Recycling a Mixed Language: Posha in Turkey

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Uzum M., DEMİR N., Bagriacik M.

Languages, cilt.8, sa.1, 2023 (ESCI) identifier

  • Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
  • Cilt numarası: 8 Sayı: 1
  • Basım Tarihi: 2023
  • Doi Numarası: 10.3390/languages8010052
  • Dergi Adı: Languages
  • Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), Scopus, Linguistic Bibliography, Directory of Open Access Journals
  • Anahtar Kelimeler: Armenian, bilingual mixed languages, language shift, Lomavren, Posha, Turkish
  • Hacettepe Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet

Özet

We provide a sketch grammar of a new bilingual mixed language based on data gathered through interaction with its last native speakers. The language, which we call Posha of Çankırı, is spoken in central Turkey. The source languages are Turkish and Lomavren, another bilingual mixed language for which the source languages are Armenian and some Central Indo-Aryan varieties. In Posha of Çankırı, the mixing happens in the nominal morphology and in the lexicon while the verbal roots and verbal morphology are entirely from the ancestral language, Lomavren, albeit with certain minor changes. The Indo-Aryan layer of vocabulary is rather thin and the Indo-Aryan retentions in grammar can only be speculated. We show that the emergence of Posha of Çankırı has been initiated by language shift, but that its ultimate defining characteristic is L2 insertions into (some distorted version of) the L1. The study contributes to the documentation of lesser known new varieties and touches upon topics such as the mechanism involved in the emergence of bilingual mixed languages.