Cover not available
Part of
Germanic Heritage Languages in North America: Acquisition, attrition and change
Edited by Janne Bondi Johannessen † and Joseph C. Salmons
[Studies in Language Variation 18] 2015
► pp. 234–255

Phonological Non-integration of Lexical Borrowings in Wisconsin West Frisian

| University of Wisconsin-Madison
| University of Georgia
Working with heritage speakers of West Frisian living in Wisconsin, the following chapter examines the frequency of use of English lexical items in spoken Wisconsin West Frisian and the phonological (non-)integration of these lexemes. The data show a comparatively low frequency of borrowing compared to other heritage communities, with a corresponding lack of phonological integration. We categorize the consultants as ‘coordinate bilinguals,’ who have simultaneous on-line access to lexical items from both language-specific lexicons. Consultants’ balanced bilingualism minimizes the cross-linguistic transfer of both lexical items and phonology while accessing lexical items from either lexicon. This coordinate bilingualism account is supported by the sociolinguistic evidence of a context-dependent diglossia – parallel to the Dutch-Frisian diglossia in the Netherlands – in which both English and West Frisian were restricted to specific domains. It is argued here that social context, as well as the multiple-lexicon coordinate bilingualism model, can best account for these data.
Keywords: bilingualism, code switching, heritage language, lexicon, phonological integration, West Frisian
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 20 August 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/silv.18.11ehr
References (48)
Anderssen, Merete and Marit Westergaard. This volume. “Word Order Variation in Norwegian Possessive Constructions: Bilingual Acquisition and Attrition.”
Annear, Lucas and Kristin Speth. This volume. “Maintaining a Multilingual Repertoire: The Lexicon of American Norwegian.”
Avery, Peter and William J. Idsardi. 2001. “Laryngeal Dimensions, Completion and Enhancement.” In Distinctive Feature Theory, ed. by T. Alan Hall, 40–71. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bentahila, Abdelali. 1995. “Review of Dueling Languages: Grammatical Structure in Codeswitching by Carol Myers-Scotton.” Language 71: 135–140. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Boersma, Paul and David Weenink. 2012. Praat 5.3.34. [URL]Google Scholar
Bousquette, Joshua. 2010. “Undifferentiated Agrarian Division of Labor as Horizontal Structure: A Warren-Based Approach to Immigrant Language Maintenance in Friesland and Randolph Twp., WI.” Manuscript.
Bousquette, Joshua and Todd Ehresmann. 2010. “West Frisian in Wisconsin: A Historical Profile of Immigrant Language Use in Randolph Township.” It Beaken 72(1): 247–278.Google Scholar
Bousquette, Joshua, Benjamin Frey, Nick Henry, Daniel Nützel, Michael Putnam, Joseph Salmons and Alyson Sewell. 2013. “How Deep is Your Syntax – Filler-Gap Dependencies in Heritage Language Grammar.” University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 19(1): 19–30.Google Scholar
Bousquette, Joshua, Michael Putnam, Joseph Salmons, Benjamin Frey and Daniel Nützel. “Multilingual Gramars, Dominance and Optimalization.” In Advances in OT syntax and semantics, ed. by Géraldine Legendre, Michael Putnam and Erin Zaroukian, 326–370. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Calabrese, Andrea and W. Leo Wetzels. 2009. “Loan Phonology: Issues and Controversies.” In Loan Phonology (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 307), ed. by Andrea Calabrese and W. Leo Wetzels, 1–10. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cederström, B. Marcus. 2014. “Swedish Space in Upper Midwestern Churches.” American Studies in Scandinavia, 44(1): 29–47.
Chomsky, Noam. 1965. Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT University Press.Google Scholar
. 1995. The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Clyne, Michael. 2003. Dynamics of Language Contact. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ehresmann, Todd and Joshua Bousquette. 2011. “Laryngeal Distinction in Wisconsin West Frisian: Phonetic and Phonological Evidence from Wisconsin Frisian.” Manuscript.
Ervin, Susan M. and Charles E. Osgood. 1954. “Second Language Learning and Bilingualism.” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 58: 139–145.Google Scholar
Frey, Benjamin. 2013. Toward a General Theory of Language Shift: A Case Study in Wisconsin German and North Carolina Cherokee. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin-Madison dissertation.Google Scholar
Galema, Annemieke. 1996. Frisians to America 1880–1914: With the Baggage of the Fatherland. Groningen: REGIO-Projekt Uitgevers.Google Scholar
Grosjean, François. 2008. Studying Bilinguals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hamers, Josiane F. and Michel Blanc. 2000. Bilinguality and Bilingualism. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Harbert, Wayne. 2007. The Germanic Languages (Cambridge Language Surveys). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Haugen, Einar. 1950. “The Analysis of Linguistic Borrowing.” Language 26: 210–231. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1953. The Norwegian Language in America: A Study in Bilingual Behavior. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
. 1956. Bilingualism in the Americas: A Bibliography and Research Guide. (Publications of the American Dialect Society 26). Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press.Google Scholar
Hjelde, Arnstein. 1996. “Some Phonological Changes in a Norwegian Dialect in America.” In Language Contact Across the North Atlantic, ed. by Per Sture Ureland and Iain Clarkson, 283–295. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Iverson, Gregory K. and Joseph Salmons. 1995. “Aspiration and Laryngeal Representation in Germanic.” Phonology 12: 369–96. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2003. “Laryngeal Enhancement in Early Germanic.” Phonology 20: 43–72. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2007. “Domains and Directionality in the Evolution of German Final Fortition.” Phonology 24: 1–25. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Johannessen, Janne Bondi and Signe Laake. Forthcoming. “Eastern Norwegian as a Common Norwegian Dialect in the American Midwest.” Journal of Language Contact.
Kolmer, Agnes. 2012. Pronomen und Pronominalklitika in Cimbro: Untersuchungen zum grammatischen Wandel einer deutschen Minderheitensprache in romanischer Umgebung (ZDL Beihefte 150). Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.Google Scholar
Koostra Gerrit, Janet van Hell and Ton Dijkstra. 2010. “Syntactic Alignment and Shared Word Order in Code-Switched Sentence Production: Evidence from Bilingual Monologue and Dialogue.” Journal of Memory and Language 63(2): 210–231. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lambert, J. Havelka and Cynthia Crosby. 1958. “The Influence of Language-Acquisition Contexts on Bilingualism.” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 56: 239–244. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Larsson, Ida, Sofia Tingsell and Maia Andréasson. This Volume. “Variation and Change in American Swedish.”
Lipski, John. 2009. “ ‘Fluent Dysfluency’ as a Case of Congruent Lexicalization: A Special Case of Radical Code-Mixing.” Journal of Language Contact 2: 1–39. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lucht, Felecia. 2007. Language Variation in a German-American Community: A Diachronic Study of the Spectrum of Language Use in Lebanon County. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin-Madison dissertation.Google Scholar
Matras, Yaron. 2009. Language Contact (Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Menn, Lise. 1989. “Some People Who Don’t Talk Right: Universal and Particular in Child Language, Aphasia, and Language Obsolescence.” In Investigating Obsolescence: Studies in Language Contraction and Death (Studies in the Social and Cultural Foundations of Language 7), ed. by Nancy Dorian, 335–345. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Muysken, Pieter. 2000. Bilingual Speech: A Typology of Code-Mixing. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Myers-Scotton, Carol. 1993. Dueling Languages: Grammatical Structures in Codeswitching. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Rothman, Jason. 2009. “Understanding the Nature and Outcomes of Early Bilingualism: Romance Languages as Heritage Languages.” International Journal of Bilingualism 13(2): 155–163. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sasse, Hans-Jürgen. 1992. “Language Decay and Contact-Induced Change.” In Language Death: Factual and Theoretical Explorations with Special Reference to East Africa, ed. by Matthias Brenzinger, 59–80. The Hague: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Simon, Ellen and Torsten Leuschner. 2010. “Laryngeal Systems in Dutch, English and German: A Contrastive Phonological Study on Second and Third Language Acquisition.” Journal of Germanic Linguistics 22(4): 403–424. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sipma, Pieter. 1913. Phonology and Grammar of Modern West Frisian, With Phonetic Texts and Glossary. London and New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Tiersma, Pieter Meyes. 1985. Frisian Reference Grammar. Ljouwert: Fryske Akadamie.Google Scholar
Weinreich, Uriel. 1953. Languages in Contact. Findings and Problems. New York: Publications of the Linguistic Circle of New York 1.Google Scholar
Wilkerson, Miranda and Joseph Salmons. 2008. “‘Good Old Immigrants of Yesteryear’ Who Didn’t Learn English: Germans in Wisconsin.” American Speech 83(3): 259–283. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2012. “Linguistic Marginalities: Becoming American Without Learning English.” Journal of Transnational American Studies 4(2), acgcc_jtas_7115. [URL].Google Scholar
Cited by (5)

Cited by five other publications

Tamasi, Susan & Lamont Antieau
2023. 12. Social Variation in North American Dialects. Publication of the American Dialect Society 108:1 ► pp. 228 ff. DOI logo
Johannessen, Janne Bondi & Joseph Salmons
2021. Germanic Heritage Varieties in the Americas. In The Cambridge Handbook of Heritage Languages and Linguistics, ► pp. 252 ff. DOI logo
Benor, Sarah Bunin
2015. How Synagogues Became Shuls. In Germanic Heritage Languages in North America [Studies in Language Variation, 18], ► pp. 217 ff. DOI logo
Eide, Kristin Melum & Arnstein Hjelde
2015. Borrowing Modal Elements into American Norwegian. In Germanic Heritage Languages in North America [Studies in Language Variation, 18], ► pp. 256 ff. DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2021. Heritage Languages around the World. In The Cambridge Handbook of Heritage Languages and Linguistics, ► pp. 11 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 24 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.