This dissertation presents the results of a tripartite exploration of English use by Latinxs in post-Katrina New Orleans, defined here as an ethnolinguistic repertoire that I call New Orleans Latinx English (NOLAE). The project considers how contemporary English use differs from that found in a pre-Katrina sample, how social network geometry…

"Ouh que c'est laid!" "Oh this is ugly!" is one of the comments among the 11,800 hits on Google for the sequence "la fille que je sors avec" [the girl I go out with]. Often the comments include the idea that the whole expression has been taken from English as a direct calque. The authors of the present keynote…

This dissertation is a study of Castilian transcodic markers in the Catalan written on the Internet. Thirty Castilian transcodic markers representing five categories were run through the interface of the Corpus d'Us del Catala a la Web (CucWeb) to collect information in order to conduct both qualitative and quantitative analysis. The major…

The role of language contact in linguistic change remains a polemic issue in the field of contact linguistics. Many researchers (Weinreich, 1953; Lefebvre, 1985; Prince, 1988; Silva-Corvalan, 1994; King, 2000; Sankoff, 2002; Labov, 2007) believe that there are limits on the types of linguistic patterns that can be transmitted across languages,…

This article focuses on a detailed description of patterns of address in Dili Tetum today. It outlines the complexities of the address system and points to considerable variation in its evolving present-day use. We find, amongst other things, that a speaker may use a range of address strategies even to the same addressee, and that the use of…

Describes a study showing how a linguistic pattern of alternation affecting an entire speech community is realized in individual idiolects; an example representative of colloquial Helsinki speech is used. Results support observations already presented by Labov, according to which linguistic change is linguistically structured to a very high…

The applicability of transferability principles to language contact in the British Isles, especially Ireland, is shown with a detailed discussion of absolute constructions, structures with interesting relations between syntax and discourse, and with susceptibility to cross-linguistic influence. Evidence for transferability of absolutes in…

The development of language conditions in Helsinki, including its origins in a Swedish-speaking area, makes it possible to observe many processes of sociolinguistic interest. Helsinki's colloquial Finnish has served as a model for the evolution of colloquial Finnish throughout the country. (Contains eight references.) (Author/LB)

A sociolinguistic analysis of English loan words in use in the 1990s in the discourse of young Japanese people is presented. The study drew data from a 1993 survey of undergraduate students at two Osaka (Japan) higher education institutions, one for men and one for women, which asked what loanwords students used and heard often. The report first…

Learned academies deplore the deterioration of Castillian Spanish due to foreign contamination. They ignore the real source of the problem within Spain itself where everyone speaks the language badly except those in the remote towns and a few intellectuals. A ray of hope comes from the Americans. (Text is in Spanish.) (AMH)

Examines acculturation patterns in the language of Samoans in San Francisco. (AM)

Following the study of Gilman and Ford on address terms, an increasing number of studies have been conducted in several sociocultural settings. In line with this trend, the present study attempts to describe and explain address terms among the Akans of postcolonial Ghana. Using observation as the main research tool corroborated by interview and…

Four hypotheses explaining the origin of Berbice Dutch, a Dutch-based Creole language spoken in the county of Berbice in Guyana, are explored. The most likely explanation is that the language was first spoken by Berbice slaves as a means of expressing the identity of a newly created "ethnic" group. (Author/CB)

The overall role played by hypercorrection in the literature on language change, language variation, and second language acquisition is reviewed. The paper argues that hypercorrection is not a completely unified phenomenon, citing an empirical study showing that quantitative methods applied to qualitative hypercorrection necessarily involve…

German borrowing of English words after 1945 is analyzed, focusing on sociolinguistic and linguistic factors, changes English words have undergone in adoption into German, the main areas of borrowing, and the channels through which borrowing has occurred. It is proposed that the most common motives for borrowing are the importation of an object or…