Language Phenomena and Processes in Language Contact Situations

The subject familiarises students with contact linguistics and analyzes language contact phenomena from the viewpoint of general linguistics and sociolinguistics. It focuses on:

Theories, approaches and research models of socially conditioned language change;

Linguistic consequences of language contact
- In language: borrowing, adoption, language change
- In speech: language choice, codeswitching, translation, interference, transfer;

social consequences of language contact;
- expansion, preservation and language abandonment
- ethnolinguistic vitality, ethnolinguistic revitalization
- language production and reproduction
- language conflict

speakers in language contact
- typology of bilingualism
- acquisition/learning of mother and other tongue,
- bilingualism and cognitive development in education.

Students expand their theoretical knowledge through research into specific cases of contact between Slovene and other languages in the Slovene ethnic/ linguistic space and in the EU.