L1 English speakers in Prague: motivators in language use and language borrowing
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L1 English speakers in Prague: Motivators in language use and language borrowing Chloe Michelle Castle (University of Adelaide) ABSTRACT This paper identifies causes of grammatical borrowing and related grammatical phenomena in L1 English L2 Czech immigrant speech. This study contributes to the literature on causes of grammatical borrowing and considers key ideas including social pressure (Thomason and Kaufman 1988), cognitive pressure (Matras 1998; Sanchez 2005) and gap filling (Campbell 1993). Thirteen semistructured interviews were conducted. Participants were affected by social pressure and cognitive pressure surrounding their language use, whether it acted as adriving or inhibiting factor in terms of grammatical borrowing. Participants also engage in borrowing akin to “language play” (Porte 2003: 116) with those close to them; it is aconscious choice to borrow in these cases and it usually represents matter (MAT) (Matras and Sakel 2007) borrowing (Castle 2021a). This paper proposes anew model which considers both conscious and subconscious borrowing whilst also considering factors inhibiting the possibility of borrowing. KEYWORDS conscious borrowing, grammatical borrowing, grammatical gap filling, immigration and language attrition, language contact DOI https://doi.org/10.14712/18059635.2021.2.3 1 INTRODUCTION This paper identifies drivers of grammatical borrowing and related borrowing phenomena in L1 English L21 Czech immigrants, established in Castle (2021a).2 Possibilities include cognitive pressure for assimilation (increasing structural similarity and simplicity, e.g. paradigmatic regularisation) (Weinreich 1953; Coteanu 1957; Heath 1978; Maher 1985; Matras 1998; Sanchez 2005), gap filling (Hale 1971; Vachek 1972; 1 In this article, L2 is used in the sense of “further language”, as it is acknowledged that participants may have other languages as well, which they may possibly be more proficient in and/or have learned prior to learning Czech. 2 The participants are referred to as immigrants but can also be considered first-generation Czechs. Ihave avoided the term expatriate because: the majority of the participants are long-term residents in the Czech Republic; it can represent negative connotations regarding refusal to participate in the host culture (see §2.1; Sherman 2009: 83–84); and alarge majority of the participants themselves either did not mention the word expatriate or actively distanced themselves from it, e.g. Participant 3 “Idon’t hang out in expatriate society”.
162 LINGUISTICA PRAGENSIA 2/2021 Karttunen 1976; Mithun 1980; Hill and Hill 1981; Campbell 1987; 1993; de la Fuente 2017) and sociocultural motivations (Brody 1987; Thomason and Kaufman 1988; Campbell 1993; Myers-Scotton 2002). It considers subconscious and conscious borrowing events (§3.2). The results and discussion are split into the following: — Social pressures: Driving and Inhibiting Influences • Pressure to speak Czech e.g. by the public, etc. • Partner influence • Prescriptivism-motivated pressure to avoid mixing • Self-pressure and perspective on mixing • Location-related pressures — Cognitive Pressures • Preference related to comfort in language • Borrowing due to forgetting aword and cognitive ease of expression — Gap Filling and Creativity • Borrowing due to usefulness and better (sociocultural) expression of meaning • Perspective on language play — Subconscious Borrowing Participant opinions are compared with their borrowing tendencies established in Castle (2021a). The data is analysed within Thomason and Kaufman’s (1998) framework, incorporating Language Management Theory (Neustupný and Nekvapil 2003; Sherman 2009; Nekvapil and Sherman 2013; Nekvapil 2016). Anew model is proposed which considers conscious and subconscious borrowing, as well as inhibiting factors. 2 BACKGROUND 2.1 CONTACT-INDUCED TRANSFER IN L1 ENGLISH SPEAKERS In the literature on L1 English speakers in European language settings, there are many L1 English expatriates who have not learned the local language (Sherman 2001; Neustupný and Nekvapil 2003; Sherman 2009; Leinonen 2012; Lawson 2016). In Leinonen’s (2012) study on American expatriates in Finland, the majority of participants were not fluent in Finnish though they had spent many years in Finland. Finnish, like Czech, is asmall language on the world stage, and when a“speaker of aglobally very powerful language” resides in the country they may assume it is not expected or necessary to be able to speak it (Latomaa 1998: 56). L1 English migrants represent aclass of “elite migrants” (Dong 2016): they are often multinationals with significant social prestige and power (Sherman 2009; Nekvapil and Sherman 2013). This prestige stems from the status of English as globally powerful language, and thus Czechs’ willingness to learn it, and the perceived career opportunities and advantages that knowledge of the language brings (Nekvapil
CHLOE MICHELLE CASTLE 163 and Sherman 2013; Sučková 2020a). Thus, many “Czech city dwellers typically have some knowledge of it [… and] the pressure […] for Anglophone expatriates to linguistically […] assimilate is not as pronounced as with other groups” (Sučková 2020a: 84). Many such Czechs may adhere to the ideology of the absolute instrumentality of aparticular language discussed in Nekvapil and Sherman (2013: 112). Nekvapil and Sherman (2013: 93) found that white collar employees from abroad in aparticular large multinational company with plants in the Czech Republic “tend not to acquire acommunicative level of Czech after living in the Czech Republic for anumber of years”. This linguistic non-integration would not be acceptable for an immigrant from apoorer country (Leinonen 2012). In Lawson’s (2016: 72) study on L1 English speaking immigrants in France, many ended their French lessons as “real life gets in the way”. Communication with locals is of arelatively lower importance in life. Amongst Czech-American couples in the Czech Republic, English is frequently used and socioculturally American patterns dominate (Sherman 2001; Neustupný and Nekvapil 2003). Americans can be unwilling to give up their expatriate status through language, and Czechs may not easily admit foreigners into their networks (Neustupný and Nekvapil 2003). The representative at the Australia/New Zealand expatriate community in Prague, CANZA, informed the researcher that L1 English L2 Czech speakers without Czech heritage are as “rare as hen’s teeth”. L1 English expatriates in this community are included in this group of immigrants who do not learn the local language to any degree of fluency. It is interesting to ponder whether social networks of such expatriates extend far beyond other L1 English speakers.3 Indeed, Sučková (2020a: 84) states that L1 use rate “can remain at 100% in the ‘expat bubble’ in the capital”. Sherman (2009: 85) discusses a“vicious circle” in terms of the explanations that can be offered here: either English speakers are “linguistically incapable” and thus remain in their expatriate bubble; or the fact that they do not venture out of this bubble and thus do not practice speaking Czech renders them “linguistically incompetent”. During the data collection process the researcher became aware that though the expatriate club did not know many relevant possible participants, they do exist. The population of L1 English L2 Czech speakers may be small, but larger than anticipated according to the literature and CANZA. These individuals seem to embed themselves within the Czech community. They often still have some L1 English speaking friends, particularly in their workplaces, but their constant contact with Czech and Czech speakers provides ahotbed in which socially motivated contact-induced grammatical 3 English L1 expatriates who frequently attend expatriate clubs (e.g. CANZA) would likely not share acommon form of English influenced by Czech bilingualism (as they are not bilingual in Czech). English L1 Czech L2 immigrants, who do not tend to attend expatriate clubs, would also not share acommon form of English influenced by Czech bilingualism as acommunity— because they do not form acommunity. This has consequences affecting interpretations of the outcomes of borrowing if similar borrowing occurrences happen in participants who are not part of awider community— similar occurrences may be happening for reasons not involving community spread and propagation but rather similar individual cognitive processes.
164 LINGUISTICA PRAGENSIA 2/2021 borrowing can take place. For those who remain primarily in the expatriate bubble, this is not possible. Accommodation (Giles et al. 1973; Giles and Coupland 1991; Giles 2009; Gasiorek and Vincze 2016) behaviour English toward L1 Czech L2 English speakers, however, is still possible in such cases (Sučková 2020b). Such accommodation occurs in an attempt by individuals to both be accepted by their interlocutor and to enhance communication. This can involve engaging in “foreigner talk” (Ferguson 1975) to aid the interlocutor in understanding (Giles et al. 1973; Giles and Coupland 1991; Giles 2009). L1 English speakers may then become habitualised to speaking in this way (Sancier and Fowler 1997; Sučková 2020b). 2.2 REASONS FOR ENGAGING IN GRAMMATICAL BORROWING Several possibilities are posited and rejected in the literature for the cause(s) of grammatical borrowing in language contact situations. Filling agrammatical gap is cited as apotential driver for grammatical borrowing (Hale 1971; Heath 1978; Hill and Hill 1981; Campbell 1993; De La Fuente 2017). Campbell (1993: 97) discusses several examples of such aphenomenon, including the borrowing of coordinate conjunctions from Spanish into Pipil, alanguage spoken in El Salvador. Prior to this borrowing, Pipil had only “very limited and perceptually none-too-salient resources of coordination and subordination” so it is hypothesised to fill the “‘grammatical gaps’ recognized in contact with Spanish” (Campbell 1993: 97). This idea is somewhat contentious in the literature, however. Brody (1987) suggests that no element is borrowed to fill agap because every full language is complete in itself: there are simply different ways of expressing different concepts. Sanchez (2005) agrees in positing that grammatical gaps do not trigger borrowing. However, such ideas become clouded by differing definitions of what grammatical gaps actually are. Campbell (1993: 96) explains it as “the claim that some languages borrow precisely because they lack otherwise useful constructions which they encounter in other languages with which they come into contact”. Sanchez (2005: 236) does posit that “grammaticalisation via aforeign morpheme” may occur, wherein aforeign morpheme can be borrowed from asource language which encodes something morphologically which the recipient language codes periphrastically. Matras and Sakel (2007: 858) posit that speakers are not trying to fill agap in one of their linguistic systems, but rather they are “attempting to avail themselves of constructions that are part of their total repertoire irrespective of the setting … and… identity of the chosen language of interaction”. To this researcher, these fit within the definition of filling agrammatical gap. Sanchez (2005) also posits morphological renewal (the replacement of anative morpheme with aforeign one provided that both are of the same type, i.e. abound form replacing abound form, and that they have the same overlapping function), structural compatibility and convergence (surface forms of contact languages become more alike) as contributing causes of borrowing. Pressures for structural compatibility and convergence may be interpreted as cognitive pressures on the bilingual brain. Matras (1998: 281) suggests that grammatical borrowing is the result of cognitive pressure experienced by bilinguals to “draw on [the] pragmatically dominant language for situative… discourse-regulating purposes”.
CHLOE MICHELLE CASTLE 165 In Thomason and Kaufman’s (1988) model, it is posited that social factors are contributing causes of grammatical borrowing. They provide ascale of borrowing, wherein lesser contact and social pressure result in mainly lexical borrowing, and very strong contact and pressure can result in borrowing of essentially any category (Thomason and Kaufman 1988). Many other studies agree that social factors can contribute to grammatical borrowing in contact situations (Brody 1987; Campbell 1993; Myers-Scotton 2002; Sakel 2007; Lipski 2017; De La Fuente 2017; Dobrushina 2017; Gardner-Chloros and Secova 2018). Sanchez (2005), however, postulates that there is no strong evidence for social factors in motivating the borrowing process aside from the very existence of the contact situation. 3 METHOD 3.1 DESIGN AND PROCEDURE Thirteen one-on-one interviews were conducted. Interviews were semi-structured to allow for new or unexpected content-rich information to be shared and further investigated (Loewen and Plonsky 2015). Interviews lasted from between 13 and 38 minutes and were undertaken at the National Technical Library in Prague, or at participant homes, in December 2019. The interviews were audiorecorded, transcribed and coded by theme in NVivo. The questions identified whether participants report themselves as engaging in grammatical borrowing and their perceived causes of the phenomenon. They provided an in-depth understanding about language choices and contributing factors. Questions can be accessed on Figshare (Castle 2021c). The sample was non-random, and asnowball sampling method was used. The researcher aimed to obtain asample with arange of ages, genders, educational levels, regions of origin and length of habitation to maximise chances of obtaining avariety of results amongst arelatively small group of participants. Abasic information sheet was used to acquire the participant metadata. Participants were required to be L1 English L2 Czech speakers. Their level of language ability was identified with aself-test and an online placement test (Gollub 2020). Participants graded themselves between 0 and 10, with 0 representing no language knowledge and 10 representing fluency. In the online test, participants were placed on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). To be considered fluent Czech speakers at an adequate level for this study, participants needed to have aB2 level on the placement test.4 Participants under this level are included in this paper, but their lack of fluency is considered and signalled throughout the analysis. 4 Aspeaker at B2 level is considered an independent user who can “interact with adegree of fluency and spontaneity that makes regular interaction with native speakers quite possible without strain for either party”, “produce aclear, detailed text on awide range of subjects” and “understand the main ideas of acomplex text on … concrete and abstract topics” (Council of Europe 2020).
166 LINGUISTICA PRAGENSIA 2/2021 There was an initial requirement for participants to have no Czech parentage and to be Australian, but this requirement was discarded due to both participant availability and the researcher having only alimited period of time in the country. There were 626 Australians residing in the Czech Republic in 2019 (Czech Statistical Office 2020), but atotal of 18, 353 foreigners from majority English-speaking countries5. The majority of these were from the UK (8, 332 people) and the US (7,245 people). However, this may not reflect the proportion of native English speakers. As of 2012, approximately 0.68% of people in the Czech Republic had English as their L1, whereas the English-speaking “foreigners” make up approximately just 0.17% of the population (van Parys 2012; Czech Statistical Office 2020). This gap may reflect those with Czech citizenship who have English as their L1, or could represent achange based on the years in which the data were collected. The Czech parentage participants are Participants 11, 12 and 13. This is considered in the analysis. 3.2 TERMINOLOGY Grammatical borrowing includes both matter borrowing (MAT) (wherein the phonological form and function are borrowed) and pattern borrowing (PAT) (wherein the function but not the phonological form is borrowed) (Matras and Sakel 2007). Examples of MAT and PAT occurring in the data are shown in examples (1) and (2) respectively. (1) Participant 3: MAT (functional suffix borrowing) mous-oviště mouse-PLACE.SUFFIX ‘aplace where mice have been making amess’ (2) Participant 7: PAT (article omission) About… husband and wife couple About husband and wife couple ‘about a husband and wife couple’ Czech: o manžel-ovi a manžel-ce About husband-LOC and wife-LOC ‘about ahusband and wife (couple)’ This paper follows Matras and Sakel (2007) in considering grammatical “unconventionalities” (Doğruöz & Backus 2009) at the individual level as grammatical borrowing, with innovation (in terms of new use of language borrowed in some way from 5 These are the countries recognised by the UK government as being majority English speaking: Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Canada, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, New Zealand, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, St Vincent and the Grenadines, The United States of America (and, of course, the UK itself) (Gov.UK 2021).
CHLOE MICHELLE CASTLE 167 another language, not its more general definition) rather than community propagation being the focus. The term mixing was used when enquiring about language use; analogous to Muysken’s (2000: 1) “code mixing”, referring to “all cases where lexical items and grammatical features from two languages appear in one sentence”. This increased the user-friendliness of the linguistic terminology. However, as the study aims to focus on grammatical borrowing, specific questions were asked and explained regarding borrowing, morphology, and syntax. It is recognised that this study may reflect potential reasons behind not only grammatical borrowing, but also lexical borrowing and other forms of mixing. This is due to difficulty for participants in identifying instances of borrowing and differentiating between them e.g. syntactic vs lexical. Some participants did have higher metalinguistic awareness than others and therefore deeper, more detailed, and relevant answers were obtained fromthem. Metalinguistic awareness plays arole in how much participants can share regarding grammatical borrowing, or any language-contact related phenomena in their speech. Borrowing events participants discuss include: 1. Conscious events that people are aware of and purposefully engage in in real time. 2. Events which people become aware of immediately after use. 3. Events which people are aware of upon reflection. 4. Events which people have avague feeling that they may possibly engage in. 5. Events that people are entirely unaware of. In this study, the researcher will not be able to obtain information about 5. However, participants discuss 1–4 at length throughout the interviews. Events that are subconscious in real time are discussed in Section 4.4. Participant awareness of borrowing events after the fact shows that their performance differs from their competency. This is not to say that borrowing represents poor performance, but rather to say that participants tend to be aware of some linguistic rules, requirements and ideologies around Standard English, though they may not always adhere to them. In the analysis, apanel of six educated L1 English speaking people were selected to find non-English sounding grammatical phenomena in the data. Metadata on this panel is displayed in Appendix 1. 3.3 PARTICIPANT DATA The sample size of 13 was based on availability of participants during the time the researcher was able to spend in the Czech Republic. This is adequate for an exploratory in-depth study into reasons behind contact-induced grammatical borrowing. The rich data collected from this sample may be added to existing data in the literature and used to better understand this phenomenon for broader cross-linguistic studies. Aims to obtain avaried sample were relatively successful (see §3.1). Participant data is displayed in Table 1, and language proficiency data is displayed in Table 2 for ease of comparison and analysis between participants.
168 LINGUISTICA PRAGENSIA 2/2021 Variable Category Number of participants Participants Age >50 5 6 7 8 10 12 <50 8 1 2 3 4 5 9 11 13 Gender Male 7 1 7 8 9 10 11 12 Female 6 2 3 4 5 6 13 Length of habitation in the Czech Republic <1 year 29 13 1–10 years 0 10–20 years 31 2 11 20 years + 83 4 5 6 7 8 10 12 Education High School 1 12 Bachelor’s Degree 62 4 6 8 9 11 Master’s Degree 21 13 PhD 4 3 5 7 10 Region ofOrigin New South Wales, Australia 1 1 Victoria, Australia 39 12 13 USA 7 2 3 4 5 6 7 10 England 2 8 11 Table 1.Participant data Participant P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 P6 P7 P8 P9 P10 P11 P12 P13 Czech Self-score 8 7 9 8 9 6 8 4 2 8 6 10 7 Czech CEFR score C2 B2 C2 C2 C2 C2 C2 A2 B1 C2 C2 C2 C1 English Self-score 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 Table 2.Participant language proficiency The self-scores of Participants 6, 9 and 11 differ significantly from their CEFR score, which is partially attributed to the fact that these participants had aself-effacing nature regarding their Czech abilities. Participant 8 states that his Czech is “A2 to B1 for all forms, listening probably alittle bit better, the speaking comes alittle bit later, but Itry with her family and things like that”. Participant 6 stated that she was not speaking Czech nearly as much as she used to, and she is not happy about her current level of Czech. There also exists alimitation in terms of the CEFR online placement test (Gollub 2020) being purely based on lexical knowledge.
CHLOE MICHELLE CASTLE 169 4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 4.1 SOCIAL PRESSURES 4.1.1 PRESSURE TO CONFORM TO SPEAKING CZECH Participants were asked whether they felt social pressure to speak Czech. Two factors come into play including whether the individual is the type to be influenced by social pressure, and whether they then do feel such pressure. In considering whether the individual is the type to be influenced by social pressure, the researcher considered later commentary by those who initially stated that they are not affected by such things.6 People are not always perceived as being confident and self-assured if they reveal that they care about what others think, even if they do, hence the researcher conducted adeeper content analysis to find amore accurate answer. Social pressure to speak Czech can act as both adriving and inhibiting influence for contact-induced unconventionalities. Consistently speaking Czech rather than English may aid in Czech fluency and lower English fluency over time. This could potentially lead to more attrition-based unconventionalities in the participants’ English, as well as borrowing in English from the influence of extensive Czech use. However, pressure to speak Czech only may also act as an inhibiting factor for borrowing, because individuals are unable to borrow from between their languages when they feel that they must only use one. Such pressure, for lower-level speakers of Czech, may actually inhibit them from trying to speak in Czech if it is not entirely fluent and thus being less likely to borrow for non-accommodation related purposes in their English, as their Czech is not proficient enough to do so. For example, Participant 8 feels astrong pressure from the larger society and community not to mix between the two languages and feels that he is judged if he does. According to the data, 23% (3/13) of participants feel social pressure to speak Czech, 23% (3/13) somewhat feel pressure and 54% (7/13) do not feel pressure to conform. Only the data from the participant’s final answer is taken here as it is considered to reflect the situation more accurately. There is aslight majority who do not feel such pressure. Almost half of the participants feel at least some pressure to speak Czech, especially in public situations. Pressure to conform to speaking Czech figures as acontributing factor in grammatical borrowing and attrition processes amongst these participants. 4.1.2 PARTNER INFLUENCE Partner influence can act as adriver for grammatical borrowing where participants speak both languages with their partners, as speakers tend to borrow where and with whom they feel most comfortable, particularly at home (§4.1.5). Participant 3 speaks English to her husband, who speaks to her in Czech. Participant 7 normally speaks Czech at home with his wife, but will switch to and mix in English in some situations. Participant 10 and his wife “kind of take turns, with Czech and English, sometimes mixing them up”. 6 Each of the pressures and influences involved with this study are summarised in Table 6.
176 LINGUISTICA PRAGENSIA 2/2021 tion asked to participants, it cannot be documented in Table 6. However, conscious engagement in “language play” (Porte 2003: 116) is aform of grammatical borrowing in this situation. Innovation rather than community propagation is the focus here. Participants 1, 2, 3, 7, 11, and 12 referred to engaging in language play. Participant 1 stated that it is something you “do only with people that you’re very comfortable with” (see also §4.1.5). Participant 2 reflects that she has a“very strange [mix of] language” spoken “especially after afew glasses of wine” that only she and her friends understand. Participant 7 discusses the addition of adiminutive to an English friend’s name for humorous effect: Eshl-ík Eshl-DIM ‘little Ashley’. Participant 11 shared that he uses Czech affixes on English words “only in fun… with swear words or stupid stuff… that’s just for fun, people enjoy the humour”. Participants 6 and 9 stated that they do not do this, which are the same participants who have anegative opinion on mixing. Other participants were unclear as to whether they engage in language play. According to Matras and Sakel (2007: 848) and Heine and Kuteva (2005: 34–35), interlocutors are “actors who make creative use of language”. Speakers use their creativity and abilities in both languages to form unique phrases that may involve grammatical borrowing. 4.4 SUBCONSCIOUS BORROWING Whilst by definition participants cannot determine aspects of their subconscious borrowing in the moment, several discussed engaging in borrowing which they later realised had occurred, either immediately after the fact or upon reflection (see §3.2). Participants have three ideologies that come across when reflecting on their subconscious borrowing practice. The first ideology is that subconscious borrowing events represent mistakes. The second is that Czechs do not speak English correctly, and the third is the use of Czech should not affect my English. In line with the first ideology, Participant 1 reflected: “Iread my writing or hear myself speak and Idrop articles, I… stop using ‘a’, ‘the’, ‘you know’…and mess up the word order alittle bit because Czech word order is abit freer so it definitely does happen sometimes that Iwill get to the end of the sentence and go, why did Isay it that way?” In this instance, he is ascribing his actions to the influence of his knowledge of the Czech language.10 He also recognises the influence of hearing L1 Czechs’ L2 English, in line with the second ideology: “hearing Czechs speak incorrectly can influence me and suddenly things that you know are wrong don’t sound so wrong”. 10 This is apossible example of syntactic borrowing. Participant 1 does not use ‘a’ or ‘the’ sometimes (disuse of the article), possibly following the pattern of Czech, which does not have articles. In terms of word order, he may also be following aCzech word order pattern rather than an English one.
CHLOE MICHELLE CASTLE 177 In line with ideology three, Participant 11 states: “sometimes you can be saying things that you thought, oh hang on that’s not right… because you’ve been thinking and speaking in Czech so often for so many years that your native language is still there but it’s… slowly getting put on the backburner.” Participant 10 does not think his syntax is affected, but that perhaps someone else would notice it. During the observation sessions in Castle (2021a), the same participant stated that, when it comes to mistakes in English, “sometimes we’re [he and his colleague, also in the observation session] not sure anymore” after having lived and worked in the Czech Republic for 30 years, in alignment with the third ideology. In line with both the first and last ideologies, Participant 4 explained that she may accidentally subconsciously “mix up the sentence order” if she has been speaking in Czech for along time and then needs to suddenly switch to English. These reflections obviously cannot encompass the grammatical borrowing that could be happening at an entirely subconscious level in terms of not realising that it has occurred at all. However, they allow an insight into borrowing that is subconscious at the moment of speech. 4.5 BORROWING TENDENCIES In Table 4, the borrowing tendencies of the participants are displayed. To create this, participant speech data from the observation sessions was analysed (Castle 2021a). In Castle (2021a), groups of two11 interlocutors participated in observation sessions, wherein they spoke about topics including travel, family, and food (with discussion sheet prompts). The ‘time’ column refers to the amount of time in the observation session that the participant spoke for. Examples of agrammatical phenomenon attestations are shown below. Example (5) shows an instance of alack of the required noun form with an adjective, and example (6) shows article omission. Example (4) in §4.3.1 is also agrammatical phenomenon attestation. (5) Participant 11 Unless you’re an English or a person who Unless you-to.be-2SG ART English-ADJ or ART person who hasn’t got a lot of money to.have-AUX-NEG to.get-PST ART lot of money ‘Unless you’re an English person or aperson who hasn’t got alot of money.’ (6) Participant 6 He had done translation of it He AUX to-do.PST translation of it 11 Initially, the sample had asize of fourteen participants (hence groups of two), but one participant was raised in the Czech Republic and then lived in Australia for eleven years as an adult. Their data is thus unusable here, but the other participant’s data is still used because they represent the ideal target candidate for this research: an L1 English speaker who learned Czech in adulthood and is now fluent in the language.
178 LINGUISTICA PRAGENSIA 2/2021 Participant Grammatical phenomena attestations12 Borrowing attestations13 Time Whether they say they borrow P1 6 2 9m 23s Yes P2 5 1 8m 33s Yes P3 3 2 6m 40s Yes P4 3 0 7m 1s Yes P5 0 0 6m 23s Yes P6 3 1 12m 31s No/Prefers not to P7 5 3 7m 43s Yes P8 4 0 6m 15s Sometimes/Ability is low in Czech P9 0 0 10m 41s No P10 5 1 8m 35s Yes P11 15 5 11m 45s Yes/Prefers not to P12 4 2 10m 16s Yes P13 2 0 8m 38s Yes Table 4.Participant borrowing tendencies Participant 11 produces the most attestations by far. He also spoke for the second longest amount of time in total. There are no attestations from Participant 9, who states that he does not borrow, but also has alower proficiency in Czech. There are none from Participant 5, who spoke for the second shortest amount of time and spoke in an interviewer-like style. Borrowing attestations are, for the most part, produced by those who say that they borrow. However, there is one attestation of aborrowing by Participant 6, who prefers not to engage in borrowing, and five by Participant 11 who states that he prefers not to borrow. There may be some subconscious borrowing occurring. 4.6 SUMMARY Social pressures, cognitive pressures, gap filling, and creativity were considered in determining the causes behind grammatical borrowing. Pressures for convergence and structural similarity are contained within the heading of cognitive pressures. The social pressures explored in this article include that of pressure from the public, community, and partners, as well as self-pressure. Self-pressures were encompassed by three ideologies that the participants adhered to, namely: it is not good to mix languages; it is ok to mix in certain situations; and it is normal and natural to mix languages. Several of the social pressures discussed in this article can act as both driving and inhibiting influences in terms of grammatical borrowing (cf. Table 5). 12 From Castle (2021a). 13 From Castle (2021a).
CHLOE MICHELLE CASTLE 179 Pressure Driving influence Inhibiting influence Pressure to conform to speaking Czech + + Partner Influence + + Pressure to keep the languages separate – + Self-pressure and perspective on mixing + + Table 5:Social pressures as driving or inhibiting influences for grammatical borrowing. (Key: + = it is an influence,– = it is not an influence). In some cases, the opinion regarding grammatical borrowing was astronger factor for avoidance of conscious grammatical borrowing than ease of cognitive processing. Most participants had no difference in relaxedness in terms of whether they were able to mix or not mix their languages, and amajority also expressed that they would borrow due to ease of expression. Most participants agreed that they would borrow due to usefulness/appropriateness and better expression of meaning. Several participants also engage in language play, particularly with those whom they are closest to and most comfortable speaking with. The relationship to the interlocutor is an important element for the emergence of grammatical borrowing. These findings are summarised in terms of each individual participant for the purposes of ease of comparison in Table 6. Factor P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 P6 P7 P8 P9 P10 P11 P12 P13 Social Pressures Conform to speaking Czech S× × × × S✓ × ✓ × S× ✓ Partner influence Cz E M Cz M Cz M E E M M Cz E Separate languages × × × S S × ✓ × ✓ S S × ✓ Self-pressure not to borrow × × × × × ✓ N N ✓N N N N Cognitive Pressures Relaxedness Sep N/A N N N Sep N M Sep N/A N/A N M Forgetting/not knowing aword ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ × ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ Ease of expression P✓P✓P×P✓✓✓✓✓✓ Gap Filling and Creativity Usefulness/ appropriateness ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ × ✓ ✓ × ✓ ✓ ✓ P Better expression of meaning P✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ × ✓ × × ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ Table 6:Summary of factors contributing to grammatical borrowing (Key: Cz = Czech, E= English, M= amix of the languages, ✓ = yes, × = no, N = neutral, S= somewhat, P = possible/probable, Sep = separate, N = no difference).
180 LINGUISTICA PRAGENSIA 2/2021 4.7 ANALYSIS Thomason and Kaufman’s (1988) framework is utilised to confirm the level of social pressure and contact experienced. The types of borrowing participants have engaged in identified in Castle’s (2021a) paper include: functional suffix borrowing (derivational morpheme) (see example 7 below); diminutive suffix borrowing (derivational morpheme) (cf. example 4), non-use of articles (syntactic unconventionality) (cf. example 8 below, example 6); and adjective placement (syntactic (and morphological) unconventionality) (cf. example 5). (7) Participant 3: functional suffix borrowing Plastic box-oviště Plastic box-PLACE.SUFFIX ‘the place where plastic boxes are kept’ (8) Participant 12: non-use of articles Immigrants were still accepted and supported Immigrant-PL to-be.PST.3PL still to.accept-PST and to.support-PST by country by country ‘immigrants were still accepted and supported by the country’ Table 7 below provides asummary of which participants engaged in these four types of borrowing. This can be viewed alongside Table 4 for afuller understanding of the borrowings which are occurring. Borrowing type Participants PAT: Non-use of article 11 (4)14, 7 (3), 12 (2), 2 (1), 1 (1), 6 (1) PAT: Adjective placement 11 (1), 10 (1) MAT: Functional Suffixes 3 (2) MAT: Diminutives 1 (1)15 Table 7.Participant borrowing occurrences Derivational morpheme borrowing meets the criteria for level 3 borrowing on Thomason and Kaufman’s (1988) scale. It is interesting to ponder whether this would then become ingrained into the language over the generations if allowed to develop and 14 The number in brackets shows the amount of occurrences of this phenomenon by this participant. 15 There was also an instance where Participant 12 mentioned that borrowings such as e.g. koalka ‘little koala’ would be very common in his speech and his bilingual community, but this was not included as this example was prompted. Also, Participant 2 mentioned that her son uses the diminutives –ka and –ovač on their dog’s (non-Czech) name, but again this was not included as it was in her son’s speech, not hers.
CHLOE MICHELLE CASTLE 181 not exposed to the outside world. The other forms of syntactic unconventionalities are placed at level 2. As there were not alarge amount of attestations, the contact level is placed between 2 and 3. The intensity of social contact can be placed between “slightly more intense contact” and “more intense contact” (Thomason and Kaufman 1988: 74–76). Most of the participants are above aB2 level of Czech competency (in fact, the majority are of C2 level) and utilise Czech in their daily lives. However, as an inhibiting factor, at least half of participants felt pressure to avoid mixing, which is not included in this scale. This is most relevant for instances where participants are able to tell that they are borrowing between the languages, for example with MAT (§4.1.3, 4.1.4, and 4.1.5). Language Maintenance Effort (Herdina and Jessner 2002) is identified as being an important factor in English maintenance for these participants (Castle 2021a). English maintenance and the presence of Global English may act as inhibiting factors in the emergence of grammatical borrowing. Using Thomason and Kaufman’s (1988) framework, it can be confirmed that the level of social pressure experienced, and the types of borrowing participants have engaged in (Castle 2021a) are matched. However, this framework does not cover both conscious and subconscious borrowing processes. The proposed model above aims to address these differences (cf. Figure 2). Figure 2.Conscious and subconscious borrowing processes Language B Subconscious Borrowing Conscious/creative Borrowing L1 L1 Conversation partner(s): anyone Conversation partner(s): close friends/family – For fun, language play, usefulness – Gap Exists – Cognitive Pressure – Structural Similarity – Social Pressure Need Grammatical resources for expression/structure from L2 Grammatical resources for expression Mitigated by: prescriptivism, self-pressure, societal pressure Mitigated by: Language Maintenance Effort (Herdina & Jessner 2002) L2 PAT borrowing No/less L2 borrowing L2 MAT + PAT borrowing No L2 MAT borrowing Bilingual language mode Monolingual language mode 1 2 3 Language A (base language)
182 LINGUISTICA PRAGENSIA 2/2021 This model considers the conversation partner involved, whether the borrowing is subconscious, the different pressures involved in each situation, and inhibiting factors in conscious borrowing. In subconscious borrowing, where the conversation partner may be anyone, need (van Coetsem 2000) encompassing cognitive pressure and social pressure (Castle 2021a) lead the speaker to utilise grammatical resources and structure from the L2 and borrow them into their L1. As mentioned in Section 4.1.3, this is more likely with PAT (Matras and Sakel 2007: 842). This explains why even prescriptivists may engage in this type of borrowing; they can only control their conscious borrowings. Indeed, the process of language management only occurs when the participant is paying attention to and thus aware of their language use. Participants note aphenomenon which is occurring, e.g. adeviation from the norm, evaluate it and thus implement acommunication design (Nekvapil and Sherman 2013: 91). Prescriptivists are unable to implement adesign in communication if they are unaware that they have engaged in what they would likely regard as adeviation from the norm it it not good to mix languages. Syntactic borrowing appears to be more subconscious than MAT. Participants were much less able to identify instances of syntactic borrowing occurring, indicating that they were less metalinguistically aware of this. They also often thought of syntactic unconventionalities as “errors” that they notice after they have produced the phrase rather than achoice that they have made beforehand, in line with the ideology subconscious borrowing events represent mistakes (see §4.4). In conscious borrowing, conversation partners are those close to the speaker. An opportunity for aMAT to fill agrammatical gap is identified, and the speaker uses it in playfulness or for usefulness and better expression of meaning. Thus, an L2 borrowing occurs in the L1. This can be inhibited by prescriptivism, self-pressure, and societal pressure. In conscious borrowings, speakers can choose whether, when and how they engage in it. Participants are integrating synthetic structures into English. Areplacement of synthetic structures with analytic structures represents language attrition (Dorian 1982; Maher 1985; 1991; Dutkova-Cope 2001: 39). However, as synthetic structures are integrated here, these borrowings do not represent attrition, especially as it is by first generation speakers, but rather aborrowing of resources and use of them for fun, or for purposes related to conscious choice. It would appear that participants are engaging in “utterance management” (Nekvapil 2016: 14) in choosing which grammatical resources to utilise in their speech. In terms of acomparison with South Australian Czech, it was interesting to see that there was morphological MAT occurring in this data but not in the SA Czech data (Castle 2021b). Almost all of the borrowings in the SA Czech data were syntactic PAT (Castle 2021b). Zajícová (2012: 304), in her article on the speech of Czech immigrants in Paraguay, stated that the fact that there was no instance of Spanish bound morphemes borrowed into Czech confirmed how borrowing hierarchies are regarding this type of replication. However, the richness of the morphology may have an effect on what is borrowed. There is creative bound morpheme MAT evident in this study, yet not in South Australian Czech or Paraguayan Czech. Czech as asynthetic language has an arguably richer morphology than English.
CHLOE MICHELLE CASTLE 183 5 CONCLUSION Social pressure, cognitive pressures, gap filling, and conscious creative decisions are drivers of grammatical borrowing, with social pressure and self-pressure potentially acting as inhibiting forces. Asignificant proportion of participants feel pressure to conform to Czech but there were still many who do not, demonstrating that there were not only different social situations, but also many different personalities at play in the sample. Amajority of participants also speak Czech only or acombination of the two languages with their partner, and alarge majority held positive or neutral ideologies regarding borrowing, those being it is normal and natural to mix languages and it is ok to mix in certain situations respectively. However, just over half of participants felt at least some pressure to keep their languages separate. In the process of analysis, the importance of separating conscious and subconscious borrowing and the processes leading to each came to light. It was identified that there are certain places or people with whom participants consciously decide to engage in borrowing. Most conscious, playful borrowing occurs with those closest to the participant, and this borrowing is often MAT. PAT, especially syntactic borrowing, is usually less conscious and can sometimes be realised after the speaker has finished. These instances of subconscious borrowings, once realised by the participant, are usually considered “mistakes”, informing the ideology subconscious borrowing events represent mistakes. Anew model was created which takes both conscious and subconscious borrowing into account, as well as including inhibiting effects such as prescriptivist ideologies and associated self-pressure to adhere to them, language maintenance effort (Herdina and Jessner 2002), and societal pressure. The main limitation of this study is the small sample size; however, it does not aim to be reflective of the whole L1 English L2 Czech immigrant community. It is an exploratory study into the realities of grammatical borrowing. Potential future studies could involve larger sample sizes or focus more heavily on the psycholinguistic perspective in terms of the roles of personality with regard to how participants react or claim to react to outside sociolinguistic influences (see §4.1.1, 4.1.3). Research could also be undertaken on grammatical borrowing between Czech and English in the large community of L2 English L2 Czech immigrants living in the Czech Republic. There is aneed for more typological studies in this area in terms of drawing on languages with different typologies in contact with one another. Declaration of Interest Statement The author declares that there is no conflict of interest.
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