Language Interrupted: Signs of Non-Native Acquisition in Standard Language Grammars

332 Pages·2007·1.79 MB·English

by  John McWhorter

Language Interrupted
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Language Interrupted
Signs of Non-Native Acquisition
in Standard Language Grammars
John McWhorter
1
2007
3
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McWhorter, John H.
Language interrupted: signs of non-native acquisition in standard language grammars /
John McWhorter.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-19-530980-5
1. Typology (Linguistics). 2. Linguistic change. 3. Languages in contact. I. Title.
P204.M34 2007
415—dc22 2006051521
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
Acknowledgments
I could not have written this book without the assistance of various linguists who were
kind enough to apply their expertise to providing me with either crucial data or in-
formed counsel to assist me in pronouncing upon language families with which I
had never before had occasion to become familiar.
For the English chapter, sincere thanks to Andrew Garrett for extensive com-
ments on an early draft of the article that preceded it, to Osten Dahl for reining
me in on some of my preliminary claims, and otherwise to Irmengard Rauch,
Anthony Grant, Gary Holland, James Matisoff, Peter Tiersma, Jarich Hoekstra,
Martin Haspelmath, Werner Abraham, Sally Thomason, Elly van Gelderen, and
especially my once and future mentor Elizabeth Traugott.
For the Chinese chapter, Hilary Chappell and Stephen Matthews went far
beyond the call of duty in helping me penetrate the Sinitic literature beyond the easily
available sources on Mandarin. Professor Chappell was especially invaluable in pro-
viding me with data translated from the Chinese as well as work in progress that helped
me get a grasp on comparative perspectives unavailable elsewhere.
Gernot Windfuhr and Prods Skjaervø kindly assisted me in filling in some gaps
for the Persian chapter, and Jay Jasanoff gave me an invaluable crash course on
comparative Indo-European diachronic morphology, especially useful for assess-
ing Persian in comparison to its sisters.
Without Alan Kaye and his innately comparative perspective that jibes with my
own, I would be unable to feel confident enough to present the Arabic chapter for
public assessment. His generosity in providing endless offprints and free refereeing
is hereby acknowledged in awe and gratitude.
For the Malay chapter, I owe endless thanks to Austronesianists Robert Blust, Mark
Donohue, and John Woolf for references and insights that helped in constructing the
argument. I am also deeply grateful to David Gil for sharing his work on Riau Indone-
sian with me, which helped to stimulate my interest in the topic of this monograph
and also served as my introduction to Indonesian languages. Gil also kindly pointed
me to Lea Brown’s dissertation on Nias. A special acknowledgment is also due to
vi Acknowledgments
Geoffrey Hull, who provided me with invaluable discussion of the Timor situation and
steered me to sources that were unlikely to come to my attention otherwise.
Presentations of various stages of this work to audiences at the University of
California, Berkeley, the University of Helsinki, the University of Pennsylvania,
Stanford University, and the Free University of Berlin also helped me to sharpen my
argumentation.
Finally, I picked up the basic idea that language family members that retain most
of their ancestors’ complexities are “normal” from work by, and constant exchanges
with, Stephane Goyette. If I had never encountered his argument that Romance is
not a “natural” outcome of Latin given the “conservative” nature of Slavic, Greek,
and Celtic, I would likely never have written this book.
Contents
1. Introduction 3
2. Defining Grammatical Complexity 21
3. Epistemological Caveats 51
4. English 59
5. Mandarin Chinese 104
6. Persian 138
7. Colloquial Arabic 165
8. Malay 197
9. A New Typology of Language Contact 252
Notes 277
References 283
Index 307
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Language Interrupted