Chapter 3
Language contact and change through translation in Afrikaans and South African English
A diachronic corpus-based study of genitive variation
Languages are constantly changing, and language contact has been identified as an important factor that
contributes to language change. Even though translation is a form of language contact, it has hardly been considered as a
factor in contact-induced language change. Against this background, this chapter investigates the potential role of
translation in language change in Afrikaans and South African English using a bidirectional comparable and parallel corpus
with synchronic and diachronic components. The investigation focuses on genitive variation – a linguistic feature that has
been shown to be undergoing change in the two languages as a consequence of language contact. The results show that
translation works in tandem with other factors to conventionalise change in terms of genitive preferences.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Factors conditioning (change in) genitive use in Afrikaans and South African English
- 3.Methodology
- 3.1Corpus design
- 3.2Time frames, registers and word counts
- 3.3Data extraction and annotation
- 3.4Linguistic variables
- 3.4.1Animacy of the possessor and the possessum
- 3.4.2The principle of end weight
- 3.4.3Final sibilance
- 3.5Statistical analysis: Modelling variable importance and variable interactions
- 3.5.1Random forest analysis
- 3.5.2Conditional inference tree
- 3.5.3Logistic regression modelling
- 4.Results
- 4.1Random forests analysis
- 4.2Conditional inference tree analysis
- 4.3Logistic regression analysis
- 4.4Interpretation of results
- 5.Conclusion
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Notes
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References
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Appendix