Linguistic Adaptation: Typological and Sociolinguistic Perspectives to Language Variation

Project Information

GramAdapt

Grant agreement ID: 805371

DOI

10.3030/805371

Project closed

EC signature date 19 October 2018

Start date 1 January 2019

End date 30 June 2024

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 491 493,00

EU contribution

€ 1 491 493,00

Coordinated by

HELSINGIN YLIOPISTO
Finland

Periodic Reporting for period 4 - GramAdapt (Linguistic Adaptation: Typological and Sociolinguistic Perspectives to Language Variation)

Reporting period: 2023-07-01 to 2024-06-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The GramAdapt project aims to better understand how language structures adapt to the sociohistorical contexts in which languages are learned and used. To reach this goal, we integrate worldwide comparisons of languages (i.e. language typology) and the study of language in its social context (i.e. sociolinguistics). Our hypothesis is that language structures adapt to the social environment in much the same way as many other aspects of human behavior are adaptive.

The project's approach combines conceptual and methodological tools from sociolinguistics and typology to provide answers about adaptation in a systematic data-driven way. Combining these fields has been challenging in the past owing especially to methodological obstacles: language typology tends to approach languages from a macro-perspective (grammar-based) but sociolinguistics from a micro-perspective (individual-based).

In addition to the novel framework, the project collects data on social environments and linguistic variables from roughly 150 languages to test hypotheses about adaptation. The results of the project allow deeper understanding of how languages vary and change under different social contexts around the world.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

In the GramAdapt project we have tailored each piece of the research design so that the model of causation, approach to comparison, sampling, variable selection, and statistical inferences would be compatible with one another (publ. 10, 19). A review and synthesis of causes of language change has been used in developing other parts of the design, informed by collaborative work on the evaluation of causal chains in language evolution (publ. 2). For selecting languages and communities, we have developed and tested a new sampling method that builds on our earlier work but is sensitive to the relationship of languages in contact unlike previous techniques (publ. 6, 13, 17). The sampling method is a crucial part of a typological method that we have developed for identifying linguistic outcomes of language contact which lets us assess the probability of contact-induced language change in a Bayesian way (publ. 19). The method has been validated with Bayesian ancestral state reconstructions, principal component analysis, and by comparing inferences based on our data to those drawn from more qualitative research on outcomes of language contact (publ. 17; dissem. 12; Di Garbo & Kapellis, in revision). Based on the approach we have analyzed linguistic data on five broad linguistic domains in 150 languages and the data will be made openly accessible upon the publication of a release paper in preparation. The selection of linguistic variables for typological comparison has been informed by pilot analyses (publ. 4, 8, 11, 12, 16, 18).

The most innovative aspect of the project has been developing methods for combining sociolinguistic and typological approaches to language variation. We have developed a questionnaire and comparative parameters for researching sociolinguistic ecology that have guided and structured our data collection (Kashima et al., accepted; Sinnemäki & Kashima, in prep.). The questionnaire is informed by insights from our earlier work (publ. 2, 5, 12) and its design incorporates knowledge from language processing, language acquisition, language socialization, linguistic anthropology, and sociolinguistics. We have also reviewed research in sociolinguistic typology as well as comparative research in variationist sociolinguistics (Sinnemäki, in revision; Sinnemäki & Kashima, in revision). Sociolinguistic data has been collected in collaboration with roughly 50 experts worldwide and the first version of the dataset has been published (Open data 5). About half of the experts (e.g. Kashima & Schokkin, accepted) also contributed a chapter on the bilingual language ecology to a collection of articles edited by members of the research team (Di Garbo, Kashima & Sinnemäki, forthcoming). Based on our approach and data we have also argued how typological research could be methodologically renewed on a wider scale (Di Garbo et al., in review).
The initial results on testing hypotheses about linguistic adaptation suggest at least partial evidence for adaptations but also correctives to earlier research (publ. 5, 12, 18; dissem. 8, 9, 10; see below).

Selected publications:
Di Garbo, F., E. Kashima & K. Sinnemäki (eds.) (forthcoming). Social Foundations of Language Contact: A Comparative Survey. Language Science Press.
Di Garbo, F. & P. Kapellis (in revision). Contact effects in nominal number systems: A worldwide survey. Studies in Language.
Di Garbo, F. et al. (in review). Towards greater social anchoring in language typology. Linguistic Typology at the Crossroads.
Kashima, E. et al. (accepted). The design principles of a sociolinguistic-typological questionnaire for language contact research. Language Dynamics and Change.
Kashima, E. & D. Schokkin (accepted). Nen and Idi Social Contact, Southern New Guinea. In F. Di Garbo et al., Social foundations of Language Contact: A Comparative Survey. Language Science Press.
Sinnemäki, K. & E. Kashima (in revision). Language typology and variationist sociolinguistics. An invited chapter in Y. Asahi et al. (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Variationist Sociolinguistics. Routledge.
Sinnemäki, K. & E. Kashima (in prep.). Comparative historical sociolinguistics. An invited chapter to B. Drinka et al. (eds.), Handbook of Historical Sociolinguistics. Mouton de Gruyter.
Sinnemäki, K. (in revision). On the "socio" in sociolinguistic typology: A review. Linguistics.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The project's main results include the following:

(1) We have built a novel integrated model of typological and sociolinguistic variation that centers on language contact (publ. 10). The model ties together our approaches to comparison, causation, sampling, feature selection, data analysis, and statistical inference in a transparent way and it has been backed up by case studies and data from multilingual corpora (publ. 12, 14, 16, 17, 18).

(2) Our sampling method puts contact relations between languages on a cetre stage in an unprecedented way, which enables researching adaptation systematically in bilingual ecologies regardless of language's societal status. The method has been successfully applied to generating a representative sample of contact situations across the world and it forms the basis of a novel typological approach developed for identifying linguistic outcomes of contact and for making inferences about contact effects (publ. 13, 19).

(3) The sociolinguistic questionnaire, our methods for comparing sociolinguistic environments, and our Social Contact Dataset are completely new with no precedents (publ. 10; Kashima et al., accepted; Sinnemäki & Kashima, in prep). The questionnaire has been filled out by nearly 50 collaborating experts worldwide and a preliminary version of the dataset has been published (Open data 5).

(4) Our preliminary empirical results suggest that the probability of language change adapts to various aspects of the bilingual language ecology, such as the degree of exposure to the contact language (dissem. 9, 10). We also provide the first systematic typological comparison of language-internal and language-external effects on linguistic patterns (publ. 5) suggesting that both are needed to explain linguistic diversity. Our results also emphasize the need for researching language ecology beyond mere sociodemographic data (publ. 12).

Photo of the GramAdapt project team