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date: 11 February 2025

Germanic Languages in Contact in North Americalocked

Germanic Languages in Contact in North Americalocked

  • Michael T. PutnamMichael T. PutnamPennsylvania State University

Summary

Over the course of 400 years, numerous speakers of Germanic languages have immigrated to North America. The primary purposes of these immigrations were to avoid political and religious persecution and seek economic stability and growth. These contact varieties of Germanic origin are the intense focus of linguistic research involving multiple sub-disciplines within the field (e.g., sociolinguistic, structural/formal, corpus, and experimental approaches). A deeper investigation into the exact nature of the factors and subsequent results of language shift and structural outcomes found in these varieties challenges a number of long-standing assumptions about language contact, shift, and change in these intense contact settings. First, upon closer inspection, calls for severe language attrition, decay, and loss are largely unattested, which divert the focus from reported language shift to a transition to a post-vernacular state of the contact language in a given area. Second, the specific outcomes of language attrition, innovation, and maintenance in various structural domains of grammar of these individuals and communities (e.g., phonetics/phonology, morphology, mental lexicon, syntax, etc.) provide a basis for comparison both within and beyond this language family. These comparisons enable linguistics to better understand the directions and limits of structural changes in contact Germanic, which can be applied to other populations past and present. Third, these findings collectively contribute broadly to research in contact and heritage linguistics, providing invaluable cross-linguistic data from multiple dyads (including those with non-European ethnic and linguistic backgrounds). Research on these vernaculars advances our collective understanding of contact and diasporic Germanic varieties around the world while additionally making lasting contributions to research on contact and heritage linguistics.

Subjects

  • Historical Linguistics
  • Language Families/Areas/Contact
  • Sociolinguistics

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