A General and Unified Theory of the Transmission Process in Language Contact_review_pharies

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202 David Pharies: Review of Rini (1999)

Penny, Ralph. 1991.AHistory of the Spanish Language. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.Pharies, David. 1987. “Blending in Spanish Word-Formation”. Romanistische Jahrbuch

38.271–289.Rini, Joel. 1991. “The Diffusion of /-ee-/ > /-e-/ in Ibero-Romance Infinitives: creer, leer, veer,

preveer, proveer, seer, poseer”. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 92.95–103.Rini, Joel. 1998a. “The Formation of Old Spanish buey(s), bueyes, grey(s), greyes, ley(s), leyes,

rey(s), reyes: A Morphophonological Analysis”. Hispanic Review 66.1–19.Rini, Joel. 1998b. “The -y of Spanish hay Reexamined”. Perspectives on Spanish Linguistics,

Volume 3. Proceedings of the First Hispanic Linguistics Colloquium, ed. by Javier GutiérrezRexach & José del Valle, 117–125. Columbus, Ohio: The Ohio State University Press.

Trask, R.L. 1996. Historical Linguistics. London: Arnold.

Reviewer’s address

David PhariesDepartment of Romance Languages and LiteraturesUniversity of FloridaGainesville, Florida 32611–7405 U.S.A.

e-mail: [email protected]

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A General and Unified Theory of the Transmission Process in Language

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AUTHOR "Peter Bakker"

TITLE "Review of “A General and Unified Theory of the Transmission Process in Language Contact”. by Frans van Coetsem"

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Contact. By Frans van Coetsem†. Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 2000.Pp.309. (= Monographien zur Sprachwissenschaft, 19).

Reviewed by Peter Bakker (Aarhus University)

This book has been written by a scholar with an independent mind. His theoryof language contact is unique and original. Van Coetsem’s originality isreflected among others in the fact that he places his list of references in thebeginning of the book rather than in the end— something I still was not usedto when I had finished reading the book, frequently looking for the referencesin vain in the back. In eight chapters the author deals with different ways inwhich languages in contact can influence one another, and he presents what hecalls a “unified theory”. of contact-induced change. The author says that thebook should be read in conjunction with his 1988monograph on loan phonol-ogy (p.41). Van Coetsem has departed from his 1988 work in that he deals notonly with phonology, but also with other components of language, and that heuses a broader database of languages. Further he has included what he calls“formulas”. in order to formalize his theory.



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Reviews / Comptes rendus / Besprechungen 203

In his work, Van Coetsem focuses mostly on a fairly limited number oflanguages, mostly Afrikaans, Dutch, English, French, German, Gothic andRomani. Several of these languages reoccur in different contact situations.Four of them (not Afrikaans, Gothic and Romani) have in common that theyare all spoken in the same area of the world, that they have influenced eachother to some extent. They are all languages with many speakers (on a globalscale), a long literary tradition and an established written norm. There isspecial attention for works by Belgian and Dutch scholars in these domainsthroughout the book.

Principles of contact-induced change that are formulated on the basis ofthis small set of languages, however, may not be valid for smaller languages inother continents, or for languages that are spoken in socially different situa-tions. Only occasionally are some of the smaller contact languages and themore extreme results of language contact discussed, mostly in ch. 8, in whichwe find discussions of Russenorsk (a pidgin based lexically on Norwegian andRussian), Michif (a mixed language with Cree verbs and French nouns),Mednyj Aleut (a variety of Aleut thoroughly mixed with Russian, using amongother things all of the Russian finite verb inflection), Media Lengua (anintertwined, mixed language with a Quechua grammatical system and Spanishlexicon), Angloromani, the intertwined language of English Gypsies, withRomani vocabulary and English grammatical system and finally the convergedforms of Marathi (South Indic), Urdu (Central Indic) and Kannada (Dravi-dian) of Kupwar in India. The book deals only with permanent effects onlanguages. Code-switching and psychological processes in bilingual speakersare hardly mentioned at all.

Van Coetsem’s originality is visible, among others, in a proliferation ofpersonal terminology, which is not always clearly defined, unfortunately. I willlist some of his terms, indicated with italics, some of which are in general use inhistorical linguistics. This is not a full discussion of all the terms used in thebook. Contact-induced change can effect the source language, in which case thesecond language acquired by a group is effected by imposition (push transfer,imitation), or it can effect the recipient language, in which case the first languageof a group that acquired a second language is effected (borrowing, pull transfer,adaptation). In historical linguistics one would speak of substratum influence inthe case of shift, and superstratum or adstratum in the case ofmaintenance. Boththe source language (SL) and the recipient language (RL) can be agents in theprocess of transfer, i.e., actively involved in the changes, in SL agentivity and RLagentivity respectively. In some cases the distinction between these two types is



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204 Peter Bakker: Review of Van Coetsem† (2000)

overruled, and then one speaks of neutralization and one finds free transfer insuch cases. It also happens that both types of agentivity co-occur and one speaksof co-agentivity. Transfer can be unidirectional or bidirectional. Some compo-nents of languages are more stable than others, which means that they are lesslikely to be changed in contact situations, and this stability is gradient. Theprocess of borrowing can be addition (motivated by need) or substitution (whena word already exists), or a form of osmotic leveling, e.g., calquing or lexicalmixing. Changes are spread by diffusion, either areal or intergenerational. In acontact-linguistic state or a contact-linguistic action one language may bedominant, and one must distinguish linguistically dominant (in bilingualindividuals) from socially dominant (cultural dominance, prestige). Contactsituations can be unmarked (roughly, Western Europe) or marked (cases thatare hard to fit in the general model). Cases of mixing and intertwining areexamples of results of markedness in situations of language contact.

These and other terms are discussed throughout the book but seldomdefined. In the introductory chapter (pp.49–104) most of these terms areintroduced, and stability is elaborated upon in ch. 2. RL agentivity is dealt within more detail in ch. 3, and examples are given in ch. 4. Subsequently SLagentivity is dealt with (ch. 5) and illustrated with case studies in ch. 6. Chap-ter 7 deals with the transfer of grammatical and phonological material, whichhappens in special circumstances. The eighth and final chapter deals withneutralization and marked language contact. An epilogue partly summarizes,partly points to some needs for further research, and partly reacts to commentson the manuscript version of the book. A 3-page appendix discusses theinfluence of spelling in the process of imitation. There is an index of names andsubjects, and four synthesizing diagrams conclude the volume.

The unusual terminology used and the lack of definitions are the mainproblems of the book. Often it seems as if the author believes that merelylabeling a phenomenon with a new term is also an explanation of itsoccurrence. The rarity of examples, which are moreover concentrated in specialexemplifying chapters, is another problem. In fact, Van Coetsem uses a verylimited set of recurring examples, some of which are found half a dozen timesthroughout the book. The pronunciation of the French borrowing in Dutch“corps” for example is discussed five times (pp. 70, 127, 147, 165, 217). The factthat Latin and Greek words may preserve their original plural markers isillustrated twelve times with either “criterion-criteria” (pp. 90–92, 151, 221,223, 260, 275) or with “focus-foci” (pp. 141, 155, 159, 168, 169, 220). Only oncethe example is “fungus-fungi” (p. 240), but that does not prevent the reader



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from repeated feelings of déjà-vu (pronounced with /y/ or /u/ in English,discussed four times in the book).

Even though a “unified theory” is promised in the title, the content of thebook is neither unified nor a theory. The range of facts discussed appears verylimited, and the number of case studies is even more restricted. Generalizationsare often vague to the point of being vacuous. The author does not make anyclear predictions, apart from some trivial ones. His discussion of the moresensational results of language contact in ch. 8makes the wrong impression that“anything goes”. in marked situations. There are indeed clear situational,linguistic and functional reasons for the structural compartmentalization in atleast some of these cases. For unknown reasons Van Coetsem ignores thoseformulated by others, e.g., the generalizations given in Bakker (1997, ch. 7). It

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is all too easy to ascribe some of these results to phenomena like“communication,”. others to “self-identification,”. and these in combinationwith general terms like “neutralization”. or “(un)markedness”. or“(non)nativeness”. for the specific situation. Nowhere does Van Coetsemattempt to explain the different compartmentalizations of the unusual cases,such as noun versus verb, borrowed verbal inflection, lexicon versus grammar.See Matras 2000, and the peer commentaries, for a first courageous attempt.

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The formalizations that Van Coetsem presents do not help either. They arenothing but compact reformulations in which words are abbreviated, orreplaced by arrows. They are at most convenient summaries. Van Coetsempresents no new facts and hardly any new or insightful solutions for problemsin the area of language contact, at least for specialists in this field. Neither doesthe book provide a possibility for beginners to gain an overview of languagecontact phenomena. Historical linguists, who have a traditional aversion againstcontact as an explanatory force, will probably likewise find little of interest.

Incidentally, Van Coetsem’s publishing career shows some remarkableparallels with the one of another historical linguist, Sarah Grey Thomason. Bothpublished books distinguishing interference/shift/SL agentivity from borrow-ing/maintenance/RL agentivity in 1988 (Thomason & Kaufman 1988). Both

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published another book in 1996 (Thomason on contact languages, Van Coet-sem on the typology of lexical accent), and both have just published a moresynthesizing book on language contact (Thomason 2001). In my view, Tho-

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mason’s work is more insightful, precise, thorough and complete.The world needs independent thinkers like Van Coetsem. I wish, however,

that he had indeed presented a “unified theory”. of language contact.



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206 Peter Bakker: Review of Van Coetsem† (2000)

References

Bakker, Peter. 1997. “A Language of our Own”: The genesis of Michif — The mixed Cree-

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French language of the Canadian Métis. New York: Oxford University Press.Matras, Yaron. 2000. “Mixed Languages: A functional-communicative approach”. Bilingual-

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ism. Language and Cognition 3(2).79–129 [with peer commentaries].Thomason, Sarah Grey. 2001. Language Contact. An introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh

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University Press.Thomason, Sarah Grey & Terrence Kaufman. 1988. Language Contact, Creolization and

Genetic Linguistics. Berkeley: University of California Press.van Coetsem, Frans. 1988. Loan Phonology and the Two Transfer Types in Language Contact.

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Dordrecht: Foris.

Reviewer’s address

Peter BakkerInstitute for LinguisticsAarhus University, NobelparkenJens Chr. Skous VejDK–8000 Aarhus C

e-mail: [email protected]

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A General and Unified Theory of the Transmission Process in Language Contact_review_pharies