Mixed language
A mixed language, also referred to as a hybrid language, contact language, or fusion language, is a language that arises among a bilingual group combining aspects of two or more languages but not clearly deriving primarily from any single language.[1] It differs from a creole or pidgin language in that, whereas creoles/pidgins arise where speakers of many languages acquire a common language, a mixed language typically arises in a population that is fluent in both of the source languages.
Because all languages show some degree of mixing[2] by virtue of containing loanwords, it is a matter of controversy whether the concept of a mixed language can meaningfully be distinguished from the type of contact and borrowing seen in all languages.[3][4] Scholars debate to what extent language mixture can be distinguished from other mechanisms such as code-switching, substrata, or lexical borrowing.[5]
Definitions[edit]
Other terms used in linguistics for the concept of a mixed language include hybrid language, contact language, and fusion language; in older usage, 'jargon' was sometimes used in this sense.[6] In some linguists' usage, creoles and pidgins are types of mixed languages, whereas in others' usage, creoles and pidgins are merely among the kinds of language that might become full-fledged mixed languages.
Thomason (1995) classifies mixed languages into two categories: Category 1 languages exhibit "heavy influence from the dominant group's language in all aspects of structure and grammar as well as lexicon" (Winford 171). Category 2 languages show a "categorial specificity of the structural borrowing" or a uniform borrowing of specific categories (Winford).
Mixed language and intertwined language are seemingly interchangeable terms for some researchers. Some use the term "intertwining" instead of "mixing" because the former implies "mixture of two systems which are not necessarily the same order" nor does it suggest "replacement of the either the lexicon or of the grammatical system", unlike relexification, massive grammatical replacement, and re-grammaticalization. The grammar of a mixed language typically comes from a language well known to first-generation speakers, which Arends claims is the language spoken by the mother. This is because of the close relationship between mother and child and the likelihood that the language is spoken by the community at large.
Arends et al. classify an intertwined language as a language that "has lexical morphemes from one language and grammatical morphemes from another". This definition does not include Michif, which combines French lexical items in specific contexts, but still utilizes Cree lexical and grammatical items.[3]
Yaron Matras distinguishes between three types of models for mixed language: "language maintenance and language shift, unique and predetermined processes ("intertwining"), and conventionalisation of language mixing patterns". The first model involves the use of one language for heavy substitutions of entire grammatical paradigms or morphology of another language. This is because a speech community will not adopt a newer dominant language, and so adapt their language with grammatical material from the dominant language. Bakker (1997) argues that mixed languages result from mixed populations. Languages "intertwine", in that the morphosyntax (provided by female native speakers) mixes with the lexicon of another language (spoken by men, often in a colonialist context). This appears to have been the case with Michif, where European men and Cree, Nakota, and Ojibwe women had offspring who learned a mixture of French and Cree. The third model "assumes a gradual loss of the conversational function of language alternation as a means of expressing contrast". In other words, language no longer becomes a means of differentiation between two speech communities as a result of language mixing.[7]
Lexical reorientation, according to Matras, is defined as "the conscious shifting of the linguistic field that is responsible for encoding meaning or conceptual representations away from the language in which linguistic interaction is normally managed, organised, and processed: speakers adopt in a sense one linguistic system to express lexical meaning (or symbols, in the Buhlerian sense of the term) and another to organize the relations among lexical symbols, as well as within sentences, utterances, and interaction. The result is a split, by source language, between lexicon and grammar."[7]
Differentiation with other language mixtures[edit]
A mixed language differs from pidgins, creoles and code-switching in very fundamental ways. In most cases, mixed language speakers are fluent, even native, speakers of both languages; however, speakers of Michif (a verb-noun or V-N mixed language) are unique in that many are not fluent in both of the source languages.[8] Pidgins, on the other hand, develop in a situation, usually in the context of trade, where speakers of two (or more) different languages come into contact and need to find some way to communicate with each other. Creoles develop when a pidgin language becomes a first language for young speakers. While creoles tend to have drastically simplified morphologies, mixed languages often retain the inflectional complexities of one, or both, of parent languages. For instance, Michif retains the complexities of its Cree verb-phrases and its French noun-phrases.[9]
It also differs from a language that has undergone heavy borrowing, such as Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese from Chinese (see Sino-Xenic), English from French, or Maltese from Sicilian/Italian. In these cases, despite the heavy borrowing, the grammar and basic words of the borrowing language remain relatively unchanged, with the borrowed words confined mainly to more abstract or foreign concepts, and any complex morphology remains that of the host language rather than being borrowed along with the borrowed word. In the case of Maltese, for example, if verbs borrowed from Italian were inflected using Italian inflectional rules rather than Arabic-derived ones, then Maltese would be a candidate for being a mixed language.
Finally, a mixed language differs from code-switching, such as Spanglish or Portuñol, in that, once it has developed, the fusion of the source languages is fixed in the grammar and vocabulary, and speakers do not need to know the source languages in order to speak it. But, linguists believe that mixed languages evolve from persistent code-switching, with younger generations picking up the code-switching, but not necessarily the source languages that generated it.
Languages such as Franglais and Anglo-Romani are not mixed languages, or even examples of code-switching, but registers of a language (here French and English), characterized by large numbers of loanwords from a second language (here English and Romani). Middle English (the immediate fore-runner of Modern English) developed from such a situation, incorporating many Norman borrowings into Old English, but it is not considered a mixed language.[10]