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
Usage-Based Approaches to Germanic Languages
Martin Hilpert
The theoretical outlook of usage-based linguistics is a position that views language as a dynamic, evolving system and that recognizes the importance of usage frequency and frequency effects in language, as well as the foundational role of domain-general sociocognitive processes. Methodologically, usage-based studies draw on corpus-linguistic methods, experimentation, and computational modeling, often in ways that combine different methods and triangulate the results. Given the availability of corpus resources and the availability of experimental participants, there is a rich literature of usage-based studies focusing on Germanic languages, which at the same time has greatly benefited from usage-based research into other language families. This research has uncovered frequency effects based on measurements of token frequency, type frequency, collocational strength, and dispersion. These frequency effects result from the repeated experience of linguistic units such as words, collocations, morphological patterns, and syntactic constructions, which impact language production, language processing, and language change. Usage-based linguistics further investigates how the properties of linguistic structures can be explained in terms of cognitive and social processes that are not in themselves linguistic. Domain-general sociocognitive processes such as categorization, joint attention, pattern recognition, and intention reading manifest themselves in language processing and production, as well as in the structure of linguistic units. In addition to research that addresses the form and meaning of such linguistic units at different levels of linguistic organization, domains of inquiry that are in the current focus of usage-based studies include linguistic variation, first and second-language acquisition, bilingualism, and language change.
Article
Gothic
D. Gary Miller
This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics. Please check back later for the full article.
Apart from runic inscriptions, Gothic is the earliest attested language of the Germanic family, dating to the 4th century. Along with Crimean Gothic, it belongs to the branch known as East Germanic. The bulk of the extant Gothic corpus is a translation of the Bible, of which only a portion remains. The translation is traditionally ascribed to Wulfila, who is credited with inventing the Gothic alphabet. The many Greek conventions both help and hinder interpretation of the Gothic phonological system. As in Greek, letters of the alphabet functioned as numerals, but the late letter names were from runic.
Gothic inflectional categories include nouns, adjectives, and verbs. Nouns are inflected for three genders, two numbers, and four cases. Various stem types inherited from Indo-European constitute different form classes in Gothic. Adjectives have the same properties and are also inflected according to so-called weak and strong forms, as are Gothic verbs. Verbs are inflected for three persons and numbers, an indicative and a nonindicative mood (here called “optative”), past and nonpast tense, and voice. The mediopassive survives in Gothic morphologically as a synthetic passive and syntactically in innovated periphrastic formations; middle and anticausative functions were taken over by reflexive-type structures. Nonfinite forms are the infinitive, the imperative, and two participles.
In syntax, Gothic had null subjects as an option, mostly in the third person singular. Aspect was effected primarily by prefixes, which have many other functions, and aspect is not consistently indicated. Absolute constructions with a participle occurred in various cases with functional differences. Relativization was effected primarily by relative pronouns built on demonstratives plus a complementizer. Complementizers could be used with subordinate clause verbs in the indicative or optative. The switch to the optative was triggered by irrealis, matrix verbs that do not permit a full range of subordinate tenses, expression of a hope or wish, potentiality, and several other conditions. Many of these are also relevant to matrix clauses (independent optatives).
Essentials of linearization include prepositional phrases, default postposed genitives and possessive adjectives, and preposed demonstratives. Verb-object order predominates, but there is much Greek influence. Verb-auxiliary order is native Gothic.
Article
Receptive Multilingualism in Germanic Languages
Charlotte Gooskens
Many languages and dialects are spoken in the Germanic language area. When speakers with different native language backgrounds want to communicate, they need to find ways to cross linguistic borders. Speakers often use English as a lingua franca, or they learn each other’s languages. However, this asks considerable time and effort. Many speakers feel insecure when speaking a foreign language, or they may not master it well enough to communicate at more than a basic level. An alternative communication mode is receptive multilingualism. This is a form of communication in which interactants speak their own language but are able to understand the language of the other well enough to communicate successfully. It is easier for most speakers to express themselves in their first language than in a foreign language. In addition, language is an important part of identity and therefore it is important for many individuals to use their native language when communicating with others.
A prerequisite for receptive multilingualism is mutual intelligibility between the languages of the interactants. To be able to communicate successfully, the participants in a conversation do not need to be able to speak the language of the conversation partner, but they need a certain level of understanding of the other speaker’s language. The level of intelligibility relies on similarities between the languages of the interactants. In general, languages that are closely related are mutually intelligible to a higher extent than less closely related languages. However, receptive multilingualism can also be successful if the interactants have been exposed to or have learned each other’s languages to an extent that is sufficient to understand them.
Receptive multilingualism has received a considerable amount of attention among scholars, educators, and policymakers in the Germanic language area. This is especially true in mainland Scandinavia, where this kind of communication between Swedes, Danes, and Norwegians is often put into practice. However, receptive multilingualism is also used among speakers with other Germanic language backgrounds. Even in the case of less closely related Germanic languages, such as German and Dutch or Frisian and Danish, there is often a potential for communication by means of receptive multilingualism. When speakers want to communicate in this mode, only a little exposure or instruction is sufficient to make them aware of important differences and similarities between their own language and the language of the speaker.
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
Germanic Languages in Contact in North America
Michael T. Putnam
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.
Article
Germanic Languages in Contact in Central and South America
Karoline Kühl
West and North Germanic language varieties have been part of the Latin American language ecology since the middle of the 19th century, when European mass migration created Germanic-speaking immigrant communities in North, Central, and South America. The subsequent fate of the Germanic immigrant varieties in Latin America varied greatly in terms of how long intergenerational transfer has been maintained, if and to what degree language maintenance has been supported by linguistic codification and language teaching, and the degree of contact with the surrounding majority population. Some languages like the Mennonite Low German varieties have been quite repellent with regard to language change induced by contact with the majority languages Portuguese and/or Spanish, other (Germanic) immigrant varieties, and indigenous languages. However, contact with the majority population and other (immigrant) ethnic groups, bilingualism, and, accordingly, the influence of Spanish and/or Portuguese has been growing for most Germanic immigrant varieties at least since the 1950s.
The long-standing German dialectological research tradition into extra-territorial Germanic language islands has led to detailed accounts of many German varieties in Latin America. Accounts of other Germanic varieties are much more restricted, both in numbers and in extent: Some like Argentine Danish or Patagonian Afrikaans have been described only recently; others, like Swedish in Brazil and Argentine Dutch, hardly at all. In all cases, the accounts differ greatly regarding if, and to what extent, language contact is included as a cause of language change. Based on the scholarly coverage, the extent of contact-induced change in the Germanic varieties in Latin America appears to vary greatly, but whether this impression is due to the varying degrees of attention that the accounts devote to the effects of language contact or to particular sociolinguistic circumstances preventing or promoting language contact cannot be established. Still, contact linguistic profiles of many Germanic immigrant varieties in Latin America present themselves as a promising terra incognita for future research.
From a bird’s-eye perspective, we may in general terms conclude that the Germanic varieties in Latin America are characterized by lexical borrowing, at least for cultural loans and discourse-structuring elements, as well as ad hoc code-switching. Interestingly, a number of varieties show a similar pattern of integrating Spanish or Portuguese verb stems of verbs ending in -ir and -ar into a very similar inflectional Germanic paradigm (Misiones Swedish -era, Argentine Danish -is(ere), Riograndenser Hunsrückisch -ieren, Volga German -i(:)ere). In general, syntactical restructurings seem to be restricted, with the notable exception of standard deviant omission of mainly pronominal subjects and, partly, pronominal objects. Other developments are specific, applying only to individual varieties.
