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Lexical acculturation, areal diffusion, lingua francas, and bilingualism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2009

Cecil H. Brown
Cecil H. Brown
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Northern Illinois University, Dekalb, Illinois 60115
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Abstract

This study continues an investigation of lexical acculturation in Native American languages using a sample of 292 language cases distributed from the Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego (Brown 1994). Focus is on the areal diffusion of native language words for imported European Objects and concepts. Approximately 80% of all sharing of such terms is found to occur among closely genetically related languages. Amerindian languages only distantly related, or not related at all, tend to share native labels for acculturated items only when these have diffused to them from a lingua franca, such as Chinook Jargon (a pidgin trade language of the Pacific Northwest Coast) or Peruvian Quechua (the language of the Inca empire). Lingua francas also facilitate diffusion of terms through genetically related languages; but sometimes, as in the case of Algonquian languages, these are neither familiar American pidgins nor languages associated with influential nation states. An explanatory framework is constructed around the proposal that degree of bilingualism positively influences extent of lexical borrowing. (Amerindian languages, bilingualism, language contact, lexical acculturation, lexical diffusion, lingua francas)

Type
Research Article
Information
Language in Society , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , June 1996 , pp. 261 - 282
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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