language contact thesis

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25 Language Contact

Peter Hans Nelde died on August 31, 2007, after a long illness. Despite his passing, the contribution he wrote for the Oxford Handbook of Applied Linguistics was considered to be of such importance that it was decided to retain it in its original form. Dr. Nelde established contact linguistics as an integral part of the discipline, supported by annual international symposia dealing with contact and conflict between linguistic minorities and majorities. In addition, he established the series Plurilingua that he maintained as editor-in-chief during his life. Dr. Nelde was professor and chair of German and general linguistics at the Katholieke Universiteit Brussel (Belgium) and visiting professor in Nijmegen (the Netherlands) and Leipzig (Germany). He directed Languages in a Network of European Excellence (LINEE), the international research project on linguistic diversity sponsored by the European Union. In 1977 he founded the Research Centre on Multilingualism and had been its director ever since. He was responsible for the publication of the Euromosaic reports on the linguistic minorities of Europe. He was also one of the editors of Sociolinguistica: International Yearbook of Sociolinguistics (Niemeyer, Tübingen) and the editor in chief of Contact Linguistics: An International Handbook of Contemporary Research. His main research areas were multilingualism, contact linguistics, language policy, and language planning. He shall be sorely missed.

• Published: 18 September 2012
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This article focuses on the ideas of multilingualism and language contact against the backdrop of applied linguistics. In the last four decades, scientific research on multilingualism has experienced numerous stimuli, the majority of which can be attributed to language contact research in the Weinreich tradition, going back to his famous Languages in Contact . Although multilingualism and language contact between individuals and groups are age old, language contact research first obtained a secure position in applied linguistics in the 1970s through the development of the social sciences. The great significance of multilingualism in the future of Europe and North America and its greater importance in many other parts of the world led to an interdisciplinary interest in contact linguistics. As an interdisciplinary branch of multilingual research, contact linguistics incorporates three areas of inquiry: language use, language user, and language sphere. This article explains the field of contact linguistics along with its significant parameters.

I. Language Contact, Multilingualism, and Applied Linguistics

In the last 40 years, scientific research on multilingualism has experienced numerous stimuli, the majority of which can be attributed to language contact research in the Weinreich tradition, going back to his famous Languages in Contact (1953). Weinreich's work is based on the fact that speakers or language communities, rather than languages on an abstract level, are in contact with one another, and that any analysis of multilingual behavior is useless without consideration of the linguistic and cultural roots of the given situation. Today, research into language contact is manifest in two volumes of an international handbook ( Contact Linguistics ) which appeared for the first time in Dirven and Pütz ( 1996 and 1997 ). The interest of applied linguistics in language contact research or contact linguistics—a term used since the Brussels “Contact and Conflict” congress in 1979—begins with the recognition that the majority of the world's population is multilingual, so that multilingualism is to be regarded as the norm rather than the exception. Although multilingualism and language contact between individuals and groups are as old as the Babylonian confusion of tongues, language contact research first obtained a secure position in applied linguistics in the 1970s through the development of the social sciences. The great significance of multilingualism in the future of Europe and North America and its greater importance in many other parts of the world led to an interdisciplinary interest in contact linguistics, whose relation to multilingualism can be portrayed graphically: see figure 25.1 .

Reprinted in Memory of Dr. Nelde.

The relation of contact linguistics to multilingualism

II. What is Contact Linguistics?

As an interdisciplinary branch of multilingual research, contact linguistics incorporates three areas of inquiry: language use, language user, and language sphere.

The significant parameters of contact linguistics are linguistic levels (phonology, syntax, lexicon) and also discourse analysis, stylistics, and pragmatics. In addition there are the external linguistic factors: for example, nation, language community, language boundaries, migration, and many others.

The type of multilingualism is also relevant; in other words, whether it manifests itself as individual, institutional, or state bilingualism, as social multilingualism, as diglossia or dialect, or as natural or artificial multilingualism, for which the immediate levels—such as so-called semilingualism or interlinguistics—also must be considered. In the process it is helpful to make a basic, simplifying distinction between autochthonous (native) and allochthonous (migrant, refugee) groups, because instances of language contact can rarely be isolated as single phenomena but, rather, usually as a cluster of characteristics.

The structuring of social groups is of crucial importance to the language user. Besides the conventional differences of age, sex, and social relationship, minority status receives special attention from researchers of multilingualism.

Above and beyond these factors, all of the sectors responsible for the social interplay of a language community play an essential role. Added to traditional sectors like religion, politics, culture, and science in the last few decades are others like technology, industry, city and administration and, most recently, also media, advertising, and data processing. In the educational/cultural sector, the schools occupy a special place, as they are constantly exposed to new forms and models of multilingual instruction from North America and—above all—from Canada. The question of whether bilingual and multilingual education will interfere with a child's right to use his/her mother (home, first, colloquial) tongue depends mainly on the intentions of the respective language planners, so that conformity and integration, instead of language maintenance, constitute the motivating forces of multilingual instruction. To oversimplify the issue, the underprivileged must submit to bilingual education and thus to assimilation, while foreign language instruction is available to the sociological elite. Contact processes that have concerned researchers in multilingualism since the beginning are partly diachronic and partly synchronic in nature. Besides language change, borrowing processes, interference, and language mixing, there are linguae francae , language alternation, language maintenance and loss, code-switching, pidginization, and creolization.

The effects of such language contact processes can be registered by measuring language consciousness and attitude. Language loyalty and prestige play a decisive role in the linguistic identity of a multilingual person, and extreme care must be taken in interpreting so-called language statistics (censuses and public opinion surveys).

The language spheres in which considerations of multilingualism have become indispensable extend over numerous areas of study and are, furthermore, dependent on the respective level of development and interest. These include, to name a few, language policy, language planning, language ecology, language contact in multinational industries and organizations, language care and revitalization among minorities, as well as single development, planned languages, and the role of English as a world language with all the concomitant effects on the respective individual languages. (For a complete list of topics see Nelde et al., 1996 .)

Such a bird's-eye view shows well enough how extensive, interdisciplinary, and yet specialized the field of multilingualism is as related to contact linguistics.

III. Contact and Conflict

Ethnic contact and conflict and sociology.

Most contact between ethnic groups does not occur in peaceful, harmoniously coexisting communities. Instead, it exhibits varying degrees of tension, resentment, and differences of opinion that are characteristic of every competitive social structure. Under certain conditions, such generally accepted competitive tensions can degenerate into intense conflicts, in the worst case ending in violence. The possibility of conflict erupting is always present, because differences between groups create feelings of uncertainty of status, which could give rise to conflicts. Sociologists who have dealt with contact problems between ethnic groups define conflicts as contentions involving real or apparent fears, interests, and values, in which the goals of the opposing group must be opposed, or at least neutralized, to protect one's own interests (prestige, employment, political power, etc.; Williams, 1947 ). This type of contention often appears as a conflict of values, in which differing behavioral norms collide, because usually only one norm is considered to be valid. Conflicts between ethnic groups, however, occur only very rarely as openly waged violent conflicts and usually consist of a complex system of threats and sanctions in which the interests and values of one group are endangered. Conflicts can arise relatively easily if—as is usually the case—interests and values have an emotional basis.

The magnitude and the development of a conflict depend on a number of factors determined by level of friction between two or more ethnic groups, the presence of equalizing or mitigating elements, and the degree of uncertainty of all the participants. Thus, a one-sided explanation of the conflict, or one based on irrational prejudices, will fail. Very different factors that influence each other can reinforce and escalate to cause group conflict. This group conflict is part of normal social behavior in which different groups compete with each other, and should therefore not be connoted only negatively, because in this way new—and possibly more peaceful—forms of coexistence can arise. On the other hand, tensions between ethnic groups brought about by feelings of intimidation can give rise to new conflicts at any time—conflicts that can be caused by a minority as well as by a majority group. As long as society continues to create new fears, because of its competitive orientation, the creation of new conflicts appears unavoidable.

Political Language Contact and Conflict

Along with sociologists, political scientists also assume that language contact can cause political conflict. Language conflicts can be brought about by changes in an expanding social system when there is contact between different language groups (Inglehart and Woodward, 1972 ). Belgium and French Canada are examples of this. The reasons for such a situation are the following: A dominant language group (French in Belgium, English in Canada) controls the crucial authority in the areas of administration, politics, and the economy, and gives employment preference to those applicants who have command of the dominant language. The disadvantaged language group is then left with the choice of renouncing its social ambitions, assimilating, or resisting. Although numerically weak or psychologically weakened language groups tend toward assimilation, in modern societies numerically stronger, more homogeneous language groups possessing traditional values, such as their own history and culture, prefer political resistance, the usual form of organized language conflict in this century. This type of conflict becomes especially salient when it occurs between population groups of differing socioeconomic structures (urban/rural, poor/wealthy, indigenous/immigrant) and when the dominant group requires its own language as a condition for the integration of the rest of the population. Although in the case of French-speaking Canada, English appeared to be the necessary means of communication in trade and business, nearly 80% of the francophone population spoke only French, thus being excluded from social elevation in the political/economic sector. A small French-speaking elite, whose original goal was political opposition to dominant English, ultimately precipitated the outbreak of the latent, socioeconomically motivated language conflict.

Most current language conflicts are the result of differing social status and preferential treatment of the dominant language on the part of the government. In these cases, there are the religious, social, economic, or psychological fears and frustrations of the weaker group that may be responsible for the language conflict. However, a critical factor in the expansion and intensification of such conflict remains the impediment to social mobility, particularly of a disadvantaged or suppressed ethnic group (e.g., the numerous language conflicts in multiethnic Austria-Hungary).

Language problems in very different areas (politics, economics, administration, education) appear under the heading of language conflict. In such cases, politicians and economic leaders seize upon the notion of language conflict, disregarding the actual underlying causes, and thus continue to inflame “from above” the conflict arisen “from below,” with the result that language assumes much more importance than it may have had at the outset of the conflict. This language-oriented “surface structure” is used to obscure the more deeply rooted, suppressed “deep structure” (social and economic problems). Furthermore, multilingual conflicts in Europe, especially in urban societies, show quite clearly that language conflicts are caused primarily by attempts on the part of the dominant group to block social mobility.

Language Conflict and Contact Linguistics

Even in contact linguistics the term conflict remains ambiguous, at least when it refers generally to social conflict that can arise in a multilingual situation. The notion appears to us essential here that neither contact nor conflict can occur between languages; they are conceivable only between speakers of languages. Oksaar (1980 ) correctly points out the ambiguity of the term language conflict as either conflict between languages within an individual or as conflict by means of language(s), including processes external to the individual. Similarly, Haarmann 1980 , 191) distinguishes between interlingual and interethnic language conflicts.

Among the founders of modern research in language contact—running parallel to the rapidly developing sociolinguistics and sociology of language (e.g., Weinreich and Fishman), the term conflict rarely appears. Although Weinreich views multilingualism (bilingualism) and the accompanying interference phenomena as the most important form of language contact, without regard to conflict between language communities on the basis of ethnic, religious, or cultural incompatibilities, Fishman 1972 : 14) grants language conflict greater importance in connection with language planning. Haugen ( 1966 ) was the first to make conflict presentable in language contact research with his detailed analysis of Norwegian language developments. Indeed, even linguists in multilingual countries (e.g., Yugoslavia, Switzerland, Belgium) resisted, up until the end of the 1970s, treating conflict methodically as part of language contact research, since such an “ideologicalization” of language contact appeared to them as “too touchy” (Fishman, 1980 : xi). One reason for the late discovery of a term indispensable in today's contact research is to be found in the history of contact linguistics itself: In traditional language contact research (as well as in dialectology and research on linguistic change) the emphasis tended toward closed, geographically homogeneous and easily describable socioeconomic groups, rather than on urban industrial societies, ripe for social and linguistic strife, whose demand for rapid integration laid the groundwork for conflict. However, it is precisely in modern urban society that conflicts result essentially from the normative sanctions of the more powerful, usually majority, group, which demands linguistic adaptation to the detriment of language contact, and thus preprograms conflict with those speakers who are unwilling to adapt.

Despite a less than ideal research situation essentially limited to empirical case studies of language contact, the following statements can be made. Language conflict can occur anywhere there is language contact, chiefly in multilingual communities, although Mattheier (1984 : 200) has also demonstrated language conflicts in so-called monolingual local communities. Language conflict arises from the confrontation of differing standards, values, and attitude structures, and strongly influences self-image, upbringing, education, and group consciousness. Thus, conflict can be viewed as a form of contact or, in terms of a model, as a complementary model to the language contact model.

Contact linguists have either described conflict research as an integral part of language contact research (Nelde et al., 1996 ) or have dealt with special topics from the perspective of conflict. The methods used are heterogeneous and come from numerous neighboring disciplines (psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics, communication research, sociology, etc.). For lack of its own methods, research still employs predominantly empirical procedures. Along with interview and polling techniques, privileged informants and representative sampling, prejudice research and stereotype and attitude observation, the past few years have seen combined investigation models such as socioprofiles and ethnoprofiles, community and polarity profiles (Nelde, 1995 ).

IV. Essential Principles of Contact Linguistics

These observations on language contact and conflict situations lead to some basic premises of contact linguistic, which, despite their occasional seeming triviality, merit consideration at this juncture:

1. Language contact exists only between speakers and language communities, not between languages. Comparison of one and the same language in different contexts is therefore possible only in a quite limited way. 2. The statement that there can be no language contact without language conflict (“Nelde's Law”; K. de Bot, 1997: 51) may appear exaggerated, but there is in the realm of the European languages at present no imaginable contact situation that cannot also be described as language conflict. 3. Contact linguistics usually sees language as a significant secondary symbol of fundamental causes of conflict of a socioeconomic, political, religious, psychological, or historical sort. Thus, in a way, language conflict appears to be the lesser evil, because it apparently can be more easily corrected and neutralized than primary sociopolitical conflicts. 4. Contact linguistics, at the same time, makes it clear that conflicts should not be condemned as only negative, but, rather, it proves that new structures that are more advantageous than the foregoing ones can often result from conflicts.

V. Typology of Conflict

The current language conflicts in Europe, North and Central America, Southeast Asia, and parts of Africa can be viewed as situations of either natural or artificial language conflict.

Natural Language Conflict

Natural language conflicts are those situations that have traditionally existed between indigenous majorities and minorities. The extensive literature of language conflict abounds with examples of this type, particularly those of minorities pitted against official national or regional languages. Conflict has frequently arisen in these situations of language contact because the linguistic minority was not in a position to assimilate. This type of conflict can be found, for example, in Europe along the Germanic-Romance and the Slavic-Germanic linguistic boundaries, and in Canada involving the French-speaking minority and among a few indigenous peoples. Natural language conflicts can become problematic when ideology on either side—not only the majority but the minority as well—is used to intensify the differences that exist, and peaceful coexistence between language communities can easily be threatened when the banner of language is hoisted as the defining symbol of a people.

The conflict between Belfast (Northern Ireland) and Connemara (North of Galway in the Irish republic), for example, involves considerably more than just language: An urban, Protestant, working environment (Belfast) in fact has little if anything in common with a rural, Catholic region of high unemployment (Connemara). The issue of language only exacerbates these differences.

A similar situation is reflected in the ideologically motivated opposition between Afrikaans and English in Namibia (and also in South Africa). The vast majority of the Namibian populace, regardless of race or social status, speaks or at least understands Afrikaans. The country's official language, however, is English, cast as the “language of freedom,” though less than 3% of the population speak it as their first language. Afrikaans, the former language of instruction and administration, remains the “language of oppression.”

More recently, the study of Russian has witnessed a rapid decline in the former Eastern Bloc countries, and one can only speculate on the relationship between the sudden lack of interest in Russian and the “de-ideologicalization” of that language in the new republics. After 1992, in the Croatian part of Bosnia-Herzegovina ( Herzeg ), all mentions of the term Serbo-Croatian have been expunged from schoolbooks and replaced, not on linguistic but on ideological grounds, by the term Croatian .

Artificial Language Conflict

Artificial, or self-imposed, conflict arises out of situations of compromise in which one or more language communities are disfavored. These situations have existed in every society from Babel to Brussels. Symmetric multilingualism, in which equal numbers of speakers are invested with equal rights and in which both language prestige and linguistic identities are congruent, is impossible, because one of the language groups will always be subject to stigmatization and/or discrimination, with conflict the inevitable result.

Artificial language conflict occurs especially when, motivated by the need for rapid international communication, politically influential economic powers export their languages (and their resulting socioeconomic influence) to their trading partners. Thus, Russian (before 1990) and English have become languages of great economic expansion, despite a noteworthy lack of formal educational planning. Secondary schools in Strasbourg, for example, have abandoned study of the native German dialect for English (as the first foreign language), with the result that German is being lost as a local working language. It is offered as a second “foreign” language only to students over 12 years old, with the result that a passive knowledge of the mother tongue (a German dialect) is now all that remains.

The European Union has provided interesting examples of artificial language conflict. In the “Which language(s) for Europe?” debate, the Danes years ago, in a spirit of genuine cooperation, seemed to have opted to forgo the use of Danish. In retrospect, Denmark may appear to have resolved the issue, in the early years of the European Union, of reducing the number of official languages to at most two, with English and French destined to be the languages of international communication. The initial delight of London and Paris at this helpful suggestion was quickly dampened, however, because the Danes also suggested that the English should use French and the French should use English. After that suggestion, enthusiasm for the Danish solution quickly withered.

The presence of almost 4,000 translators and interpreters in Brussels suggests a return to the Tower of Babel. At the present time (the year 2000), the 11 working languages of the 15 member states generate a total of (10 × 11 =) 110 language combinations. The enlargement of the European Union by six or more additional member states in the coming years, with several new languages, leads to so many mathematical combinations that no assembly hall in the world would be able to accommodate meetings for all the interpreters.

These examples amply demonstrate that the language contacts and conflicts that threaten the peaceful coexistence of peoples are not always the consequence of long-standing historical contacts and conflicts among language communities. The new orders and restructurings of recent years have also led to sources of conflict that were not fully grasped just a few years ago. In any event, neither natural nor artificial conflict should be judged only negatively; rather, we should hope that out of conflict there may ensue new alliances and new solutions that will function better than any of the efforts of the past.

VI. Future Prospects

There are hardly any areas of human life that do not have to do with language contact and multilingualism in some way. Since its renaissance in the 1950s and 1960s, research on multilingualism has been carried out on contact linguistic initiatives due to the inclusion of neighboring disciplines like sociology, psychology, and many others. In the new century, younger subdisciplines will probably play a leading role because of their pronounced orientation to practical applications. The difference between the so-called internal and external linguistic criteria that was stressed in the past will be abandoned, because the interdependence and inseparability of these factors has become apparent in the most recent research results. In addition to the traditional (“hyphenated”) linguistic disciplines, these areas of research will surely include ecolinguistics, which has already provided research on language contact with many new stimuli. In the area of the conflict issues mentioned before, ecolinguistic initiatives have proved to be particularly successful, so much so that the constantly changing forms of language contact and multilingualism can be described more satisfactorily. More and more new migrant groups (evacuees, asylum seekers, refugees, expatriates) are being included in the traditional autochthonous and allochthonous forms of multilingualism, in addition to the native minorities. Here, we see, at the beginning of the new century, new language contact research fields arising. One example is connected to the development of the new media and their dominant role in changing societal structures by destroying traditional fields in the society. This also has an enormous influence on the central concept of contact linguistics that remains multilingualism. In future research, we have to develop new forms of multilingualism that are emerging from virtual contacts and from new economic-based minorities. It is one of the chief tasks of contact linguistics to meet this challenge and concern itself more intensively than in the past with a field that can serve as an outstanding example of applied science, the significance of which for life and survival on an overpopulated planet with hundreds of different languages cannot be overvalued.

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Language contact: Bridging the gap between individual interactions and areal patterns

Contact linguistics is the overarching term for a highly diversified field with branches that connect to such widely divergent areas as historical linguistics, typology, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and grammatical theory. Because of this diversification, there is a risk of fragmentation and lack of interaction between the different subbranches of contact linguistics. Nevertheless, the different approaches share the general goal of accounting for the results of interacting linguistic systems. This common goal opens up possibilities for active communication, cooperation, and coordination between the different branches of contact linguistics. This book, therefore, explores the extent to which contact linguistics can be viewed as a coherent field, and whether the advances achieved in a particular subfield can be translated to others. In this way our aim is to encourage a boundary-free discussion between different types of specialists of contact linguistics, and to stimulate cross-pollination between them.

• Introduction Rik van Gijn, Max Wahlström, Hanna Ruch, Anja Hasse Chapter 1
• Linguistic accommodation Hanna Ruch, Carlota de Benito Moreno Chapter 2
• Code-switching Hanna Lantto Chapter 3
• Contact languages Danae Perez Chapter 5
• Language shift Andreia Karnopp Chapter 4
• Dialect areas and contact dialectology Péter Jeszenszky, Philipp Stöckle, Anja Hasse Chapter 6
• Linguistic areas Rik van Gijn, Max Wahlström Chapter 7

Biographies

Rik van Gijn studied general linguistics at the University of Amsterdam. He received his PhD at the Radboud University Nijmegen and subsequently held positions at the Max-Planck-Institute for Psycholinguistics Nijmegen and the University of Zurich. Currently he is assistant professor at Leiden University. His interests focus on the description and comparison of the indigenous languages of South America, and on bringing together different disciplines to help uncover the population history of the continent, in particular with respect to historical contact.

Hanna Ruch studied Hispanic Philology, German Linguistics and Geography at the University of Zurich. She received her PhD from Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich with a thesis on sound change in Andalusian Spanish. Her postdoctoral research was concerned with phonetic accommodation in Swiss German dialects and comprised experimental, interactional, and theoretical approaches. Apart from linguistic accommodation, her research intererests include  variation and change, speech perception, dialectology, and language evolution. Hanna Ruch is currently working as a  linguist in the Swiss public sector. 

Max Wahlström studied Slavic Philology and Linguistics at the University of Helsinki, where he received his PhD in 2015 with a thesis titled "Loss of case inflection in Bulgarian and Macedonian". His current research deals with morphosyntax, information structure, and reference, both from language-specific and typological perspectives. Wahlström operates on fieldwork data from the Balkans, large speech corpora, and historical text corpora. His further academic interests include the development of literary languages and historical and contemporary socio-linguistics of the Balkan languages. He currently works as a University Lecturer of South Slavic languages at the University of Helsinki.

Anja Hasse studied Scandinavian Philology, German Linguistics, and Comparative Germanic Linguistics at the Universities of Zurich and Uppsala. After research stays at the University of L’Aquila and with the Surrey Morphology Group, she received her PhD from the University of Zurich with a thesis on overabundance in Zurich German inflection. Her focus lies on the contact between closely related Germanic varieties, morphology, Swiss German dialectology, and language variation and change. Currently, she is a postdoc at the University of Zurich in a project on Amish Shwitzer, and is co-leader of a project on Elfdalian.

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A study in language contact

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Makoe, B. 1999. A study in language contact. University of Cape Town.

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Language Shift and the Speech Community: Sociolinguistic Change in a Garifuna Community in Belize

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Language shift is the process by which a speech community in a contact situation (i.e. consisting of bilingual speakers) gradually stops using one of its two languages in favor of the other. The causal factors of language shift are generally considered to be social, and researchers have focused on speakers’ attitudes (both explicit and unstated) toward a language and domains of language use in the community, as well as other macro social factors. Additional research has focused on the effects of language shift, generally on the (changing) structure of the language itself. The goal of this thesis is to examine the relationship between social and linguistic factors in considering the causes and effects of language shift, focusing on age-based variation in the speech community. This dissertation examines the linguistic and social correlates of early language shift in a Garifuna community in Belize. An apparent time analysis shows an externally-motivated change in the status of the sociolinguistic variable (ch) that is evidence for a shift in the dominant language in the community. A second change in progress, variable deletion of intervocalic r, is described for the first time as an internally-motivated change, albeit progressing alongside contact-induced changes. Evidence is also presented to propose that the behavior of the transitional generation (speakers aged 30-49) shows interesting characteristics with regard to these two variables as a result of shifting language ideologies in the village. These ideological shifts are examined along with changing attitudes in the community toward English, Belizean Creole, and Garifuna.

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Concept of Language Contact in Linguistic Essay

Language contact only happens when two or more people speaking different languages come together, or spend time together. Contact linguistic is the study of language contact. When people speaking different languages stay together and interact freely, the different languages they speak influence each other resulting to neologism.

Languages usually grow bit by bit and with time they become popular (Sun, 2006). Commonly, languages influence each other through the exchange of words. The influence increases leading to even an exchange of grammar structuring and formation of sentences.

Other times, the contact of two languages can lead to a partial replacement of one language by the other. In other cases like in a situation where people without a common language interact, language contact can lead to the formation of new languages. As time goes by, the two languages develop to become one common language. The influence that impacts one language is usually as a result of the neighborhood one is in. This is because when one group is more populated than the other, people tend to get more used to one language than the other.

In most cases, changes brought about by language contact affect one language more than the other. For example, Chinese has had a significant effect on Japanese and their word formation. On the other hand, Chinese remains free of Japanese influence even after playing a crucial role in formation of Japanese words.

A great deal of Chinese Neologism is either from European missionaries or retrieved from the Japanese. The modern Chinese uses the word culture to represent culture . It is also widely used as a neologized term for the European borrowed word from Japanese (Stemmer & Whitaker, 2008).

Chinese people in modern China cause neologism when they come to contact with people of different foreign cultures, and who speak different languages. Trade between the Chinese people and the Europeans has contributed to the occurrence of neologism. Chinese people sell their wares to people who speak other languages.

When individuals from nations that do not have a common language come together for business purposes the necessity for a common language comes up for the transaction to take place. This has considerably contributed to the evolution of new words that probably never existed in either Chinese or European languages.

The origin of Indo-European family of languages in china was as a result of migration. This is a combination of English and other European languages.

The majority of people who use this language are believed to have been pastoralist, and when they came together they gradually formed a new language. Missionary activities also contributed to Neologism. This happened when they translated some European words to Chinese. The exposure of China to European philosophy and academic rules also contributed to neologism (Jung, 2002).

It is notable that most morphemes from European language initially became popular in Japan, before they were introduced to China. This is because Chinese people have developed a better understanding of European opinion on matters that affect them. The English words commonly used are ok and bye and almost all the Chinese people in modern china understand them.

The most successful neologisms from European are those that are semantic and phonemic at the same time like the Chinese word mÍ-nÍ-qÚn (charm-you-skirt) for miniskirt. Note that it is initially a loan blend because qui is not a transliteration for the English work skirt. Mi-ni is phonemic as it transliterates mini in English (Liu, 1999).

In modern China, cases of intermarriage with European Japanese and also other people who come from other parts of the world are unusually many. As a result, these different languages come together leading to the occurrence of neologism. Young people who leave China for Europe for the purpose of further education return to china later in their lives speaking other languages. They return carrying the effect of living in a country that speaks another language (Cha, 2001).

Others move from Japan to china for sports purposes and vice versa. Because of the need to communicate, the people learn the basics from each other, and the interaction form a common language. It does not have to be an entirely new language, the essential thing is that these people can easily relate, and communicate with each other.

The need for leisure activities has seen people move from one country to another. Tourism has seen many people move from one country to another contributing to the alteration of the original language of the places mostly visited by tourists (Liu, 1999). Once they stay there for some time, the languages they speak interact and chances of one language taking other the other are extremely high.

For a person whose origin is Europe working in China, he/she has to learn Chinese. In this case, because of his European origin, some altered Chinese terms produce entirely new terms, but with a meaning. At times, the need for a new name to describe something leads to a development or borrowing of words from other languages.

Cha, T. H. K. (2001). Dictée . Berkeley, Calif. [u.a.: Univ. of California Press.

Jung, H. Y. (2002). Comparative political culture in the age of globalization: An introductory anthology . Lanham [u.a.: Lexington Books.

Liu, L. H. (1999). Tokens of exchange: The problem of translation in global circulations . Durham, N.C: Duke Univ. Press.

Stemmer, B., & Whitaker, H. A. (2008). Handbook of the neuroscience of language . Amsterdam: Elsevier/Academic Press.

Sun, C. (2006). Chinese: A linguistic introduction . Cambridge [u.a.: Cambridge Univ. Press.

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IvyPanda. (2019, April 10). Concept of Language Contact in Linguistic. https://ivypanda.com/essays/language-contact/

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English to ASL Gloss Machine Translation , Mary Elizabeth Bonham

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School of Visual Arts MFA Thesis Exhibitions Feature Work by 61 Artists

Five shows by graduating students in painting, graphic design, sculpture, print media and photography, and visual narrative on view on and off campus through April 20

This article was originally published in BU Today on April 9, 2024. By Sophie Yarin. Photo by Cydney Scott.

As the academic year draws to a close and commencement season approaches, there’s no shortage of reasons to celebrate at the College of Fine Arts. Not only does 2024 mark the school’s 70th birthday— CFA was founded as the School of Fine and Applied Arts in 1954 —but it’s also a year of exciting firsts for the School of Visual Arts and its five Master of Fine Arts programs: painting, sculpture, print media and photography, visual narrative, and graphic design. 

This year marks the first that the print media and photography and the visual narrative MFA programs, both launched in 2022, will graduate a class. The 2024 exhibitions also mark the largest cohort to date—61 graduating MFA students—in the school’s history. And for the first time, this year’s shows include an off-campus venue: the sculpture exhibition is being shown at 1270 Commonwealth Ave., where what was once a CVS pharmacy has been transformed into a pop-up art gallery. 

All of the exhibitions, on view through April 20, are free and open to the public. Collectively, they offer a sense of the breadth and depth of work being done by MFA students across a range of mediums. For those who cannot make it to all five of this year’s shows, we’ve pulled together some works from each program for your viewing pleasure. But remember: there’s plenty more to see in person.

The visual arts are often compared to a written language, notes  Josephine Halvorson , a CFA professor of art, painting, and chair of graduate studies in painting, in the 2024 painting thesis exhibition catalog. “Reading, literacy, and lexicons are terms we frequently cite in critique,” she writes. “Students [have turned] to language, either materially or analogically, to help them navigate meaning in their work.”

James Gold, Mosaic Excavation with Carpets. Egg tempera, India ink, acrylic gouache, and pigmented gesso on panel.

Abbi Kenny, Atlantic Cranberry Sauce (courtesy of Weight Watchers). Acrylic, molding paste, acrylic gouache, black pepper, glitter, glass beads, muscovite mica, glass flakes, and yupo collage on canvas.

Some works in this year’s exhibition speak plainly, relying on a strong instinct toward realism and representation. James Gold (CFA’24) imbues his canvases with a photographer’s sense of discovery: his subjects—ancient tapestries, mosaics, and scrolls—are rendered so as to capture every detail and texture.

Paintings by Abigail Kenny (CFA’24) share Gold’s photorealistic sensibility, but her concerns are more outlandish, less rarefied. Vivid-hued reproductions of illustrated recipe cards, from Kenny’s own family collection, comment on Andy Warhol’s iconic soup cans from the early 1960s.

see more works by MFA painting students

The MFA Painting Thesis Exhibition is at the Faye G., Jo, and James Stone Gallery, 855 Commonwealth Ave., through Saturday, April 20. Hours: Tuesday to Saturday, 11 am to 5 pm.

Graphic Design

The theme for this year’s graphic design thesis show,  Side B , refers to the flip side of a record, and “a willingness to defy expectations, explore uncommon tools, and present a multifaceted expression of craft,” write thesis advisors  Christopher Sleboda , a CFA associate professor of graphic design, and  Kristen Coogan , a CFA associate professor of graphic design and chair of the MFA graphic design program, in the catalog for the show. 

For her thesis project,  Between Waves , Bella Tuo (CFA’24) literally crowdsourced a new font. Over the course of a day, she encouraged strangers to contribute a hand-drawn line, curve, or serif until each letter of the alphabet was complete .

Bella Tuo, Between Waves project feat. Rainbow Hui. Digital media.

Arjun Lakshmanan, The Grand Tour-50 Iterations. Digital media.

Arjun Lakshmanan (CFA’24) was inspired by a NASA mock travel poster that imagined interplanetary tourism. With the same retro futuristic style, he produced a series of 50 similar postcards that emphasized three-dimensionality and warped perception. 

Lindsay Towle (CFA’24), whose design sensibility is informed by the graphic imprint of basketball and other facets of urban street culture, devised new aesthetic associations that make room for visual subcultures within the dominant narrative. A poster of her thesis concept,  Backcourt , mixes graffiti lettering, a hallmark of elements of street culture, with classic typography and handwritten elements.

see more works by MFA graphic design students

The MFA Graphic Design Thesis Exhibition is at the 808 Gallery, 808 Commonwealth Ave., through Saturday, April 20. Hours: Tuesday to Saturday, 11 am to 5 pm.

Visual Narrative

The first graduating class of the MFA visual narrative program has created a collection of work that runs the storytelling gamut, crafting work that’s “humorous, poignant, and thought-provoking,” writes  Joel Christian Gill , a CFA associate professor of art and chair of the visual narrative program. 

Sadie Saunders (CFA’24) and Ella Scheuerell (CFA’24) both opted to create graphic memoirs, and although their methodologies differ (Saunders uses digital drawing while Scheuerell relies on collage and mixed media), their stories are grounded in their experiences as young artists coming of age in the pandemic era. Scheuerell introduces readers to her uncle, whose art she discovered among his effects after his death by suicide. As she comes to terms with his loss, the drawings and his invisible presence keep her company. Saunders’ work reads more like a memoir-slash-sitcom, a self-deprecating tour of her barista job and the cast of characters who challenge her to find her voice. 

Sadie Saunders, pages from Spilled Milk and Other Reasons to Cry at Work. Digital drawing.

Ella Scheurell, Heavy Shoes, Colored pencil, watercolor sharpie on paper.

Avanji Vaze, page from Vrindavan House. Digital drawing.

Works by Avanji Vaze (CFA’24), Sandeep Badal (CFA’24), and Ariel Cheng Kohane (COM’22, CFA’24) have created stories that revel in invented universes and complex plotlines. Vaze’s graphic novel combines a Utopian fairytale (where Earth is run by a species of benevolent mushrooms) and MTV’s  The Real World , centering a lovable-but-dysfunctional crew of artist roommates as her main cast. Badal’s thesis work is a comic within a comic; his protagonist, a graphic novelist, shares the stage with his own invented character, a trans-femme superhero who begins to feel like the world is treating her like a villain. And Cheng Kohane’s world is a reimagination of classic Western flicks, but populated by a cast of Asian and Jewish characters to match her own blended heritage.

see more works by MFA visual narrative students

The MFA Visual Narrative Thesis Exhibition is at the Commonwealth Gallery, 855 Commonwealth Ave., through Saturday, April 20. Hours: Tuesday to Saturday, 11 am to 5 pm. Students will present their thesis work on Wednesday, April 10, and Friday, April 12, from 3 to 5 pm at the Howard Thurman Center, 808 Commonwealth Ave.

Print Media & Photography

This year’s graduates of the print media and photography MFA program have created work that “disrupt[s] the viewer’s sense of the familiar and, in turn, prompt[s] more questions than answers,” write thesis advisors  Lynne Allen , a CFA professor of art, printmaking,  Toni Pepe , a CFA assistant professor of art and chair of photography, and  Deborah Cornell , a CFA professor of art and chair of printmaking, in the show’s catalog. The four graduates whose work is in the thesis show have subverted the expected with their thesis work, in the process highlighting a core principle of printmaking: that it’s a medium of endless possibilities.

The photographs of Sofia Barroso (CFA’24) have been processed to the point of distortion, incorporating fabric, paper, thread, paint, and processes like cyanotype and silkscreen printing.

Sofia Barroso, Exploration of Possibilities. Cyanotype on fabric.

Julianne Dao, Walking Shadows. Collagraph, Chiné-colle archival inkjet print.

Julianne Dao (CFA’24) creates prints that play with negative space; each of her prints began with an object from nature, which she then processed through woodcut, embossing, and other techniques to create a bold design full of light and shadow.

Emily Taylor Rice (CFA’21,’24) and Delaney Burns (CFA’24) injected messages of social activism into their works: Rice creates prints that reflect the emotional turmoil of substance use disorders, using found textiles and colored pigments to reflect the chaos of alcohol dependence and utilizing embossing techniques to replicate emotional scars and ripped-and-torn sections to represent a process of deconstruction and rebirth. 

see more works by MFA Print media & Photography students

The MFA Print Media & Photography Thesis Exhibition is at the 808 Gallery, 808 Comm Ave., through Saturday, April 20. Hours: Tuesday to Saturday, 11 am to 5 pm.

The pieces in the MFA sculpture exhibition may have little in common visually, writes  David Snyder , a CFA assistant professor of sculpture and chair of graduate studies in sculpture, “but what they have built together is…a conversation, a culture, a language, a heart.”

The works by the five students included in this year’s show respond to one another, playing on unconventional uses of space.

Yolanda He Yang, section of Sand Floor and Two Holes to the Basement and Happenings on the Wall. Piano strings, sand, LED spotlight and motor, glass, projector, wood, plastic sheet, mylar, telephone wires, marble.

Helena Abdelnasser, I think it’s dying. Wood, hinges, screws, white paint, soil, grass seeds, plastic bag, water, unfired clay, baby monitor.

In one area, a section of a piece by Yolanda He Yang (MET’21, CFA’24) shares room with a pillar constructed by Helena Abdelnasser (CFA’24). Yang’s sprawling narrative installations include materials that evoke personal significance, and the artist has painstakingly cataloged the origins of each object. The result: an annotated roadmap of a memory. Looming nearby is one of Abdelnasser’s sculptures: an obelisk made of whitewashed picket fences planted in a patch of earth—an untouchable idealization. In one corner of the work, blurred by decay and dirt, is a reproduction of a dead bird—a gruesome reality.

Alyssa Grey (CFA’24) is fascinated by the relationship between art and its modes of display—walk past one of her entries and a motion-sensing camera will project you onto a small television mounted on a plywood pedestal. Mae-Chu Lin O’Connell (CFA’24) injects a self-deprecating, almost paranoiac sensibility in each of her works, making liberal use of claustrophobia, clutter, sensory discomfort, and haphazardness in her installations and videos.  Boxmaker , a scattered assemblage of objects in the shadow of an assembled piece of box furniture, brims with frustration, while her videos create an eerie sound collage out of the banal act of eating.

see more works by MFA sculpture students

The MFA Sculpture Thesis Exhibition is at 1270 Commonwealth Ave., through Saturday, April 20. Hours: Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, 11 am to 5 pm, and Mondays and Thursdays by appointment.

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School of Criminology

Congratulations to Zena Rossouw on successfully defending her MA thesis

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Big congratulations to Zena Rossouw, who successfully defended her MA thesis entitled “Stranger Danger: Analyzing Offender Behaviours Based on Victim Approach Tactics in Sexual Homicide”

Perpetrators using a ruse in sexual homicide may experience delayed detection and provide the offender with an opportunity for a subsequent attempt if the initial effort fails. This study explores associations between victim characteristics and offender behaviours in sexual murderers targeting stranger victims using a "con" approach versus alternative methods (blitz or surprise). The results from the logistic regression revealed that "con" approach offenders had more male victims, targeted vulnerability, and displayed post-crime organization. Their crimes more often

involved fellatio and lower rates of victim beating when compared to other approaches. The

cluster analysis identified three groups: "Abandoners," "Relocators," and "Eclectic." "Abandoners" don't move the victim's body and sometimes use a con approach. "Relocators" always move the body and occasionally target vulnerability. "Eclectic" offenders target both genders, exhibit diverse behaviours, prey on vulnerability, almost half involve fellatio, and often use a con approach. The implications for investigations are discussed.

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Computer Science > Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition

Title: brave: broadening the visual encoding of vision-language models.

Abstract: Vision-language models (VLMs) are typically composed of a vision encoder, e.g. CLIP, and a language model (LM) that interprets the encoded features to solve downstream tasks. Despite remarkable progress, VLMs are subject to several shortcomings due to the limited capabilities of vision encoders, e.g. "blindness" to certain image features, visual hallucination, etc. To address these issues, we study broadening the visual encoding capabilities of VLMs. We first comprehensively benchmark several vision encoders with different inductive biases for solving VLM tasks. We observe that there is no single encoding configuration that consistently achieves top performance across different tasks, and encoders with different biases can perform surprisingly similarly. Motivated by this, we introduce a method, named BRAVE, that consolidates features from multiple frozen encoders into a more versatile representation that can be directly fed as the input to a frozen LM. BRAVE achieves state-of-the-art performance on a broad range of captioning and VQA benchmarks and significantly reduces the aforementioned issues of VLMs, while requiring a smaller number of trainable parameters than existing methods and having a more compressed representation. Our results highlight the potential of incorporating different visual biases for a more broad and contextualized visual understanding of VLMs.

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