CONTACT LINGUISTICS: THE LANGUAGE ENCLAVE PHENOMENON (SOCIOLINGUISTICS, ACQUISITION, CHANGE, CREOLE)

This dissertation explores the question of how language contact affects linguistic structures and proposes a theory of partially-formed grammars.;A closer examination of the effects of language contact is achieved by examining data from a class of contact languages which share similar sociolinguistic environments, termed enclave languages. An enclave language is a special case of a multilingual speech community in which speakers of Language A are surrounded by, and/or dominated by, speakers of Language B, and isolated from standard Language A speakers. Linguistic evidence is presented from approximately twenty enclave speech communities including Louisiana, Missouri and Virgin Islands French; Trinidad, Guyanese and Mauritian Hindi; Scots Gaelic; US Finnish; Kupwar Urdu; Texas, Pennsylvania and Iowa German; and certain Amerindian languages. Data reveal similar morphosyntactic reductions, increased paradigmatic regularity, and greater analyticity of forms despite the very different nature of the approximately twenty languages examined.;Part III proposes a hypothesis establishing a relationship between child language acquisition and the language contact phenomena. This hypothesis suggests that children acquiring Language A may acquire a partially-formed grammar of A because of a lack of exposure to a full range of repertoires in A or because the switch to dominance in B takes place before the full grammar of A is learned. This theory of partially-formed grammars is compared to pidgin/creole theories and theories of language universals. No clear conclusions can be drawn on the basis of current data; the need for language acquisition studies in enclave language communities is discussed.;A review of the literature on language contact (Part I) reveals the absence of a comprehensive theoretical approach. We see divergent approaches used to explain such phenomena as pidgin/creole languages; individual bilingualism; societal multilingualism including convergence, leveling and koines; and language death.