked pattern – thereby establishing syntactic equivalence with the language or languages of their Balkanic neighbors. Consequently, in these Turkish dialects of Macedonia the verb occurs far more frequently in a non-final position than it does in Standard Turkish.

• Turkish and Macedonian (Friedman 2003: 66)

• a Erol' dur iyi ög‡renci. 'It is Erol who is the good student.‘ (Standard Turkish)• b 'Erol is a good student.' (West Rumelian Turkish)• c Erol e dobar uc‡enik. 'Erol is a good student.' (Macedonian)

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• Evidence• i West Rumelian Turkish has been influenced

massively by Macedonian.• ii An internal development from SOV to SVO in

Turkish is unlikely.• iii Using a pragmatically marked option to establish an

equivalence relation with the word order of the model language appears to be a crosslinguisticallysalient strategy.

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Ratcliffe (2005: 143-5) argues that in the Bukhara d ialect of Arabic of Uzbekistan, there is a common syntactic OV pattern where transitive verbs have an encliticized pronoun referring back to a nominal object, cf. (a), and he notes: "This type of construction is by no means alien to other forms of Arabic, where a word can be topicalized by being moved to the first position of a sentence, with its syntactic ro le indicated by a resumptive pronoun", as in the Egyptian example of ( b).

• (a) Bukhara Arabic (Ratcliffe 2005: 144)• sakina xadaì- ha. 'He took a knife.'• knife (he) took- it•• (b) Egyptian Arabic (Ratcliffe 2005: 145)• il- fustaìn gibt- u. 'I got the dress.'• the dress I.got- it

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• Evidence for contact influence of Tajik and Uzbek:

• (i) There are a number of examples bearing witnessto the process of replication from Tajik and Uzek to Bukhara Arabic.

(ii) There is no plausible internal explanation for the OV order in Bukhara Arabic.

(iii) Bukhara Arabic did not experience any significant change since OV was available as a pragmatically marked option.

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• What appears to have happened in Bukhara Arabic is that a topicalization strategy within a VO syntax wa s grammaticalized to a pragmatically unmarked OV syntax, with "the reanalysis of a resumptive pronoun as a verbal inflection agreeing with the object" (Ratcliffe 2005: 145).

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• Extension and frequency

• Perhaps the main strategy in contact: Extend an existing structure to new contexts and use it more frequently to match the word order of the model language

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In contact with the SOV language Uzbek, speakers of the Qashqa-Darya dialect have, first, acquired a free word order, where the main constituent orders are SVO, OVS, and SOV, and, second, the verb-final order SOV, illustrated below, has become the most frequent word order type in this Arabic dialect (Chikovani 2005).

• Qashqa-Darya Arabic (Chikovani 2005: 131)• boìy iÌbint hus&ruìya gaìl-ki.

• (bey girl beautiful said)• 'The bey said to the beautiful girl …'.

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• Extension of preposed adjective order • In the contact situation between English and the French/Norman

dialect Guernésiais on the Channel Island of Guernsey, speakers of Guernésiais appear to be replicating the preposed-adjective order of English. Traditionally, only qualificative adjectives, especially color terms, were preposed while all other types of adjectives were postposed in Guernésiais. But now they create a new use pattern of adjective - noun ordering. Guernésiais speakers tend to preposeadjectives distinctly more frequently than would be expected historically: Jones (2002: 154) found 70 % of all adjectives to be preposed. What happened is that an existing use pattern was extended: That contact played some role in this change is suggested e.g. by the fact that not only simple adjectives but also compound adjectives, which are likely to follow the noun in Mainland Norman, are being preposed, e.g.,

• Guernésiais (Jones 2002: 156)ses anti-rouoyalistes principes

• 'his anti-royalist principles'

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• Conclusion: The main strategies for creating new word order arrangements matching those of the model language are the following:

• (a) Use an existing construction and assign it a new function.

• (b) Use a pragmatically marked construction and develop it into a pragmatically unmarked (“the normal”) construction.

• (c) Extend an existing use pattern to new contexts.

• (d) Use an existing use pattern more frequently.

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• In more general terms:

• (a) Grammatical replication involves first and above semantic and pragmatic structures while syntactic changes are derivative of the former.

• (b) Speakers recruit material available in R (the replica language) to create new structures on the model of M (the model language).

• (c) Rather than being entirely new, the structures created in R are built on existing use patterns and other structures already available in R.

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Contact-induced linguistic transfer

Replication Borrowing

Grammatical replication Lexical replication

Contact-induced grammaticalization Restructuring

Rearrangement Loss

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• One crucial difference between borrowing and replication:

• Whereas borrowing means that some new material is added to the receiving language, this is – as a rule – not the case in replication.

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Any questions?