Dwyer, Arienne M. 1992. Altaic elements in the Linxia dialect: contact-induced change on the Yellow River plateau. Journal of Chinese Linguistics 20. (Language contact between the Hàn and non-Hàn languages of China has often been assumed to be unidirectional (i.e., Hàn non-Hàn) and limited generally to lexical items, while morphosyntactic interference is believed to be moderate and comparatively recent. However, in the northwestern Chinese dialect of Línxìa, it will be shown below that in fact the opposite is true: the Línxìa dialect consistently retains certain native phonological and lexical features, while undergoing heavy interference in syntax. In this paper three examples illustrating the nature and extent of contact-induced change in the Línxìa dialect are examined. In Section 1 the morphemes for ‘small, little’ of the region’s languages are compared as an illustration of extensive lexicosemantic diffusion resulting in areal convergence. In Section 2 it is concluded that the co-existing markers of the comitative/ instrumental in Línxìa represent two different types of borrowing: one, a calque on a compound numeral of the Mongolic languages of the region, and the other an outright loan from Mongolic of the Proto-Altaic comitative suffix *-lū. Finally, as an example of significant syntactic and phonological reanalysis, in Section 3 the Línxìa postpositional conditional marker -ì is examined. We conclude that this is the result of the combination of certain social and linguistic factors, and that social factors, such as political dominance, may well be the primary determinants of change. These data provide evidence to support a reanalysis of certain universals of language contact.)
http://cup.cuhk.edu.hk/ojs/index.php/JCL/article/viewArticle/1794/0
@article{dwyeraltaic1992,
author = {Dwyer, Arienne M},
journal = {Journal of Chinese Linguistics},
note = {Language contact between the Hàn and non-Hàn languages of China has often been assumed to be unidirectional (i.e., Hàn non-Hàn) and limited generally to lexical items, while morphosyntactic interference is believed to be moderate and comparatively recent. However, in the northwestern Chinese dialect of Línxìa, it will be shown below that in fact the opposite is true: the Línxìa dialect consistently retains certain native phonological and lexical features, while undergoing heavy interference in syntax. In this paper three examples illustrating the nature and extent of contact-induced change in the Línxìa dialect are examined. In Section 1 the morphemes for ‘small, little’ of the region’s languages are compared as an illustration of extensive lexicosemantic diffusion resulting in areal convergence. In Section 2 it is concluded that the co-existing markers of the comitative/ instrumental in Línxìa represent two different types of borrowing: one, a calque on a compound numeral of the Mongolic languages of the region, and the other an outright loan from Mongolic of the Proto-Altaic comitative suffix *-lū. Finally, as an example of significant syntactic and phonological reanalysis, in Section 3 the Línxìa postpositional conditional marker -ì is examined. We conclude that this is the result of the combination of certain social and linguistic factors, and that social factors, such as political dominance, may well be the primary determinants of change. These data provide evidence to support a reanalysis of certain universals of language contact.},
number = {1},
title = {Altaic elements in the Linxia dialect: contact-induced change on the Yellow River plateau},
url = {http://cup.cuhk.edu.hk/ojs/index.php/JCL/article/viewArticle/1794/0},
volume = {20},
year = {1992}
}