to google/should be

[John Dunn]

It may be worth noting that in Welsh you can also find the reverse pattern of relexification, i.e. Welsh structures with English lexicon.  Examples I recall hearing include 'y favourite ploy Bennett' [Bennett's favourite ploy] and 'tair chops o lamb' [three lamb chops], though since Welsh numerals are followed by the singular, the plural ending may be interpreted as a structural anglicism.  It may also be the case that some speakers replace the syntactically and structurally complex higher Welsh numerals with their simpler English counterparts.  

Even allowing for the specific features of the education and mass media systems that have brought about this state of affairs, one can presumably posit similarly (or even more) convoluted patterns of influence for other situations of language contact, e.g. German/Yiddish/Slavonic or Yiddish/Hebrew/A.N. Other.

John Dunn.
 

-----Original Message-----
From: colkitto <colkitto at ROGERS.COM>
To: SEELANGS at BAMA.UA.EDU
Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2007 22:40:35 -0500
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] to google/should be "who is a Slavic speaker?"

I will take the liberty of quoting from my review of Dixon The Rise and Fall 
of Languages (1999)

[cut]
.........

[A] much-discussed phenomenon in historical linguistics is relexification, 
which involves situations where a language preserves its original 
grammatical structure during a period of close language contact while 
borrowing most of its lexicon from another language. Some of the examples 
cited by Thomason & Kaufman (1988), and discussed by Dixon, appear to this 
involve this process (see above). Welsh may also provide a relevant example. 
Currently in South Wales a form of relexification appears to be actually 
under way. Many children in Glamorgan and the Rhondda whose first language 
is English are being educated through the medium of Welsh. However, there 
have been no actual Welsh-speaking communities in those areas since about 
1850. The Welsh that such children actually use, however, may be described 
as English structure with a Welsh lexicon: partially parallel to the 
Yiddish/Hebrew situation described by Wexler. This type of Welsh is called 
bratiaith (jargon), and is regarded with scorn by many speakers from North 
Wales, who often claim that it is incomprehensible. However, if the decline 
of Welsh in rural communities coupled with the increase in numbers of 
speakers of bratiaith continues, one day the latter might be the only type 
of Welsh left.

[cut]
John Dunn
Honorary Research Fellow, SMLC (Slavonic Studies)
University of Glasgow, Scotland

Address:
Via Carolina Coronedi Berti 6
40137 Bologna
Italy
Tel.: +39 051/1889 8661
e-mail: J.Dunn at slavonic.arts.gla.ac.uk
johnanthony.dunn at fastwebnet.it

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