Language Contact and Morphosyntactic Complexity: Evidence from German

Maitz, Péter; Németh, Attila

doi:10.1017/s1470542713000184

Cited by 31 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…Barðdal and Kulikov (2008, p. 470) review various scenarios for case reduction, including phonetic-phonological, morphological and syntactic-semantic accounts, noting that case loss is “typically preceded by a period of variation and alternation between case forms or argument structures.” Language contact clearly correlates with loss of inflectional morphology (O’Neil, 1978; Maitz and Németh, 2014). This is one of the most robust findings across myriad dialects and contact settings for heritage German varieties.…”

Section: Case Marking and Case Reduction In Germanic And Heritage Germanmentioning

confidence: 99%

New Structural Patterns in Moribund Grammar: Case Marking in Heritage German

et al. 2015

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Research treats divergences between monolingual and heritage grammars in terms of performance—‘L1 attrition,’ e.g., lexical retrieval—or competence—‘incomplete acquisition’, e.g., lack of overt tense markers (e.g., Polinsky, 1995; Sorace, 2004; Montrul, 2008; Schmid, 2010). One classic difference between monolingual and Heritage German is reduction in morphological case in the latter, especially loss of dative marking. Our evidence from several Heritage German varieties suggests that speakers have not merely lost case, but rather developed innovative structures to mark it. More specifically, Heritage German speakers produce dative forms in line with established patterns of Differential Object Marking (Bossong, 1985, 1991; Aissen, 2003), suggesting a reallocated mapping of case. We take this as evidence for innovative reanalysis in heritage grammars (Putnam and Sánchez, 2013). Following Kamp and Reyle (1993) and Wechsler (2011, 2014), the dative adopts a more indexical discourse function, forging a tighter connection between morphosyntax and semantic properties. Moribund grammars deploy linguistic resources in novel ways, a finding which can help move us beyond simple narratives of ‘attrition’ and ‘incomplete acquisition.’

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Section: Case Marking and Case Reduction In Germanic And Heritage Germanmentioning

confidence: 99%

New Structural Patterns in Moribund Grammar: Case Marking in Heritage German

et al. 2015

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“…Maitz and Németh ( 2014 ) compare three types of German varieties against four indicators of morphosyntactic complexity (degree of synthesis being one of them), and to the effect that these varieties represent three distinct sociolinguistic and sociohistorical profiles: one highly standardized contact variety (Standard German), two high contact varieties (Kiche Duits and Unserdeutsch), and one low contact L1 variety (Cimbrian). The results show significant differences between the two types of high contact varieties, on the one hand, and the low contact L1 variety, on the other, with respect to all four parameters of morphosyntactic complexity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Language Structures May Adapt to the Sociolinguistic Environment, but It Matters What and How You Count: A Typological Study of Verbal and Nominal Complexity

Sinnemäki

Garbo

2018

Front. Psychol.

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In this article we evaluate claims that language structure adapts to sociolinguistic environment. We present the results of two typological case studies examining the effects of the number of native (=L1) speakers and the proportion of adult second language (=L2) learners on language structure. Data from more than 300 languages suggest that testing the effect of population size and proportion of adult L2 learners on features of verbal and nominal complexity produces conflicting results on different grammatical features. The results show that verbal inflectional synthesis adapts to the sociolinguistic environment but the number of genders does not. The results also suggest that modeling population size together with proportion of L2 improves model fit compared to modeling them independently of one another. We thus argue that surveying population size alone may be insufficient to detect possible adaptation of linguistic structure to the sociolinguistic environment. Rather, other features, such as proportion of L2 speakers, prestige and social network density, should be studied, and if demographic numeric data are used, they should not be used in isolation but rather in competition with other sociolinguistic features. We also suggest that not all types of language structures within a given grammatical domain are equally sensitive to the effect of sociolinguistic variables, and that more exploratory studies are needed before we can arrive at a reliable set of grammatical features that may be potentially most (and least) adaptive to social structures.

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“…Under this indicator, scholars naturally regard difficulty, obscurity and non-essentiality as complex language phenomena. Here are the details: (a) Acquisition difficulty is regarded as a subjective category of language complexity in second language researches (Maitz & Németh, 2014). However, they do not strictly correspond, because the similarity between the target language and the mother tongue also determines the difficulty of acquisition.…”

Section: Relevant Characteristics: Resource/cost Consumptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

What Is Language Complexity?

Ma¹,

Wang²

2019

MACL

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Abstract：On the basis of complex system theory and the frontier researches of Chinese and foreign linguistics in this field, this paper systematically discusses the conceptual connotation of language complexity, and generalizes the essential characteristics in quality and quantity, which is non-linearity and high organizational depth. The non-linearity is mainly manifested as imbalance, emergence and interactivity, while the high organizational depth as multi-level, multi-dimension, multi-stage, high cardinality, etc. Generally speaking, the more complex the information is, the longer the minimum description length (MDL) of it is, and the higher resource/cost consumption is. In the relation of unity of opposites between complexity and simplicity, language complexity is absolute, while simplicity is relative. Complexity is always in dominance, while simplicity always serves as a lever to balance, control and regulate complexity. They are developing nonlinear adaptive interactions, which leads to the formation and development of linguistic paradigm system (such as grammatical paradigm and rhetorical paradigm). The conclusion provides a theoretical basis for the study of language complexity.

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Language Contact and Morphosyntactic Complexity: Evidence from German

Cited by 31 publications

References 35 publications

New Structural Patterns in Moribund Grammar: Case Marking in Heritage German

New Structural Patterns in Moribund Grammar: Case Marking in Heritage German

Language Structures May Adapt to the Sociolinguistic Environment, but It Matters What and How You Count: A Typological Study of Verbal and Nominal Complexity

What Is Language Complexity?

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