Metatypy
Encyclopedia
Metatypy is a type of morphosyntactic and semantic language change
brought about by language contact
involving multilingual speakers. The term was coined by linguist Malcolm Ross.
Malcolm Ross
(1999: 7, 1) gives the following definition:
Ross (2002) identifies the following metatypic changes:
Ross finds that semantic reorganization occurs before syntactic restructuring. The syntactic changes occur in the order of (i) sentence/clause, (ii) phrase, and, finally, (iii) words.
Below are some languages that have undergone metatypy:
(of the Oceanic family, western branch) due to influence from the neighboring Waskia language
(of the Madang
family, Trans–New Guinea). Here, in Ross' terminology, Takia is the modified language and Waskia is the inter-community language. Waskia, however, does not seem to have been significantly influenced by Takia. Both languages are spoken on Karkar Island
.
The end result of the metatypic change leaves Takia usually having a word-for-word Waskia translation, such as the following:
This pairing of syntactic and semantic structures makes this word-for-word translation possible. Some of the grammatical changes that Takia has undergone include:
The diffusional changes of Takia are only in terms of metatypy. This means that Takia has not altered its phonology
and has virtually no loanword
s borrowed from Waskia.
Language change
Language change is the phenomenon whereby phonetic, morphological, semantic, syntactic, and other features of language vary over time. The effect on language over time is known as diachronic change. Two linguistic disciplines in particular concern themselves with studying language change:...
brought about by language contact
Language contact
Language contact occurs when two or more languages or varieties interact. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics.Multilingualism has likely been common throughout much of human history, and today most people in the world are multilingual...
involving multilingual speakers. The term was coined by linguist Malcolm Ross.
Malcolm Ross
Malcolm Ross
Malcolm David Ross is a linguist and professor at the Australian National University. He has published work on Austronesian and Papuan languages, historical linguistics, and language contact.-External links:**...
(1999: 7, 1) gives the following definition:
[Metatypy is a] change in morphosyntactic type and grammatical organisation [and also semantic patterns] which a language undergoes as a result of its speakers’ bilingualism in another language. This change is driven by grammatical calquing, i.e. the copying of constructional meanings from the modified language and the innovation of new structures using inherited material to express them. A concomitant of this reorganisation of grammatical constructions is often the reorganisation or creation of paradigms of grammatical functors.... Usually, the language undergoing metatypy (the modified language) is emblematic of its speakers’ identity, whilst the language which provides the metatypic model is an inter-community language. Speakers of the modified language form a sufficiently tightknit community to be well aware of their separate identity and of their language as a marker of that identity, but some bilingual speakers, at least, use the inter-community language so extensively that they are more at home in it than in the emblematic language of the community.
Ross (2002) identifies the following metatypic changes:
- "reorganization of the language's semantic patterns and ‘ways of saying things’"
- "restructuring of its syntaxSyntaxIn linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....
, i.e. the patterns in which morphemeMorphemeIn linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest semantically meaningful unit in a language. The field of study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. A morpheme is not identical to a word, and the principal difference between the two is that a morpheme may or may not stand alone, whereas a word,...
s are concatenated to form- (i) sentences and clauses,
- (ii) phrases, and
- (iii) words."
Ross finds that semantic reorganization occurs before syntactic restructuring. The syntactic changes occur in the order of (i) sentence/clause, (ii) phrase, and, finally, (iii) words.
Below are some languages that have undergone metatypy:
| Modified Language | Inter-community Language |
|---|---|
| Takia Takia language Takia is an Austronesian language spoken by about 20,000 people on Karkar Island, Bagabag Island, and coastal villages Megiar and Serang, Madang Province, Papua New Guinea. Children are being discouraged from using Takia, and it is being supplanted by Tok Pisin and English... (Oceanic) |
Waskia Waskia language Waskia is a Papuan language of Papua New Guinea. It is spoken on half of Karkar Island, and a small part of the shore on the mainland, by 20,000 people; language use is vigorous. The Waskia share their island with speakers of Takia, and Oceanic language which has been restructured under the... (Trans–New Guinea) |
| Anêm Anêm language The Anêm language is a language isolate spoken in five main villages along the northwestern coast of New Britain island, Papua New Guinea: Malasoŋo , Karaiai, Mosiliki, Pudêlîŋ, Atiatu and Bolo... (East Papuan) |
Lusi (Oceanic) |
| Arvanitic (Albanian Albanian language Albanian is an Indo-European language spoken by approximately 7.6 million people, primarily in Albania and Kosovo but also in other areas of the Balkans in which there is an Albanian population, including western Macedonia, southern Montenegro, southern Serbia and northwestern Greece... , Indo-European Indo-European languages The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia... ) |
Greek Greek language Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;... (Indo-European Indo-European languages The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia... ) |
| Mixe Basque Basque language Basque is the ancestral language of the Basque people, who inhabit the Basque Country, a region spanning an area in northeastern Spain and southwestern France. It is spoken by 25.7% of Basques in all territories... |
Gascon Gascon language Gascon is usually considered as a dialect of Occitan, even though some specialists regularly consider it a separate language. Gascon is mostly spoken in Gascony and Béarn in southwestern France and in the Aran Valley of Spain... (Italic Italic languages The Italic subfamily is a member of the Indo-European language family. It includes the Romance languages derived from Latin , and a number of extinct languages of the Italian Peninsula, including Umbrian, Oscan, Faliscan, and Latin.In the past various definitions of "Italic" have prevailed... ) |
| Phan Rong Cham Cham language Cham is the language of the Cham people of Southeast Asia, and formerly the language of the kingdom of Champa in central Vietnam. A member of the Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian family, it is spoken by 100,000 people in Vietnam and up to 220,000 people in Cambodia . There are also... (Malayo-Polynesian) |
Vietnamese Vietnamese language Vietnamese is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam... (Vietic) |
| Asia Minor Greek Greek language Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;... (Indo-European Indo-European languages The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia... ) |
Turkish Turkish language Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,... (Turkic) |
| Ilwana (Benue–Congo) | Orma Orma language Orma is spoken by the Orma people in Kenya.The origin of the language is from the Oromo language. Other Oromo languages are spoken in extensive areas of Ethiopia.... (Cushitic) |
| Kannada Kannada language Kannada or , is a language spoken in India predominantly in the state of Karnataka. Kannada, whose native speakers are called Kannadigas and number roughly 50 million, is one of the 30 most spoken languages in the world... (Dravidian Dravidian languages The Dravidian language family includes approximately 85 genetically related languages, spoken by about 217 million people. They are mainly spoken in southern India and parts of eastern and central India as well as in northeastern Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Iran, and... ) |
Kupwar Marathi Marathi language Marathi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people of western and central India. It is the official language of the state of Maharashtra. There are over 68 million fluent speakers worldwide. Marathi has the fourth largest number of native speakers in India and is the fifteenth most... (Indo-Iranian Indo-Iranian languages The Indo-Iranian language group constitutes the easternmost extant branch of the Indo-European family of languages. It consists of three language groups: the Indo-Aryan, Iranian and Nuristani... ) |
| Tariana Tariana language Tariana is an endangered Maipurean language spoken along the Vaupés River in Amazonas, Brazil by approximately 100 people. Another approximately 1500 people in the upper and middle Vaupés River area identify themselves as ethnic Tariana but no longer speak the language.The Tariana and East Tucano... (Maipurean Maipurean Arawakan , also known as Maipurean , is a language family that spans from the Caribbean and Central America to every country in South America except Ecuador, Uruguay and Chile... ) |
Tucanoan languages Tucanoan languages Tucanoan is a language family of Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador, and Peru.-Family division:There are two dozen Tucanoan languages:*Western Tucanoan**Correguaje **Tama **Macaguaje ... |
| Kupwar Urdu Urdu Urdu is a register of the Hindustani language that is identified with Muslims in South Asia. It belongs to the Indo-European family. Urdu is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan. It is also widely spoken in some regions of India, where it is one of the 22 scheduled languages and an... (Indo-Iranian Indo-Iranian languages The Indo-Iranian language group constitutes the easternmost extant branch of the Indo-European family of languages. It consists of three language groups: the Indo-Aryan, Iranian and Nuristani... ) |
Kupwar Marathi Marathi language Marathi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people of western and central India. It is the official language of the state of Maharashtra. There are over 68 million fluent speakers worldwide. Marathi has the fourth largest number of native speakers in India and is the fifteenth most... (Indo-Iranian Indo-Iranian languages The Indo-Iranian language group constitutes the easternmost extant branch of the Indo-European family of languages. It consists of three language groups: the Indo-Aryan, Iranian and Nuristani... ) |
Example: Papuanised Takia and Waskia
The example given by Ross (1999) is the "papuanisation" of the Takia languageTakia language
Takia is an Austronesian language spoken by about 20,000 people on Karkar Island, Bagabag Island, and coastal villages Megiar and Serang, Madang Province, Papua New Guinea. Children are being discouraged from using Takia, and it is being supplanted by Tok Pisin and English...
(of the Oceanic family, western branch) due to influence from the neighboring Waskia language
Waskia language
Waskia is a Papuan language of Papua New Guinea. It is spoken on half of Karkar Island, and a small part of the shore on the mainland, by 20,000 people; language use is vigorous. The Waskia share their island with speakers of Takia, and Oceanic language which has been restructured under the...
(of the Madang
Madang languages
The Madang or Madang–Adelbert Range languages are the largest family of Trans–New Guinea languages in the classification of Malcolm Ross. William Foley concurs that it is "highly likely" that the Madang languages are part of TNG. The family is named after Madang Province and the Adelbert...
family, Trans–New Guinea). Here, in Ross' terminology, Takia is the modified language and Waskia is the inter-community language. Waskia, however, does not seem to have been significantly influenced by Takia. Both languages are spoken on Karkar Island
Karkar Island
Karkar Island is an oval-shaped volcanic island located in the Bismarck Sea, about 30 kilometres off the north coast of mainland Papua New Guinea in Madang Province. The island is about 25 km in length and 19 km in width. In the centre is an active volcano with two nested calderas...
.
The end result of the metatypic change leaves Takia usually having a word-for-word Waskia translation, such as the following:
| English transl.: | "the man is hitting me" | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Takia: | tamol | an | ŋai | i-fun-ag=da |
| man | DET | me | he-hit-me=IMP Imperfective aspect The imperfective is a grammatical aspect used to describe a situation viewed with internal structure, such as ongoing, habitual, repeated, and similar semantic roles, whether that situation occurs in the past, present, or future... |
|
| Waskia: | kadi | mu | aga | umo-so |
| man | DET | me | hit-PRES Present tense The present tense is a grammatical tense that locates a situation or event in present time. This linguistic definition refers to a concept that indicates a feature of the meaning of a verb... .he |
This pairing of syntactic and semantic structures makes this word-for-word translation possible. Some of the grammatical changes that Takia has undergone include:
| Metatypic Change | Early Western Oceanic | Papuanised Takia | |
|---|---|---|---|
| word order Word order In linguistics, word order typology refers to the study of the order of the syntactic constituents of a language, and how different languages can employ different orders. Correlations between orders found in different syntactic subdomains are also of interest... : |
SVO | → | SOV |
| non-deictic determiner: | precedes head Head (linguistics) In linguistics, the head is the word that determines the syntactic type of the phrase of which it is a member, or analogously the stem that determines the semantic category of a compound of which it is a component. The other elements modify the head.... noun Noun In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of... |
→ | follows head |
| attributive noun: | precedes head | → | follows head |
| conjoined noun phrase Noun phrase In grammar, a noun phrase, nominal phrase, or nominal group is a phrase based on a noun, pronoun, or other noun-like word optionally accompanied by modifiers such as adjectives.... : |
Noun Phrase + Conjunction Grammatical conjunction In grammar, a conjunction is a part of speech that connects two words, sentences, phrases or clauses together. A discourse connective is a conjunction joining sentences. This definition may overlap with that of other parts of speech, so what constitutes a "conjunction" must be defined for each... + Noun Phrase |
→ | Noun Phrase + Noun Phrase + Postposition |
| adposition Adposition Prepositions are a grammatically distinct class of words whose most central members characteristically express spatial relations or serve to mark various syntactic functions and semantic roles... : |
preposition | → | postposition |
The diffusional changes of Takia are only in terms of metatypy. This means that Takia has not altered its phonology
Phonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
and has virtually no loanword
Loanword
A loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
s borrowed from Waskia.
See also
- CalqueCalqueIn linguistics, a calque or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal, word-for-word or root-for-root translation.-Calque:...
- Mixed languageMixed languageA mixed language is a language that arises through the fusion of two source languages, normally in situations of thorough bilingualism, so that it is not possible to classify the resulting language as belonging to either of the language families that were its source...
- Language changeLanguage changeLanguage change is the phenomenon whereby phonetic, morphological, semantic, syntactic, and other features of language vary over time. The effect on language over time is known as diachronic change. Two linguistic disciplines in particular concern themselves with studying language change:...
- Language contactLanguage contactLanguage contact occurs when two or more languages or varieties interact. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics.Multilingualism has likely been common throughout much of human history, and today most people in the world are multilingual...
- LoanwordLoanwordA loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
- MultilingualismMultilingualismMultilingualism is the act of using, or promoting the use of, multiple languages, either by an individual speaker or by a community of speakers. Multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. Multilingualism is becoming a social phenomenon governed by the needs of...
- Language transfer
- RelexificationRelexificationRelexification is a term in linguistics used to describe the mechanism of language change by which one language replaces much or all of its lexicon, including basic vocabulary, with that of another language, without drastic change to its grammar. It is principally used to describe pidgins, creoles,...
- Hybrid languageHybrid languageA Hybrid language can refer to:*A Multi-paradigm programming language, a programming language that draws on elements from more than one programming paradigm, in computer science...
(disambiguation page)