The language contact & phoneme inventories

下面为大家整理一篇优秀的paper代写范文- The language contact & phoneme inventories，供大家参考学习，这篇论文讨论了语言接触和音素库存。语言接触在语言的复杂性和多样性中起着重要的作用。这种在儿童时期的长期接触和熟练将导致简化。许多邻近语言的长期存在，这些语言被借用来完成片段。因此，音素库存量正在迅速增加。涉及儿童双语的长期接触可能通过借用产生大量的库存，而成人语言接触可能通过不完全学习、混杂化和简化产生较少的库存。然而，不幸的是，后一种解释不能成为库存较少的唯一解释。低程度的语言接触可能会导致语言存量少，因为易混淆性和单词长度造成的记忆负荷困难是无关的，因为不涉及临界后阈值学习。

Language contact plays a great role in the complexity of languages as well as its diversity. Such contacts that is long-term during childhood and proficient will lead to simplification. The long-term presence of many neighboring languages which are borrowed to complete the segments. As a result, phoneme inventories are rapidly increasing.For example, Rennellese has 13 consonants, Emae 15, Mele-Fila 16, and West Uvean 26. Moreover, simplification may very well lead to loss of phonological contrasts: the smaller the inventory, the easier it is to learn, which is why the most extreme products of pidginization, pidgin languages themselves, tend to have small phoneme inventories.So, long-term contact involving child bilingualism may produce large inventories through borrowing, and adult language contact may produce smaller inventories through imperfect learning, pidginization, and simplification. Unfortunately, however, this latter cannot be the only explanation for small inventories. Low degrees of language contact may lead to languages with small inventories, because the memory load difficulties caused by confusability and word length will not be relevant, since post-critical threshold learning is not involved.

Child v.s Adult speakers

In cases where there is long-term language contact involving child-language acquisition, high degrees of language contact may lead to larger phoneme inventories, as a result of borrowing, as suggested by Nichols.

Situations involving adult language contact, on the other hand, are likely to favor medium-sized phoneme inventories, i.e., inventories which are not so large as to be difficult for adolescents and adults to remember and acquire, but not so small as to cause confusability of constituents and high word length.

Small communities to keep large inventories?

Because the ability of small communities encourages continued adherence to norms from one generation to another, however complex they may be. we should distinguish between isolated communities which do, however, have neighbors, such as the San and the Yele, and isolated communities which do not, such as the Hawai’ians. small communities which have neighbors, but which wish to remain as isolated as possible, may elaborate systems in order to make them more opaque to these neighbors. Migrations carried settlers to ever more remote parts of the Pacific, was accompanied by ever smaller phoneme inventories.

large communities & small inventories?

Because it is difficult for adolescents and adults to remember and acquire.

The memory load difficulties caused by confusability and word length will not be relevant, since post-critical threshold learning is not involved. They may also just as well lead, however, to large inventories, because, equally, the memory load difficulties caused by the acquisition of large numbers of phonemes will not be relevant either.

Other factors

Besides language contacts, the size of phoneme inventory also depends on the population size.

There is a robust connection between them. The more people speak in one kind of languages, the bigger its phoneme inventory is likely. For example, China with the population of about 1.4 billion puts Mandarin as its authorized language. But there are many dialects in China due to its vast area.So there is a positive correlation between the size of phoneme inventory. 

The small population one country has, the small phoneme inventory it creates or vice versa.

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