LINGUIST List 15.1822

Wed Jun 16 2004

Qs: Immigrant Lang; Zipf Law

Editor for this issue: Andrea Berez <andrealinguistlist.org>

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Directory

  1. Lars Anders Kulbrandstad, Names of Foreigner or Immigrant Varieties
  2. Rania Voskaki, The Zipf Law Cross-Linguistically

Message 1: Names of Foreigner or Immigrant Varieties

 Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2004 10:50:50 -0400 (EDT)
From: Lars Anders Kulbrandstad <lars.kulbrandstadluh.hihm.no>
Subject: Names of Foreigner or Immigrant Varieties

In an ongoing research project I explore what varieties spoken by
foreigners and immigrants are called in various languages. I am
interested in different kinds of designations: names of learner
language in general, of immigrant varieties in particular groups or in
general, of mixed varieties in multiethnic milieus and of more
permanent varieties in groups with a background in given first
languages. The purpose of the study is to develop a typology of such
names and to analyse what ideas and attitudes might lay behind them.

In Scandinavia GEBROKKEN ('broken�Euro') is the traditional general
label in Danish and Norwegian for more or less faulty attempts to
speak a foreign language; in Swedish it's BRUTEN ('broken'). Then
there are less common appellations like KAUDERVELSK (Kauder Welsh in
origin probably used about the language spoken by Italian merchants in
southern Germany) and LABBELENSK (possibly a corruption of lapplandsk
'Lapplandish'). Among the more recent names I have registred so far
are KEBABNORSK (''Kebab Norwegian''), PAKKISNORSK (''Pakistani
Norwegian''), JALLANORSK (''Yalla Norwegian'' - most likely from the
Arabic injection yalla 'hurry up'), VOLLANORSK (''Wallah Norwegian"
from Arabic wa-ll (I swear) by Allah), RINKEBYSVENSKA (''Rinkeby
Swedish'' - Rinkeby is a suburb in Stockholm) and PERKERDANSK
(''Perker Danish'' - probably formed from per(ser) 'Persian' and
tyr(ker) 'Turk'').

I would now like to broaden the scope and include names and epithets
from other languages and would be grateful for any help with the data
collection. Please include as much information about each item as
possible (sense, emotive value, origin, distribution etc.).

I will post a summary of our contributions.

Lars Anders Kulbrandstad
Hedmark University College
Norway
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Message 2: The Zipf Law Cross-Linguistically

 Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2004 15:01:24 +0000
From: Rania Voskaki <rvoskakihotmail.com>
Subject: The Zipf Law Cross-Linguistically

Dear colleagues,

I would be grateful to you if you could let me know whether there are
any studies on the Zipf low cross-linguistically? I am very much
interested in studies using developmental data.

Thank you,
Best wishes,
Rania Voskaki
PhD student
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
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