Exploring past and present layers of multilingualism in Flemish-emigrant writing
-
Yasmin Crombez
Abstract
This article aims to contribute to the study of Belgian Dutch as an immigrant language in North America. It does so with the specific hypothesis that the pre-migration sociolinguistic and language political context in migrants’ home countries plays an important role, in particular with regard to societal multilingualism, as underlying layers of multilingualism can have an impact on the post-migration contact situation. Using the diary of a Flemish missionary who moved to Canada in 1886 as our main source, both Dutch-French and Dutch-English language contact are charted over a 25-year time span, with specific attention to lexical borrowing. We discuss the impact of a number of mostly language-internal variables on the relative frequency of lexical borrowing from each source language (e.g., semantic field, part of speech, level of integration in the target language, luxury versus necessary loans), revealing highly divergent borrowing profiles for French and English. The article rounds off by assessing the explanatory value of the pre-migration sociolinguistic context of Belgian Dutch, for the language patterns observed in this specific ego-document, discussing the interaction between past and present layers of language contact.
Abstract
This article aims to contribute to the study of Belgian Dutch as an immigrant language in North America. It does so with the specific hypothesis that the pre-migration sociolinguistic and language political context in migrants’ home countries plays an important role, in particular with regard to societal multilingualism, as underlying layers of multilingualism can have an impact on the post-migration contact situation. Using the diary of a Flemish missionary who moved to Canada in 1886 as our main source, both Dutch-French and Dutch-English language contact are charted over a 25-year time span, with specific attention to lexical borrowing. We discuss the impact of a number of mostly language-internal variables on the relative frequency of lexical borrowing from each source language (e.g., semantic field, part of speech, level of integration in the target language, luxury versus necessary loans), revealing highly divergent borrowing profiles for French and English. The article rounds off by assessing the explanatory value of the pre-migration sociolinguistic context of Belgian Dutch, for the language patterns observed in this specific ego-document, discussing the interaction between past and present layers of language contact.
Chapters in this book
- 日本言語政策学会 / Japan Association for Language Policy. 言語政策 / Language Policy 10. 2014 i
- Table of contents v
-
Part I. Introduction
- Investigating West Germanic Languages 2
-
Part II. Linguistic structure and change
- Homorganic lengthening in late Old English revisited 14
- Meter, syntax, and the use of punctuation in the Leipzig fragment of the Hêliand 32
- The semantics and grammatical status of - frei 51
- Een mooi paar mouwen 69
-
Part III. Migration, contact, and change
- Sound change, analogy, and urban koineization in the regularization of verbs in late fourteenth-century English 80
- Vowel lowering, consonant cluster simplification, and koineization in the history of Pennsylvania Dutch 107
- Lexicalizing vernacular architecture in the Cape Dutch Vernacular 131
-
Part IV. Vernacular sources and change
- Weaving data strands together 164
- Investigating change from a perspective of continuity 188
- Non-native communication in eighteenth-century maritime circles 225
-
Part V. Historical sociolinguistics
- The dialect of Vriezenveen 260
- Exploring past and present layers of multilingualism in Flemish-emigrant writing 276
- An excursion into the lost history of historical sociolinguistics 301
- Index 325
Chapters in this book
- 日本言語政策学会 / Japan Association for Language Policy. 言語政策 / Language Policy 10. 2014 i
- Table of contents v
-
Part I. Introduction
- Investigating West Germanic Languages 2
-
Part II. Linguistic structure and change
- Homorganic lengthening in late Old English revisited 14
- Meter, syntax, and the use of punctuation in the Leipzig fragment of the Hêliand 32
- The semantics and grammatical status of - frei 51
- Een mooi paar mouwen 69
-
Part III. Migration, contact, and change
- Sound change, analogy, and urban koineization in the regularization of verbs in late fourteenth-century English 80
- Vowel lowering, consonant cluster simplification, and koineization in the history of Pennsylvania Dutch 107
- Lexicalizing vernacular architecture in the Cape Dutch Vernacular 131
-
Part IV. Vernacular sources and change
- Weaving data strands together 164
- Investigating change from a perspective of continuity 188
- Non-native communication in eighteenth-century maritime circles 225
-
Part V. Historical sociolinguistics
- The dialect of Vriezenveen 260
- Exploring past and present layers of multilingualism in Flemish-emigrant writing 276
- An excursion into the lost history of historical sociolinguistics 301
- Index 325
