Grammar simplification from prestige language's influence

[Linguist Wannabe]

In my conworld, I am creating a language spoken on an island, which is distantly related to another language spoken on the mainland (it is about a one week boat ride between them). The mainlander's language became a lingua franca used by a number of ethnic groups, in addition to having its own native speakers. The two languages developed mostly in isolation from each other for 2000 years, with the mainlander's language becoming isolating, and losing all plural marking and Tense-Aspect-Mood distinctions. In contrast, the islander's language kept all of these, and is somewhere between an agglutinating and a fusional language, and has even developed noun-incorporation.

Then the mainlanders renew their contact with the island, trading intensely and even more importantly, converting the islanders to their religion. The mainlander's opened religious schools throughout the island where they taught their language to most of the islanders. Many devout islanders also spent time living on the mainland to study the religion. In addition, the mainlander's language had become a lingua franca among many ethnic groups. When they visited the island to trade, they all used the same language.

My question is, what is the likelihood that, in this situation, the mainlander's language starts to affect the grammar of the islander's language (e.g. by making it lose tense-aspect-mood marking on verbs)? If this is a plausible scenario, how long would the period of heavy contact have to continue for before such changes occurred.

Thanks a lot if anyone has any thoughts on this

[gestaltist]

I would be interested to see what more experienced people say.

In my mind, the exchange would mainly be in the vocabulary (particularly religious and commercial words). As most islanders would learn the language through religious schools, using constructs based on the lingua franca might be seen as formal or even mystical. (Kind of like in English when you start using words like „thee“).

Maybe the language of the higher social class would become more like the lingua franca, as a result - they would be the one who would use it the most, after all. It might lead to a nice dichotomy between the „high islander language“ and „low islander language“.

I don’t know enough to comment on the timeline for such changes to occur. You might want to take a look at the history of English, though: England is an island that got under the influence of various linguistic groups throughout its history.

[Imralu]

<flippant>Isn't this kind of what happened to English?</flippant>

<less flippant><unhelpful>I like this. Keep talking!</less flippant>

[sirdanilot]

These things happen all over the place in the real world. For example in the Vaupés Area in the Amazon, languages of unrelated genetic origin have been structurally influencing each other for years on end, without really extensive vocabulary borrowing.

I dont think anyone knows why in South America, borrowing is more of structure, and in Europe, borrowing is more of vocabulary. It may have to do with culture (vocab is more salient than structure when borrowed and so there may be cultural constraints in South America on vocab borrowing).

If you want a standard European model of borrowing, it goes like this roughly:
1. islanders incorporate mainland words for new concepts
2. islanders replace some of their own words with mainland borrowings
3. islanders undergo structural borrowing from mainlander's language
4. language attrition might occur with the islanders, with Islandish eventually dying out in favour of Mainlandish

Dutch, for example, is at stage 2 (regarding English borrowing), and some people actually start to use some english constructions and expressions in writing though nothing large-scale yet. Copper Island Aleut might be an example of stage 3 as it is heavily structurally changed due to Russian.

Of course languages can remain in a stage stable indefinitely. Languages that start borrowing don't necessarily die out. But in this scenario it is quite possible.

[Linguist Wannabe]

I would be interested to see what more experienced people say.

In my mind, the exchange would mainly be in the vocabulary (particularly religious and commercial words). As most islanders would learn the language through religious schools, using constructs based on the lingua franca might be seen as formal or even mystical. (Kind of like in English when you start using words like „thee“).

Maybe the language of the higher social class would become more like the lingua franca, as a result - they would be the one who would use it the most, after all. It might lead to a nice dichotomy between the „high islander language“ and „low islander language“.

I don’t know enough to comment on the timeline for such changes to occur. You might want to take a look at the history of English, though: England is an island that got under the influence of various linguistic groups throughout its history.

Good point. Maybe the islander's language could evolve into a state of diglossia, with a high register containing more features from the mainland language.

[Linguist Wannabe]

These things happen all over the place in the real world. For example in the Vaupés Area in the Amazon, languages of unrelated genetic origin have been structurally influencing each other for years on end, without really extensive vocabulary borrowing.

I dont think anyone knows why in South America, borrowing is more of structure, and in Europe, borrowing is more of vocabulary. It may have to do with culture (vocab is more salient than structure when borrowed and so there may be cultural constraints in South America on vocab borrowing).

If you want a standard European model of borrowing, it goes like this roughly:
1. islanders incorporate mainland words for new concepts
2. islanders replace some of their own words with mainland borrowings
3. islanders undergo structural borrowing from mainlander's language
4. language attrition might occur with the islanders, with Islandish eventually dying out in favour of Mainlandish

Dutch, for example, is at stage 2 (regarding English borrowing), and some people actually start to use some english constructions and expressions in writing though nothing large-scale yet. Copper Island Aleut might be an example of stage 3 as it is heavily structurally changed due to Russian.

Of course languages can remain in a stage stable indefinitely. Languages that start borrowing don't necessarily die out. But in this scenario it is quite possible.

Very interesting to hear about the stages of borrowing (and how it might be different in different regions). I think I remember once reading that in Amazonia, there was a cultural constraint against code-switching.

I will read up on Copper Island Aleut.

[Porphyrogenitos]

These things happen all over the place in the real world. For example in the Vaupés Area in the Amazon, languages of unrelated genetic origin have been structurally influencing each other for years on end, without really extensive vocabulary borrowing.

I dont think anyone knows why in South America, borrowing is more of structure, and in Europe, borrowing is more of vocabulary. It may have to do with culture (vocab is more salient than structure when borrowed and so there may be cultural constraints in South America on vocab borrowing).

If you want a standard European model of borrowing, it goes like this roughly:
1. islanders incorporate mainland words for new concepts
2. islanders replace some of their own words with mainland borrowings
3. islanders undergo structural borrowing from mainlander's language
4. language attrition might occur with the islanders, with Islandish eventually dying out in favour of Mainlandish

Dutch, for example, is at stage 2 (regarding English borrowing), and some people actually start to use some english constructions and expressions in writing though nothing large-scale yet. Copper Island Aleut might be an example of stage 3 as it is heavily structurally changed due to Russian.

Of course languages can remain in a stage stable indefinitely. Languages that start borrowing don't necessarily die out. But in this scenario it is quite possible.

Very interesting to hear about the stages of borrowing (and how it might be different in different regions). I think I remember once reading that in Amazonia, there was a cultural constraint against code-switching.

I will read up on Copper Island Aleut.

Yes, in the Vaupés area, amongst the Tucuano and neighboring peoples, it seems that borrowing of vocabulary is constrained by a taboo - it is considered incest to marry someone who speaks the same language as you. That is, they practice linguistic exogamy. I figure that loanwords are the most obvious form of linguistic "mixing", but grammatical influence goes "under the radar" since on a superficial level it's not the most obvious marker of a distinct language.

[Yng]

this really depends on the scenario. I think 'simplification' is maybe not that useful a term, but a language's TAM system (for example) slowly coming to line up with that of a prestige language is possible through several different routes. I think the influence will only be very strong, though, if there's a lot of active bilingualism going on. Sure, French syntax/Latin syntax affected English a bit, but this was largely, I think, through translations introducing new calqued constructions into the written language (e.g. 'having Xed') which then became more common. Much more widespread effects seem to have come from mass bilingualism/language mixing with Old Norse, which was very similar linguistically speaking. If we take another example - English and Welsh - Welsh's historically much more complex TAM system has shifted increasingly to match English's almost exactly, with distinctions being lost and individual elements of the system matching up with individual elements in English's system. If we have a situation where lots of native speakers of the language have a high competence in the new prestige language, as well as perhaps significant populations on the island who only speak that language and intense contact between the two spheres, as you've suggested, I'd expect both a distinct dialect of the prestige language to develop on the island and the gradual shift of the island language towards the prestige language in all sorts of different ways - lexically, grammatically etc.

[2+3 clusivity]

You might look up Soqotri. The backstory situation with that island is very similar. Perhaps with the language as well.

[Linguist Wannabe]

this really depends on the scenario. I think 'simplification' is maybe not that useful a term, but a language's TAM system (for example) slowly coming to line up with that of a prestige language is possible through several different routes. I think the influence will only be very strong, though, if there's a lot of active bilingualism going on. Sure, French syntax/Latin syntax affected English a bit, but this was largely, I think, through translations introducing new calqued constructions into the written language (e.g. 'having Xed') which then became more common. Much more widespread effects seem to have come from mass bilingualism/language mixing with Old Norse, which was very similar linguistically speaking. If we take another example - English and Welsh - Welsh's historically much more complex TAM system has shifted increasingly to match English's almost exactly, with distinctions being lost and individual elements of the system matching up with individual elements in English's system. If we have a situation where lots of native speakers of the language have a high competence in the new prestige language, as well as perhaps significant populations on the island who only speak that language and intense contact between the two spheres, as you've suggested, I'd expect both a distinct dialect of the prestige language to develop on the island and the gradual shift of the island language towards the prestige language in all sorts of different ways - lexically, grammatically etc.

I hadn't known that Welsh's TAM had been influenced by English's. Very interesting!

[Linguist Wannabe]

You might look up Soqotri. The backstory situation with that island is very similar. Perhaps with the language as well.

I could find a lot of information on the history of Soqotra. Yes it seems to have a very close parallel with what I had in mind. But unfortunately I haven't found anything substantial on the history of the language.

[marconatrix]

I hadn't known that Welsh's TAM had been influenced by English's. Very interesting!

OTOH the Breton system has been influenced by French. In both W and B (or possibly some stage of Late British) the inflected present and future tenses fell together. W like English now uses a construction equivalent to "I am X-ing" for the ongoing present. (But then so do Cornish and Scots Gaelic, so could this be an areal feature or substratum effect in the island of Britain?) Breton OTOH solved the present/future distinction by re-purposing the future subjunctive (used for hypothetical future happenings) as a simple future tense. That makes sense because really any future statement is hypothetical, we can never really know the future. Breton also makes good use of the imperfect (habitual past action) which has an equivalent in French, whereas this tense is said to be pretty shaky in modern Welsh, having no inflected equivalent in English.