Linguistics 330 Contact Languages Reed College, Fall 2014 T/TH 1:10-2:30, Eliot 405 Kara Becker Vollum 125 kbecker@reed.edu Office Hours: Tuesdays 3-4, Wednesdays 10-12 (and by appointment) Prerequisites Linguistics 211 and 212, or consent of instructor. Course Description This course is an investigation into the linguistic varieties and linguistic practices that emerge from contact situations. Taking into account both diachronic and synchronic perspectives, we focus on the three major outcomes of language contact: maintenance, shift, and creation, covering topics including borrowing, bilingualism, code-switching, language death, and pidgin and creole formation. Since the field of contact linguistics is inherently socio-linguistic, we pay equal attention to the social and linguistic settings of contact, as well as the social and linguistic outcomes of contact. Students will gain experience working with primary source data to present case studies of the structural and sociolinguistic properties of contact varieties. Conference. (Fulfills Group B). Course Texts Winford, Donald. 2003. An Introduction to Contact Linguistics. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Zentella, Ana Celia. 1997. Growing up Bilingual. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Kulick, Don. 1992. Language Shift and cultural reproduction: Socialization, self, and syncretism in a Papua New Guinean village. Cambridge University Press. Additional articles will be posted in PDF on Moodle
Course Requirements The Contact Languages in Music Archive: 20% You will research a contact variety, select a genre of music, artist, and song that utilize that variety, and submit an overview and analysis of the use of linguistic features in your selected song. Final Project: 40% I would recommend you approach your final project topic from one of two avenues: 1) Interest in a particular variety (a pidgin, creole, mixed language, or code-switched variety, for example), or 2) Interest in a particular conceptual topic (creole genesis, education, language death) which (could, but not should) be investigated through a case study of one or more varieties. In 3 Stages: Week 9 (November 6 th ): Submit a 1-page topic description and an annotated bibliography. Week 12 (November 25 th ): Submit a minimum of 5 pages of rough draft for feedback from me. Finals Week (Tuesday, December 16 th ) at 5pm: Your final paper. 15-pages max, including references and appendices. If you would like feedback on your paper, please note this on the first page and include your box number. If you d like feedback, please submit either a hard copy or word document to me; otherwise these formats or a PDF to my email is fine. Participation: 40% Participation in conference is mandatory and crucial to the success of our class, particularly at the upper division. Engage in class in a way that demonstrates the effort you put in to our class and our readings. Ask questions, connect concepts and readings, attempt to clarify or expand on what others say in class. I will expect you to come to class prepared with at least two substantive questions or comments for each reading for that day. If discussion isn t flowing well, I may formalize your contributions by asking you to submit discussion questions in advance. Instead of this, come to class ready to discuss what you ve read!
A Rotating Discussion Leader. On most days one of your will serve as our discussion leader. You should come prepared to 1) briefly summarize the papers we have read (major questions, major findings, major takeaways), and 2) lead discussion by preparing substantive questions or comments that relate to the readings. Extra credit: Contribute artifacts that directly relate to our course material to the Sociolinguistic Artifacts website: www.reed.edu/slx-artifacts Course Policies On Absences: Regular, prepared and disciplined conferencing is intrinsic to this course. Once you have missed two weeks of class whether or not your absences are excused you will have missed two much material and will not receive credit for this course. If a condition is chronic, appropriate documentation and reasonable accommodations should be considered in consultation with both me and the Disability Support Services office. A notice from Student Services that are you are absent because of an illness or are taking a formal emergency absence does not mean that you are excused from meeting any of the requirements of this course. If you must be absent due to health or an emergency, it is your responsibility to catch up on missed material. On Accommodations: If you are a student with a disability and believe you will need accommodation for this class, it is your responsibility to contact and register with Disability Support Services and provide them with documentation of your disability, so that they can determine what accommodations are appropriate for your situation. With your permission they will discuss with me those reasonable and appropriate accommodations. To avoid any delay you should contact the DSS office as early as possible in the semester, and contact me for assistance in developing a plan to address your academic needs in this course. Please note that accommodations are not retroactive and that reasonable disability accommodations cannot be provided until I have received an accommodation letter from and discussed your case with the DSS office. You can reach Disability Support Services at (503) 517-7921 or disability-services@reed.edu On Incompletes: I don t give them except in the case of an acute, extreme emergency or health crisis that interrupts what otherwise was good work in this course. On Late Work/Extensions: You are entitled to one one-day extension on a due date in this course, no questions asked. After that, any late work drops a full letter grade for every 24 hours past the deadline.
Course Outline Week 1: Introduction Sep 2 1. Crawford, James. 2001. Monolingual and Proud. 2. NY Times: Are we really monolingual? Sep 4 1. Winford Chapter 1 Week 2: Borrowing Sep 9 1. Winford Chapter 2 (pgs. 30-53) 2. Diniz de Figuerido, Eduardo H. 2010. To borrow or not to borrow: The use of English loanwords as slang on websites in Brazilian Portuguese. English Today 26 (4): 5-12. Sep 11 1. Brown, Becky. 2003. Code convergent borrowing in Louisiana French. Journal of Sociolinguistics 7(1): 3-23. 2. Angermeyer, Philipp Sebastian. 2005. Spelling bilingualism: Script choice in Russian American classified ads and signage. Language in Society 34: 493-531. Discussion Leader: Week 3: Code-switching Sep 16 1. Winford Chapter 4 2. Zentella Chapters 1, 2 and 3 Sep 18 1. Winford Chapter 5 (126-141) 2. Zentella Chapters 4, 5 and 6 Week 4: Code-switching Sep 23 1. Zentella Chapters 7 and 9 Sep 25 1. Zentella Chapters 10 and 12 Week 5: SLA and Shift Sep 30 1. Winford Chapter 7 (208-235) **Assignment 1 is Due** Oct 2 1. Winford Chapter 7 (256-267) 2. Kulick Introduction and Chapter 1 Week 6: Shift Oct 7 1. Kulick Chapters 2, 3 and 4 Oct 9 1. Kulick Chapters 5 and 6 Week 7: Shift Oct 14 1. Kulick Chapter 7, Conclusion Oct 16 **Assignment 1 Presentations**
FALL BREAK: October 21 and 23 Week 8: Pidgins and Creoles Oct 28 1. Winford Chapter 8 2. Thomason, Sarah Grey. 1983. Chinook Jargon in areal and historical context. Language 59 (4): 820-870. Required Sections: 1-5 (820-835) and Section 7 (859-867) Oct 30 1. Winford Chapter 9 (304-319) 2. Arends, Jacques. 2003. A Demographic perspective on creole formation. In Silvia Kouwenberg and John Victor Singler (eds.) The Handbook of Pidgin and Creole Studies. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. 309-331. Week 9: The Creole Prototype Nov 4 1. Winford Chapter 9 (319-329) 2. McWhorter, John H. 1998. Identifying the creole prototype: Vindicating a typological class. Language 74 (4): 788-813. Nov 6 1. Bickerton, Derek. 1984. The language bioprogram hypothesis. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 7: 173-188. **Final Project Annotated Bibliography is due** Week 10: Creole Genesis Nov 11 1. Kegl, Judy and John McWhorter. 1996. Perspectives on an emerging language. The Proceedings of the Twenty-eighth Annual Child Language Research Forum. 15-138 2. Siegel, Jeff. 2007. Recent evidence against the Language Bioprogram Hypothesis: The pivotal case of Hawai i Creole. Studies in Language 31 (1): 51-88. Nov 13 1. Singler, John Victor. 2006. Children and creole genesis. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 21 (1): 157-173. 3. Jourdan, Christine and Roger Keesing. 1997. From Fisin to Pijin: Creolization in process in the Solomon Islands. Language in Society 26 (3): 401-420. Week 11: The Creole Continuum Nov 18 1. Lipski, John M. 2011. Decreolization as emergent grammar(s): Some Afro-Bolivian data. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages. 26 (2): 276-340. (skip section 11). 2. Mufwene, Salikoko S. 1994. On Decreolization: The case of Gullah. In The Social Construction of Identity: Creole Situations. 63-87 (skip notes). Nov 20 1. Escure, Geneviève. 1982. Contrastive Patterns of Intragroup and Intergroup Interaction in the Creole Continuum of Belize. In Language (11): 239-264. 2. Irvine, Alison. 2004. A good command of the English language: Phonological variation in the Jamaican acrolect. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Studies 19 (1): 41-76. Week 12: African American English Nov 25 1. Spears, Arthur K. Pidgins/Creoles and African American English. In The Handbook of Pidgin and Creole Studies. 512-542. **Final Project 5 Pages is Due**
Nov 27: Thanksgiving Week 13: Attitudes and Ideology Dec 2 1. Garret, Paul B. 2006. Contact languages as endangered languages: What is there to lose? Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 21 (1): 175-190. 2. Wassink, Alicia Bedford. 1999. Historic low prestige and seeds of change: Attitudes towards Jamaican Creole. Language in Society 28: 57-92. Dec 4 1. Schieffelin, Bambi and Rachelle Doucet. 1994. The real Haitian Creole: Ideology, Metalinguistics, and Orthographic Choice. American Ethnologist 21 (1): 176-200. 2. Handman, Courtney. 2013. Text messaging in Tok Pisin: Etymologies and Orthographies in Cosmopolitan Papua New Guinea. Culture, Theory and Critique 54 (3): 265-284. Week 14: December 9 Dec 9 1. Siegel, Jeff. 2007. Creoles and Minority Dialects in Education: An update. Language in Education 21 (1): 66-86. **Final Paper is due Tuesday, December 16 th at 5pm**