English is a global language. Synthesizing how it has impacted other languages is far from straightforward, given the sheer number of languages it is in contact with, the diversity of the outcome of this contact, and its dependence on the nature and history of the particularities of the contact setting, the domains of use, and the actual users involved. Even when reducing the span to Germanic languages within the European context, at least two stories can be told.
A first account focuses on the use of English as a means of communication in Europe. The impact on other Germanic languages then mainly focuses on the progressive use of English instead of other Germanic languages in domains such as (international) business, (tertiary) education, or science. A second account rather foregrounds how English is used within Germanic languages, studying variation and change that is induced by contact with English, primarily in the form of lexical borrowing. The question then becomes which English words, phrases, and constructions have been imported; how this import takes place; and why.
Both accounts can be considered as part of the same story, with a stronger presence of English as a means of communication in certain domains also leading to more intense contact, more bilingual speakers, and, hence, more occasions for contact-induced variation and change. Although the theoretical frameworks, research questions and methodologies relied on in scholarly work focusing on English instead of other Germanic languages are quite different from those in work on the use of English within other Germanic languages, closer inspection reveals that their objectives are quite similar overall.
First, while research on English as a means of communication fundamentally aims to conceptualize the relationship between English and other languages, research on borrowing does the same at the level of the linguistic system, targeting the relationship between English terms and the heritage lexicon. Second, both accounts consider whether existing linguistic terminology is sufficiently apt for this conceptualization, with critical musings on terms such as variety or native speaker in research on the use of English as a lingua franca, or on loanword and synonymy in the field of borrowing. Finally, strengthened by findings from empirical research, these conceptualizations are used to inspire, sometimes spark, or rather defuse, ideological debates on the status of English as a global language.
This article provides a closer description of these research themes, prioritizing research on the impact of English on German, Dutch, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish, within the European areas traditionally associated with these languages. To set the scene, a more panoramic perspective is adopted in the first section, which briefly describes the rationale of this article.
Article
Recent Impact of English on Other Germanic Languages
Eline Zenner
Article
Morphological Change
Carola Trips
Morphological change refers to change(s) in the structure of words. Since morphology is interrelated with phonology, syntax, and semantics, changes affecting the structure and properties of words should be seen as changes at the respective interfaces of grammar.
On a more abstract level, this point relates to linguistic theory. Looking at the history of morphological theory, mainly from a generative perspective, it becomes evident that despite a number of papers that have contributed to a better understanding of the role of morphology in grammar, both from a synchronic and diachronic point of view, it is still seen as a “Cinderella subject” today. So there is still a need for further research in this area.
Generally, the field of diachronic morphology has been dealing with the identification of the main types of change, their mechanisms as well as the causes of morphological change, the latter of which are traditionally categorized as internal and external change. Some authors take a more general view and state the locus of change can be seen in the transmission of grammar from one generation to the next (abductive change). Concerning the main types of change, we can say that many of them occur at the interfaces with morphology: changes on the phonology–morphology interface like i-mutation, changes on the syntax–morphology interface like the rise of inflectional morphology, and changes on the semantics–morphology like the rise of derivational suffixes. Examples from the history of English (which in this article are sometimes complemented with examples from German and the Romance languages) illustrate that sometimes changes indeed cross component boundaries, at least once (the history of the linking-s in German has even become a prosodic phenomenon). Apart from these interface phenomena, it is common lore to assume morphology-internal changes, analogy being the most prominent example.
A phenomenon regularly discussed in the context of morphological change is grammaticalization. Some authors have posed the question of whether such special types of change really exist or whether they are, after all, general processes of change that should be modeled in a general theory of linguistic change. Apart from this pressing question, further aspects that need to be addressed in the future are the modularity of grammar and the place of morphology.
Article
English Language
Geoffrey K. Pullum
English is both the most studied of the world’s languages and the most widely used. It comes closer than any other language to functioning as a world communication medium and is very widely used for governmental purposes. This situation is the result of a number of historical accidents of different magnitudes. The linguistic properties of the language itself would not have motivated its choice (contra the talk of prescriptive usage writers who stress the clarity and logic that they believe English to have). Divided into multiple dialects, English has a phonological system involving remarkably complex consonant clusters and a large inventory of distinct vowel nuclei; a bad, confusing, and hard-to-learn alphabetic orthography riddled with exceptions, ambiguities, and failures of the spelling to correspond to the pronunciation; a morphology that is rather more complex than is generally appreciated, with seven or eight paradigm patterns and a couple of hundred irregular verbs; a large multilayered lexicon containing roots of several quite distinct historical sources; and a syntax that despite its very widespread SVO (Subject-Verb-Object) basic order in the clause is replete with tricky details. For example, there are crucial restrictions on government of prepositions, many verb-preposition idioms, subtle constraints on the intransitive prepositions known as “particles,” an important distinction between two (or under a better analysis, three) classes of verb that actually have different syntax, and a host of restrictions on the use of its crucial “wh-words.” It is only geopolitical and historical accidents that have given English its enormous importance and prestige in the world, not its inherent suitability for its role.
Article
Language of Social Media and Online Communication in Germanic
Steven Coats
This article provides an overview of language practices that have emerged as a result of technological developments related to telecommunications and the internet, primarily in text-based modalities, and discusses research into social media and online communication in Germanic languages. It begins by providing a brief history of the communication technologies and platforms that underlie computer-based communication (CMC), then considers language features common to text-based CMC modalities that have developed since the 1970s such as email messages, mailing lists and message boards, chatrooms, SMS (Short Message Service), instant message (IM), and social media platforms such as Twitter/𝕏 or Facebook. For text communication in these modalities, features such as abbreviation, nonstandard orthography, use of emoticons and emoji, and performative marking of verbs are common in the Germanic languages, and new discursive practices have emerged for use of the hashtag (#) and the “at” sign (@). The article then reviews some of the findings of research into CMC for English, German, Dutch, Afrikaans, Frisian, and the Scandinavian languages, noting the diversity of theoretical approaches and analytical frameworks employed. Selected focus issues are discussed, including ethnographic and interactive studies of Germanic CMC and approaches to the study of multimodal online language on video-streaming and -sharing websites such as YouTube. The article concludes by noting some desiderata for research into Germanic language social media and online communication.
Article
Writing Systems in Modern West Germanic
Martin Evertz-Rittich
The writing systems of the modern West Germanic languages have many features in common: They are all written using the Modern Roman Alphabet and exhibit a certain depth, that is, in addition to the pure grapheme–phoneme correspondences, prosodic, morphological, and syntactic information that is systematically encoded in their writing systems. A notable exception is the writing system of Yiddish, which is not only written with an alphabet evolved from the Hebrew script but is also almost completely transparent.
Except for Yiddish, all writing systems of modern West Germanic languages use graphematic syllable and foot structures to encode suprasegmental properties such as vowel quantity. Paradigmatic relations are represented by morphological spellings (especially stem and affix constancy). Syntagmatic relations are expressed, for example, in compound spelling, which adheres to the same principles in all writing systems under discussion.
The writing systems of modern West Germanic languages have been studied by grapholinguists in varying depth. While German is probably the best researched writing system in the world, some writing systems, such as Luxembourgish, await thorough grapholinguistic investigation.
