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References
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Language
contact can affect the pragmatic and discourse-functional levels.
Silva-Corvalán
(1994) finds that pragmatic and discourse level changes are, in
fact, affected to a greater degree than are changes at the level of
grammatical structure:
Given
a primary language A and a secondary language B, the permeability of B
will not be evident in the incorporation of new syntactic structures
on the model of A, but first and foremost on the following: (a) the
extension of the discourse-pragmatic functions of a structure in B
according to the model of the functions of the parallel structure in
A; (b) the preferential use in B of a structure parallel to one in
A to the detriment of variants of B (which may or may not convey
different meanings); and (c) the loss of semantic-pragmatic
constraints governing the use of the variants of a syntactic variable
in B when the corresponding structure in A is not sensitive to such
constraints. (p. 135)
Prince
(1988), in her study of the discourse functions of analogous structures in
Slavic, Yiddish, and English, also finds evidence to support “that one
language may borrow the discourse functions of a particular syntactic form
from another language” (p. 505).
The
fact that no tokens were found for non-US Spanish but were for US Spanish
for the functions of topic-launching and contrast is of particular
interest because it shows the possibility not just of more frequent use
but of expanded contexts of use, which is another indicator of
contact-induced change (Heine & Kuteva, 2005, §2.2.2). |