Polish and Belorussian dialects in contact: a study in linguistic convergence

ENThis dissertation investigates the extent of contact-induced innovation in the phonology, morphology, syntax and lexicon of the Polish and Belorussian dialects of the Bialystok, Hrodna and Vilnius regions in the light of recent proposals by Thomason and Kaufman (1988) and van Coetsem (1988) concerning the typology of linguistic transfer. These authors have argued that a distinction must be made between borrowing (defined as the transfer of foreign features into a language by native speakers of that language) and interference or imposition (i.e. the transfer of features into a language by non-native speakers), which they maintain will have fundamentally different linguistic consequences. Borrowing tends to affect primarily the least stable domains of the recipient language (above all, the lexicon, although it may also include limited phonological transfer through lexical borrowing, as well as some superficial syntactic patterns), while interference/imposition primarily affects the more stable domains (phonology, "deep" syntax, and to a lesser extent, inflectional morphology). It is observed that Polish influence (through borrowing) in the majority of the Belorussian dialects of the region investigated is found primarily in the lexicon, with a limited number of contact innovations in the derivational morphology and syntax, while the Polish dialects which arose on a Belorussian or mixed Lithuanian-Belorussian substratum exhibit far more profound structural modifications, including freer stress, vowel reduction, the absence of clitic pronouns and of personal inflection in the past tense, copula deletion, and other phonological, morphological and syntactic features typically associated with East Slavic.The data and analysis presented in this dissertation support the position that in language contact it is not, as Jakobson and others have argued, the internal "developmental tendencies" of the systems involved which are responsible for the diffusion or non-diffusion of linguistic features, but rather the types of linguistic transfer (borrowing vs. imposition), which in turn are a consequence of the interplay of linguistic, psychological and social factors. In addition, this dissertation provides valuable insights concerning the mechanisms and typology of linguistic transfer in contact situations involving closely-related language varieties as opposed to linguistically more divergent systems.