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Language Contact, Continuity and Change in the Genesis of Modern Hebrew
Edited by Edit Doron, Malka Rappaport Hovav, Yael Reshef and Moshe Taube
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 256] 2019
► pp. 257–286

Can there be language continuity in language contact?

| The Ohio State University

The paper argues that contact-induced change is no more unusual or “inorganic” than any sort of language change, and that it does not affect the basic continuity that language transmission across generations ensures. Language continuity depends on an unbroken line of transmission, which may be preserved not only in cases of system-internal changes, but also in changes induced by language contact, even in creoles and mixed languages. The paper illustrates these points by examining three cases of language contact: Judezmo (Judeo-Spanish spoken by Jewish communities in the Balkans before World War II); the Constantinople Judeo-Greek dialect of the 16th century; the diglossia in 19th century Greece between Demotic and Katharevousa.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Case study #1: Judezmo
  • 3.Case study #2: Judeo-Greek of Ottoman Constantinople
  • 4.Case study #3: Greek diglossia
  • 5.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 18 September 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.256.10jos
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