Centre for Research on Language Contact
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The Centre for Research on Language Contact (CRLC) brings together the research activities of the faculty members and students of York University who investigate various aspects of language contact at both societal and individual levels. Among the topics examined by CRLC members one can mention: second or multiple language acquisition, societal or individual bilingualism, inter-group relationships in bilingual or multilingual settings, minority language maintenance or loss, bilingual education, the role of language and cultural contact in language change, pidgin and Creole genesis, dialect mixture and the linguistic and cultural dimensions of translation. CRLC members investigate language contact from the perspective of several disciplines (e.g., linguistics, sociology, demography, psychology, political science, history and musicology) and in a variety of settings, Toronto and Ontario, other Canadian provinces and other countries throughout the world. The CRLC includes external members who are leading researchers in the field of Language Contact.
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Item Open Access Bilingualism, Language maintenance and Religion in Gaspe East(UQAM, Dept. of Linguistics, 1975) Mougeon, Raymond; Macnamara, JohnItem Open Access Language Maintenance, Bilingualism and Religion in Gaspé East(Presses de l'Université du Québec; http://www.puq.ca/fr/index.asp, 1976) Mougeon, Raymond; Macnamara, JohnItem Open Access Acquisition of English Prepositions by Monolingual and Bilingual (French/English) Ontarian Students(OISE, 1977) Carroll, SusanneItem Open Access Facteurs sociaux influençant l'acquisition du français par les jeunes Franco-ontariens(Canadian Society for the Study of Education; http://www.csse.ca/, 1977) Mougeon, Raymond; Belanger, Monique; Canale, MichaelItem Open Access Basque Language Survival in Rural Communities From the Pays Basque, France(Desert Research Institute Publication in the Social Sciences, 1977)In comparison to the Basque country in Spain, the Pays Basque in France is very small; its three provinces cover an area of only approximately 2,500 square miles, somewhat more than half the total of the "Departement" of Atlantic Pyrenees. Furthermore, unlike its Spanish counterpart, the Pays Basque is almost completely devoid of substantial industry as well as of any major urban centers. The only exception is the city of Bayonne. It has been observed in that rural areas are more favorable to the preservation ofminority languages and cultures than urban ones. Thus it may be hypothesized that the chances of maintenance of the Basque language may be higher in France than in Spain. In order to attempt to evaluate the Basque language's chances of survival% on the French side of the border, the authors decided, in 1976, to carry out a survey on the use of Basque and French for communication, by Basque children enrolled in elementary schools and by their parents, in order to compare language use of the two groups. Furthermore, the children's language use was investigated as a function of several extralinguistic variables: age of children, locale of communication, socioeconomic status of the parents, etc. In all, four elementary French language public schools (écoles communales) were surveyed. They are located in four neighboring' mountain villages situated near Donibane Garazi (St. Jean Pied de Port) in the Pyrenees: Bussunaritz, Mendive, Lecumberry, and Ahaxe. Since the population of these villages is composed mainly of farmers and of people of Basque extraction, they may be looked upon as settings most favorable to Basque language and culture preservation. For this reason the results of our study will probably represent a conservative measure of Basque language retention. Because of this, we intend to carry out later a similar survey in the neighboring town of St. Jean Pied de Port; a community which is much more open to the outside world. Such a survey should enable us to see whether, with respect to language retention, the Basque children of a relatively me urbanized community differ from the children of typically rural communities. Given the geographical limitations of the present survey, it must be regarded as only exploratory. However, since to our knowledge this survey is the first of its kind, its results should be of interest to all those concerned with the maintenance of Basque culture and language.Item Open Access Dialect acquisition among Puerto Rican bilinguals(Cambridge University Press - Copyright holder: Cambridge University Press - Http://journals.canbridge.org, 1978) Poplack, ShanaItem Open Access Maintenance of French in Ontario: Is education in French enough?(Springer Netherlands, 1979) Mougeon, Raymond; Canale, MichaelThis paper demonstrates that French language maintenance in Ontario does not depend only on French language schooling. Other contributing factors include francophone concentration and institutional support for French in the public and private sector. Difficulties related to French language schooling and suggestions for improving the status of French are presented.Item Open Access El ingles de Samaná y la hipotesis del origen criollo(Academia Puertorriqueña de la Lengua Española, 1980) Poplack, Shana; Sankoff, DavidItem Open Access Sometimes I'll start a sentence in Spanish y termino en español: toward a typology of code-switching(Mouton de Gruyter, 1980) Poplack, ShanaItem Open Access Le français et l'anglais écrit des élèves franco-ontariens: analyse des erreurs contenues dans un échantillon de rédaction écrites par des élèves de 12ème et 13ème annees.(The Ontario Ministry of Education, 1981) Mougeon, Raymond; Green, Daina; Truong, Marie Claude; Marwick, GillianA detailed analysis and inventory were made of the errors found in 200 essays in French and English written by Franco-Ontarian secondary school students. Analysis of the French essays identified nine high-frequency error types, as well as several of lesser frequency. Only four error types were of high frequency in the English essays, while 18 low-frequency types were identified. A comparative study of written French and English achievement, based on the overlap student group, revealed that for all the error types which are comparable across languages, the students committed proportionately more or as many errors in their French essays compared to their English essays. The results are presented in such a way that they may be used in the construction of pedagogical guidelines and in material selection for composition instruction.Item Open Access Paramètres extralinguistiques de la variabilité morphologique en français ontarien(Gunter Narr Verlag, 1982) Mougeon, RaymondCette étude examine certains aspects de la variabilité morphologique dam: le français ontarien (dialecte en situation minoritaire). Dans une première partie nous présentons des données ayant trait à l'emploi des pronoms démonstratifs, des pronoms réfléchis et du genre par des jeunes locuteurs francophones ontariens. Tous ces locuteurs connaissent et emploient aussi l'anglais (langue du groupe majoritaire) à des degrés différents. Les résultats de ces études indiquent que la fréquence d’utilisation de la langue minoritaire (le français) et majoritaire (l'anglais) par les élèves pour communiquer avec leurs parents a une influence sur l'acquisition et la maîtrise de l'usage standard des éléments morphologiques mentionnés plus haut. On constate par exemple que les jeunes bilingues qui communiquent surtout en anglais emploient proportionnellement plus de formes non standard régularisées du pronom démonstratif que les jeunes bilingues qui communiquent surtout en français. Dans la deuxième partie de notre étude nous examinons en détail le phénomène de l,'omission des pronoms réfléchis devant les verbes pronominaux à partir d'un large corpus de données linguistiques recueillies auprès de jeunes locuteurs provenant de différentes communautés franco-ontariennes. Nous montrons que pour un même niveau d'âge, les jeunes locuteurs ont des taux d'omission des pronoms réfléchis qui diffèrent sensiblement d'une communauté à l'autre. Nous interprétons ces différences intercommunautaires comme le résultat de la présence de proportions variables de locuteurs bilingues qui communiquent plus souvent en français qu'en anglais dans les communautés à l'étude et lions ce phénomène à la force démographique variable des francophones dans chacune de ces communautés. Nous montrons également qu'indépendamment des différences intercommunautaires, pour un niveau d'âge donné, la variation dans la fréquence d'omission des pronoms réfléchis est en rapport avec l'effet combiné des paramètres, fréquence d’emploi du français et de l'anglais et appartenance socio-économique. On constate en particulier que les jeunes bilingues issus de la classe ouvrière et communiquant surtout en anglais omettent les pronoms réfléchis le plus fréquemment et que les élèves issus de la moyenne bourgeoisie et communiquant surtout en français les omettent le moins souvent. Nous pensons que certains de nos résultats sont peut-être généralisables à d'autres communautés linguistiques minoritaires et qu'ils mériteraient d'être réexaminés dans le cadre d'autres études.Item Open Access Bilingual Competence: Linguistic Interference or Grammatical Intergrity?(National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education, Arlington, 1983) Poplack, ShanaThis study reviews five papers focusing on Spanish in the United States setting in light of traditional and current research in the field of bilingualism. The author discusses methodological, conceptual, and analytical approaches to language contact, as well as the implications of various research frameworks for the findings. It is suggested that the "sociolinguistic method" can be successfully applied to the study of language contact.Item Open Access Acquisition du français en situation minoritaire: Le cas des franco-ontariens(CLE International; www.cle-inter.com, 1984) Mougeon, Raymond; Beniak, Edouard; Canale, MichaelItem Open Access Borrowing: the Synchrony of Integration(Mouton de Gruyter; http://www.degruyter.de/cont/imp/dgRecht/dgRechtEn.cfm, 1984)The notion of loanword assimilation is operationalized in a number of different ways, focusing on both linguistic and social aspects. The indices of integration thus constructed are applied to a set of lexical data elicited from Puerto Rican children and adults from East Harlem, New York. The results of this survey are analyzed statistically using the method of principal components. We interpret the output in terms of the social and linguistic trajectory of words during the borrowing and integration process. Of particular importance are the relatively close relationship between increase in usage frequencies and the processes of phonological integration, the transient nature of inconsistencies in gender assignment, and the fates of competing lexical items for a single referent.Item Open Access Réflexions en marge du développement de l'écrit en langue autochtone(Recherches amérindiennes au Québec; http://www.recherches-amerindiennes.qc.ca/revueaccueil.html, 1984) Burnaby, BarbaraItem Open Access Retention of French among young Franco-Ontarians(Commissioner of Official Languages, 1984) Mougeon, RaymondItem Open Access La chute du /L/ en français du Canada(Publications de l'Université de Provence; http://www.univ-provence.fr/document.php?pagendx=41, 1985) Walker, DouglasItem Open Access Contrasting patterns of code-switching in two communities(University of Victoria. Dept. of Linguistics, 1985) Poplack, ShanaItem Open Access A sociolinguistic study of language contact, shift and change(Mouton Publishers, 1985)Bilingual speech communities provide linguists with a favorite laboratory to study the effects of language contact on linguistic structure. Without denying the interest or importance of this traditional contrastive approach to the problem of bilingualism, attention is attracted to the often concomitant problem of language shift and to the linguistic consequences of the resultant restriction in subordinate language use: grammatical simplification and stylistic reduction. These internal developments, but also external ones due to language contact, are examined through the multiple variants of a prepositional variable in Ontarian French, a contact variety of Canadian French whose speakers evidence varying degrees of knowledge of and shift to English. It is shown that even a high level of retention of French is not a safeguard against grammatical influence from English, any more than maintenance of French on a par with English is a guarantee against simplification. This suggests that in a situation of UNSTABLE bilingualism, speakers may be unable to preserve the structural 'integrity' of the subordinate language.Item Open Access Le français en situation de contact et la variation linguistique : le français parlé en Ontario (Canada)(Publications de l'Université de Provence, 1986)