Re: CHAT: The Conlang Instinct

On Fri, 3 Dec 1999, John Cowan wrote:

> FFlores wrote:
>
> > I insert English
> > words and phrases into my Spanish when I speak to my brother.
>
> This code-switching is very interesting to me: it is common the world over
> when bilinguals talk to bilinguals.  The usual theory is that there is a
> universal metagrammar, with two rules that control when switches happen:
>
> 1) switches happen only between free morphemes (the free morpheme rule)
>
> 2) switches happen only when the word order of both languages is in alignment
> (the equivalence rule).
[snipped very cool discussion of code-switching]

> ObConlang:  Have any artlangers thought about language-mixing strategies involving
> multiple conlangs, or conlangs and natlangs?  And has talked occasionally about
> Livagian-influenced English, I know.
This may have occurred in the Tepa materials I have access to. Since the
last surviving speaker of Tepa had Southern Paiute as his native
language, there are bound to be L1 interference effects in his Tepa. (It
may be, for example, that the consonant alternations in Tepa are really
a result of the same kinds of alternations in Southern Paiute. Or it
might be areal influence (which I consider more likely).)

Alma Walker's journals, which are the ultimate source of all of my Tepa
materials might have recorded a "sanitized" variety of Tepa, in which
all of the obvious Southern Paiute contaminations--including code-
switching--were removed. I suspect that this is in fact the case. I'll
have to look into this a little further, though; it would be interesting
to see if any code-switching did occur, since Tepa and Southern Paiute
are so different, typologically; Southern Paiute is SOV, and Tepa is
VOS.

[For those of you unfamiliar with Tepa, the conceit which I make use of
to explain the spotty nature of Tepa documentation is that it is an
extinct NatAm language, whose last surviving speaker was a Southern
Paiute/Tepa bilingual. Tepa was recorded in the journals of one Alma
Walker, a Mormon missionary sent in the latter half of the 19th century
to south eastern Utah to preach to the Southern Paiutes and Navajos
there. He may not have been the most diligent missionary, but he was a
fine amateur linguist--even if he doctored up his data a bit :-).]

Dirk

--
Dirk Elzinga
dirk.elzinga@m.cc.utah.edu