Dates: 20.,21.,22.04.22 (hybrid), and 19.05.22 (online)
Times: 10:00-17:00
Venue: Dorotheenstr. 24, room 3.246, and via Zoom
The seminar aims to provide a theoretical introduction to the study of language contact. The approach is anchored in a functional perspective that brings together the study of individual bilingualism with the study of contact-induced language change in diachronic and typological perspective. Topics covered include bilingual first language acquisition, bilingual speech production and the example of discourse particle in bilingual speech, managing the bilingual repertoire and structural ‘fusion’, the borrowing of structural categories and borrowing hierarchies, convergence and linguistic areas, urban multilingualism and multilingual signage, and the implications of contact linguistics for a theory of the evolution of language.
Assessment:
Participants will prepare short presentations on a topic related to the lecture series (group work is welcome), to be shared in an online session on Thu 19 May 2022.
Both the presentations and the module exam can be given in English or in German. The module exam will be an term paper (Hausarbeit) and can be taken during the first exam period (1. Prüfungszeitraum).
Introductory reading:
Matras, Yaron. 2020 [2009] Language contact (second edition). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Adamou, Evangelia & Matras, Yaron. eds. 2021. The Routledge Handbook of Language Contact. London: Routledge |
