Acceso usuarios
Frank Jablonka
The typology of language contacts is an important issue of contact linguistics. Different configurations of contact situations, such as of creoles, interlects between standard languages and dialects, or even the emergence of Romance languages have been tried to be explained by ecolinguistic parameters, such as the rapidity of evolution or geographical distance. Contemporary urban vernaculars, i.e. the contact variety spoken in French peripheral urban districts, and the postcolonial contact in Maghrebine Francophony with Arabic varieties can be joined to the list of specific contact cases. The notion of « limit » can be considered an essential category in contact typology, and it turns out that Juri Lotman’s semiotic approach can assign a specifically dynamizing function to the limits of language contacts. Under globalization conditions, even apparently very different outcomes of language contact can be explained by common underlying principles, even if we may accept the idea of a rupture in sociological terms.
