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Linguistic stability and change under small-scale egalitarian language contact : a mixture model approach

Cathcart, Chundra Aroor LU and Yager, Joanne LU (2020) 42nd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Developing a Mind: Learning in Humans, Animals, and Machines, CogSci 2020 p.3109-3115
Abstract

This paper investigates the outcomes of small-scale egalitarian language contact in an attempt to address whether different linguistic domains exhibit different degrees of stability and resistance to convergence among cohabitant speakers of Jahai and Jedek, two closely related Aslian (Austroasiatic) language varieties spoken in northern Peninsular Malaysia. Using nonparametric Bayesian mixture models, we find that basic vocabulary items show a signal that strongly matches the linguistic identity of individuals, while data from other domains do not. This result is in agreement with other findings from the study of language contact: basic vocabulary is said to be a domain where distinctions in linguistic identity are often emphasized and... (More)

This paper investigates the outcomes of small-scale egalitarian language contact in an attempt to address whether different linguistic domains exhibit different degrees of stability and resistance to convergence among cohabitant speakers of Jahai and Jedek, two closely related Aslian (Austroasiatic) language varieties spoken in northern Peninsular Malaysia. Using nonparametric Bayesian mixture models, we find that basic vocabulary items show a signal that strongly matches the linguistic identity of individuals, while data from other domains do not. This result is in agreement with other findings from the study of language contact: basic vocabulary is said to be a domain where distinctions in linguistic identity are often emphasized and maintained, while other parts of the vocabulary may be less salient for the purposes of indexing speaker identity, and are thus more prone to the effects of convergence. We demonstrate that this finding is an artifact of neither data coverage nor model choice; at the same time, we are able to identify variation in basic vocabulary items across linguistic groups which is suppressed by the model we use, and outline alternative methods for analyzing data of this sort.

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author
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organization
publishing date
type
Contribution to conference
publication status
published
subject
keywords
Bayesian modeling, Language change, Language contact, Linguistics
pages
7 pages
conference name
42nd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society: Developing a Mind: Learning in Humans, Animals, and Machines, CogSci 2020
conference location
Virtual, Online
conference dates
2020-07-29 - 2020-08-01
external identifiers
  • scopus:85139511985
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
d3ec26c9-2bf0-49ae-9d0a-cc7f9231ff6a
date added to LUP
2023-01-10 10:04:53
date last changed
2023-09-25 08:41:57
@misc{d3ec26c9-2bf0-49ae-9d0a-cc7f9231ff6a,
  abstract     = {{<p>This paper investigates the outcomes of small-scale egalitarian language contact in an attempt to address whether different linguistic domains exhibit different degrees of stability and resistance to convergence among cohabitant speakers of Jahai and Jedek, two closely related Aslian (Austroasiatic) language varieties spoken in northern Peninsular Malaysia. Using nonparametric Bayesian mixture models, we find that basic vocabulary items show a signal that strongly matches the linguistic identity of individuals, while data from other domains do not. This result is in agreement with other findings from the study of language contact: basic vocabulary is said to be a domain where distinctions in linguistic identity are often emphasized and maintained, while other parts of the vocabulary may be less salient for the purposes of indexing speaker identity, and are thus more prone to the effects of convergence. We demonstrate that this finding is an artifact of neither data coverage nor model choice; at the same time, we are able to identify variation in basic vocabulary items across linguistic groups which is suppressed by the model we use, and outline alternative methods for analyzing data of this sort.</p>}},
  author       = {{Cathcart, Chundra Aroor and Yager, Joanne}},
  keywords     = {{Bayesian modeling; Language change; Language contact; Linguistics}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  pages        = {{3109--3115}},
  title        = {{Linguistic stability and change under small-scale egalitarian language contact : a mixture model approach}},
  year         = {{2020}},
}