Cover not available
Part of
Lifespan Acquisition and Language Change: Historical sociolinguistic perspectives
Edited by Israel Sanz-Sánchez
[Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics 14] 2024
► pp. 84–103

Chapter 4
The dynamics of lifelong acquisition in dialect contact and change

ORCID logo | The Australian National University
Acquisition research involving speakers of mutually intelligible varieties (dialects) or mutually unintelligible varieties (languages) reveals a wide range of possible acquisition outcomes at different life stages and their potential to shape language change across the community. Since contexts of dialect contact often include language contact, attempts to understand the link between dialect acquisition and dialect change must also consider language contact as a potential factor. This chapter surveys the research on dialect contact and lifespan change in contexts of language maintenance in both non-mobile and mobile languages users as a window into the human capacity for lifelong acquisition and change. The chapter adopts a linguistic repertoire focus, recognizing that bidialectalism/bilingualism is a matter of degree, and that language dominance plays a key role in crosslinguistic transfer. This proposal is illustrated with a case study of dialect and language contact in Early Modern Dutch.
Keywords: dialect contact, lifespan change, language dominance, linguistic repertoire, crosslinguistic transfer
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Language variation, dialect contact and change across the lifespan: Past findings, future directions
  • 3.The relevance of speakers’ linguistic repertoires to dialect contact and change
  • 4.Lifelong acquisition, contact and change: The case of /f/ and /v/ in Early Modern Dutch
  • 5.Acquisition across the lifespan and the historical sociolinguistics of dialect contact and change: Challenges and opportunities
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 4 April 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ahs.14.04hen
References (66)
References
Manuscript sources
Bibliotheca Thysiana 655. Memoriaal van Magdalena Thijs, 1614–1622. Bijzondere Collecties, Universiteitsbibliotheek Leiden.
Secondary sources
Andrews, Edna. 2019. Cognitive neuroscience and multilingualism. In John Schwieter (ed.), The handbook of the neuroscience of multilingualism, 21–47. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Arnal, Antoni. 2011. Linguistic changes in the Catalan spoken in Catalonia under new contact conditions. Journal of Language Contact 4(1). 5–25. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Birdsong, David. 2018. Plasticity, variability and age in second language acquisition and bilingualism. Frontiers in Psychology 9. 1–17. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bosch, Jasmijn & Sharon Unsworth. 2021. Cross-linguistic influences in word order. Effects of age, dominance and surface overlap. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 11(6). 783–816. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bot, Kees de. 2007. One theory for acquisition and attrition? Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 7(6). 678–681. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2019. Defining and assessing multilingualism. In John Schwieter (ed.), The handbook of the neuroscience of multilingualism, 3–18. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chambers, Jack K. 1992. Dialect acquisition. Language 68(4). 673–705. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1995. Sociolinguistic theory. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Clements, J. Clancy. 2018. Speech communities, language varieties, and typology: What does acquisition have to do with it? Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 33(2). 413–414. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Coetsem, Frans van. 1988. Loan phonology and the two transfer types in language contact. Dordrecht: Foris Publications. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2000. A general and unified theory of the transmission process in language contact. Heidelberg: Winter.Google Scholar
Eckert, Penelope. 1997. Age as a sociolinguistic variable. In Florian Coulmas (ed.), The handbook of sociolinguistics, 151–167. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Filipović, Luna. 2019. Bilingualism in action: theory and practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Giles, Howard. 1980. Accommodation theory: Some new directions. York Papers in Linguistics 9. 105–136.Google Scholar
Gompel, Roger van & Manabu Arai. 2018. Structural priming in bilinguals. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 21(3). 448–455. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gregersen, Frans, Marie Maegaard & Nicolai Pharao. 2009. The long and short of (æ)-variation in Danish – a panel study of short (æ)-variants in Danish in real time. Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 41. 64–82. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gussenhoven, Carlos & Rolf Bremmer. 1983. Voiced fricatives in Dutch: Sources and present-day usage. North-Western European Language Evolution 2. 55–71. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hamann, Cornelia, Esther Rinke & Dobrinka Genevska-Hanke. 2019. Editorial: Bilingual development: The role of dominance. Frontiers in Psychology 10. 1–3. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Harbert, Wayne. 2007. The Germanic languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hayakawa, Sayuri & Viorica Marian. 2019. Consequences of multilingualism for neural architecture. Behavioral and Brain Functions 15(6). 1–24. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Heidlmayr, Karin, Emmanual Ferrange & Frédéric Isel. 2021. Neuroplasticity in the phonological system: The PMN and the N400 as markers for the perception of non-native phonemic contrasts by late second language learners. Neuropsychologia 156. 1–15. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hendriks, Jennifer. 2018. The effects of complex migration trajectories on individual linguistic repertoires in the Early Modern Dutch urban context. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 119(1). 121–144.Google Scholar
Hiramoto, Mie. 2010. Dialect contact and change of the northern Japanese plantation immigrants in Hawai’i. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 25(2). 229–262. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Howell, Robert B. 1993. German immigration and the development of regional variants of American English: Using contact theory to discover our roots. In Joseph Salmons (ed.), The German language in America, 190–212. Madison, WI: Max Kade Institute.Google Scholar
2006. Immigration and koineization: the formation of Early Modern Dutch urban vernaculars. Transactions of the Philological Society 104. 207–227. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hsin, Lisa, Géraldine Legendre & Akira Omaki. 2013. Priming cross-linguistic interference in Spanish–English bilingual children. In Sarah Baiz, Nora Goldman & Rachel Hawkes (eds.), Proceedings of the 37th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, 165–177. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla.Google Scholar
Kerswill, Paul. 1996. Children, adolescents, and language change. Language Variation and Change 8. 177–202. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2010. Contact and new varieties. In Raymond Hickey (ed.), The handbook of language contact, 230–251. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kissine, Mikhail, Hans Van de Velde & Roeland van Hout. 2003. An acoustic study of standard Dutch /v/, /f/, /z/ and /s/. Linguistics in the Netherlands 20(1). 93–104. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Knotter, Ad. 1995. Vreemdelingen in Amsterdam in de 17e eeuw: groepsvorming, arbeid en ondernemerschap. Historisch Tijdschrift Holland 27. 219–235.Google Scholar
Koostra, Gerrit Jan & Willemijn J. Doedens. 2016. How multiple sources of experience influence bilingual syntactic choice: Immediate and cumulative cross-language effects of structural priming, verb bias, and language dominance. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 19(4). 710–732. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Koostra, Gerrit Jan & Hülya Şahin. 2018. Crosslinguistic structural priming as a mechanism of contact-induced language change: Evidence from Papiamento-Dutch bilinguals in Aruba and the Netherlands. Language 94(4). 902–930. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lenneberg, Eric. 1967. Biological foundations of language. New York: John Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar
Loey, Adolphe van. 1970. Schönfelds Historische Grammatica van het Nederlands. Zutphen: N.V. W. J. Thieme & Cie.Google Scholar
Mufwene, Salikoko. 2008. Language evolution: Contact, competition, and change. London: Continuum. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nahkola, Kari & Maria Saanilahti. 2004. Mapping changes in real time: A panel study on Finnish. Language Variation and Change 16. 75–92. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nycz, Jennifer. 2015. Second dialect acquisition: A sociophonetic perspective. Language and Linguistics Compass 9(11). 469–482. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2019. Linguistic and social factors favoring acquisition of contrast in a new dialect. In Sasha Calhoun, Paola Escudero, Marija Tabain & Paul Warren (eds.), Proceedings of the 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 1480–1484. Canberra, Australia: Australasian Speech Science and Technology Association.Google Scholar
Otheguy, Ricardo, Ana Celia Zentella & David Livert. 2007. Language and dialect contact in Spanish in New York: Toward the formation of a speech community. Language 83(4). 770–802. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pavlenko, Anna & Scott Jarvis. 2002. Bidirectional transfer. Applied Linguistics 23(2). 190–214. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pinget, Anne-France, René Kager & Hans Van de Velde. 2020. Linking variation in perception and production in sound change: Evidence from Dutch obstruent devoicing. Language and Speech 63(3). 660–685. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Putnam, Michael T., Tanja Kupisch & Diego Pascual y Cabo. 2017. Different situations, similar outcomes. Heritage grammars across the lifespan. In David Miller, Fatih Bayram, Jason Rothman & Ludovica Serratrice (eds.), Bilingual cognition and language: The state of the science across its subfields, 251–279. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Rijswijk, Remy van. 2016. The strength of the weaker first language. Language production and comprehension by Turkish heritage speakers in the Netherlands. Utrecht: LOT.Google Scholar
Salmons, Joseph. 2012. A history of German. What the past reveals about today’s language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Sankoff, Gillian. 2005. Cross-sectional and longitudinal studies in sociolinguistics. In Ulrich Ammon, Norbert Dittmar, Klaus J. Mattheier, and Peter Trudgill (eds.), An international handbook of the science of language and society. Volume 2, 1003–1013. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
. 2018. Language change across the lifespan. Annual Review of Linguistics 4. 297–316. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2019. Language change across the lifespan: three trajectory types. Language 95(2). 197–229. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sankoff, Gillian & Hélène Blondeau. 2007. Language change across the lifespan: /r/ in Montreal French. Language 83(3). 560–588. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sanz-Sánchez, Israel & Fernando Tejedo-Herrero. 2021. Adult language and dialect learning as simultaneous environmental triggers for language change. In Whitney Chappell & Bridget Drinka (eds.), Spanish socio-historical linguistics: Isolation and contact, 104–137. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schmid, Monika. & Barbara Köpke. 2017. The relevance of first language attrition to theories of bilingual development. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 7(6). 637–667. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Shockey, Linda. 1984. All in a flap: long-term accommodation in phonology. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 46. 87–96. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Siegel, Jeff. 2010. Second dialect acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Solheim, Randi. 2009. Dialect development in a melting pot: The formation of a new culture and a new dialect in the industrial town of Høyanger. Nordic Journal of Linguistics 32(2). 191–206. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stanford, James. 2008. Child dialect acquisition: New perspectives on parent/peer influence. Journal of Sociolinguistics 12(5). 567–596. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stanford, James N. 2014. Language acquisition and language change. In Claire Bowern & Bethwyn Evans (eds.), The Routledge handbook of historical linguistics, 466–483. London & New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali & Sonja Molfenter. 2007. How’d you get that accent?: Acquiring a second dialect of the same language. Language in Society 36. 649–675. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Treffers-Daller, Jeanine. 2019. What defines language dominance in bilinguals? Annual Review of Linguistics 5. 375–393. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Trudgill, Peter. 1986. Dialects in contact. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Unsworth, Sharon, Vicky Chondrogianni & Barbora Skarabela. 2018. Experiential measures can be used as a proxy for language dominance in bilingual language acquisition research. Frontiers in Psychology 9. 1–15. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Van de Velde, Hans, Marinel Gerritsen & Roeland van Hout. 1996. The devoicing of fricatives in standard Dutch: A real-time study based on radio recordings. Language Variation and Change 8. 149–175. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Verspoor, Marjolijn, Wander Lowie & Kees de Bot. 2009. Input and second language development from a dynamic perspective. In Thorsten Piske & Martha Young-Scholten (eds.), Input matters in SLA, 62–81. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Vries, Jan de. 1984. European urbanization, 1500–1800. Harvard, MA.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Weijnen, Antonius A. 1966. Nederlandse Dialectkunde. 2nd ed. Assen: Van Gorcum.Google Scholar
Winford, Donald. 2020. Theories of language contact. In Anthony Grant (ed.), The Oxford handbook of language contact, 51–74. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Yaeger-Dror, Malcah. 1989. Realtime versus apparent time change in Montreal French. York Papers in Linguistics 13. 141–153.Google Scholar