Stadt: Eichstätt

Beginn: 2020-12-14

URL: https://kuei.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_8YYOHL7aQZaQ6692cXKdKw

The Chair of Romance Linguistics (Prof. Dr. Roland Schmidt-Riese) and the Language Center (María Martínez Casas) of the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt invite you to attend the online guest lecture on December 14th (1:00-2:30 p.m. Berlin)

Long-term language contact in Argentina: Data from the Afrikaans-Spanish bilingual community

by Nicholas Henriksen Ph.D. & Lorenzo García Amaya Ph.D. (University of Michigan)

In this presentation, the speakers will offer an overview of research objectives and outcomes from a collaborative Michigan Humanities project entitled “From Africa to Patagonia: Voices of Displacement.” Mr. Henriksen and Mr. García Amaya will speak on behalf of an interdisciplinary and inter-generational research team investigating a unique linguistic and cultural contact situation between Spanish and Afrikaans in Patagonia, Argentina. Specifically, the presentation addresses two questions: (i) What determines the nature of cross-language effects under long-term language contact? (ii) Are related phonetic processes affected similarly by cross-language interference? The speakers explore data gathered from a bilingual community in Patagonia (Argentina), where Spanish and Afrikaans have been in contact since the start of the 20th century. Although the members of this community are Afrikaans-L1, they have been L2-Spanish dominant for most of their lives (40-50 years), and represent the last remaining Afrikaans-Spanish bilingual speakers in Patagonia. Through three fieldwork trips, a research team conducted sociolinguistic interviews with Afrikaans-Spanish bilinguals (in Afrikaans and Spanish), and with monolingual Spanish and Afrikaans controls in Patagonia and South Africa, respectively.

This presentation offers data from three ongoing projects related to the Patagonian bilinguals: (i) vowel timing and durational control; (ii) intervocalic phonemic-stop lenition; and (iii) the production of filled pauses (e.g., eh, em). For each project, it is considered whether the data offer evidence of unidirectional L1-to-L2 influence, unidirectional L2-to-L1 influence, or whether the bilinguals exhibit bidirectional influences when speaking their two languages. Altogether, this research shows that understanding L1-L2 interference requires a holistic approach, including information about language-usage patterns in the community, as well as the phonetic/phonological structure of the sound inventories of the two languages involved.

Student Assistants: Anke Britt Fiedrich Parada, Antonia Mitko, Bianca Zens, Claudia Moser, Jenny Chantratita, Luna Sarabia Geiger, Sophie Braun & Wiebke Platzer.

Beitrag von: María Martínez Casas

Redaktion: Robert Hesselbach